( CNN ) -- Pete Seeger sang with such a gentle voice that it 's easy to forget how his music drove a fierce , radical movement for change . `` Young people in the civil rights movement began to realize that music was like a weapon you could use , but it was a nonviolent weapon . So you did n't have to feel powerless . You had this weapon , and it was a beautiful song , '' said Candie Carawan in a phone interview from her Tennessee home . Her husband , Guy , is one of the musicians , along with Seeger and Frank Hamilton , credited with adapting the song `` We Shall Overcome '' from an earlier hymn . They were more vessels than songwriters . They became instruments through which the words of oppressed individuals got a hearing . Seeger , Carawan and others lifted up anonymous voices , and these voices changed the world . For 17 years , I 've been working closely with nonprofit organizations that are advocating for causes . They deploy lots of PowerPoint shows . It 's nearly unimaginable a nonprofit executive would put music front and center in an advocacy campaign . Yet that is what happened in the civil rights movement . And it worked . I called Guy Carawan a few years ago , when he was still granting interviews , to ask him whether the music came to be important through some kind of happy accident , or whether it was intentional . Turns out music was front and center by design . Some of the credit goes to Danish folk schools . That 's where Myles Horton saw firsthand how to deploy culture in training individuals to take on social and political causes . A Tennessee native educated in New York and Chicago , Horton co-founded Highlander Folk School in 1932 . As in the Danish schools he visited , music was central . His wife , Zilphia , classically trained in music , led Highlander 's music program and helped create the anthems we associate with the civil rights movement . Highlander hosted and trained the Mount Rushmore names from the civil rights movement , including the Rev . Martin Luther King Jr. , Rosa Parks and James Bevel . They mixed with folk musicians such as Seeger and Carawan . And everyone mixed with men and women who would never become famous -- just folks fighting for the right to vote , to move about freely and to speak freely . The right to be recognized as human beings , in short . This pre-Internet caldron of connectivity -- civil rights leaders and musicians and ordinary men and women mixing together in common cause -- scared the dickens out of people who derived power from the status quo . Authorities could arrest people and beat people . They just could n't stop the singing . Carawan taught `` We Shall Overcome '' to young people in 1960 at the founding meeting of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee at Shaw University . `` Ella Baker wanted me down there to teach that song , '' Carawan said . `` There is power in the words and the songs and the people . '' Two weeks before , he had been at Highlander teaching `` We Shall Overcome '' to one of the first gatherings of the students who would lead sit-ins . At the same meeting , he taught students to sing `` I 'm Gon na Sit at the Welcome Table '' and `` Keep Your Eyes on the Prize . '' It all seems so harmless now , these beautiful songs . But singing those songs could result in a beating . Or time in jail . Music was gasoline on the civil rights fire , and Highlander was effectively a music distribution hub . So tiny little Monteagle , Tennessee , home to Highlander , became a threat to the most powerful people in the country . Georgia state officials sent a spy to Monteagle and ran a smear campaign against King . A congressional committee went after Seeger . The state of Tennessee shut down Highlander and seized the land . `` There 's great nostalgia for these songs , '' Candie Carawan says . `` They have become part of American culture . But at the time , the songs were threatening . It helped people feel united . '' Nothing is more threatening to power than seeing opponents organize . It 's easier to hold off a bunch of unhappy individuals , each isolated and harmless . It 's tougher to resist a bunch of unhappy individuals who unite and work together . Or as Arlo Guthrie describes in his anti-war song `` Alice 's Restaurant , '' if one person sings alone , authorities will think he 's crazy . If 50 people sing out together , they will see it 's a movement . `` Pete understood how powerful music could be , '' Candie Carawan said this week , reflecting upon his death . `` He thought it could change the world . Not all of us would go that far , but he really believed that . '' Seeger described his banjo as a machine that surrounds hate and forces it to surrender . He was right . The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of John Bare .
Legendary folk singer Pete Seeger died recently at the age of 94 . Hide Caption 118 of 119 Photos:People we lost in 2016 Bare : Leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. mixed with the singers who spread message . Seeger understood the liberating power of music , Bare says .