Rise Up Singing! An Online Celebration of Song

We Began to Sing tells the story of Peter and Annie’s mission to revive communal singing, what their friend and mentor Pete Seeger called “the people’s music.” From 1960s protest movements to the present, they have witnessed singing’s power to forge human connections and galvanize social change. As cultural fissures threaten our social compact, their work takes on new urgency.

Annie Patterson co-created the world-renowned songbook Rise Up Singing: The Singalong Songbook along with her partner, Peter Blood, along with its sequelRise Again. Annie is a folk performer, jazz vocalist, music educator, artist, and premiere song leader, having led singing with countless communities around the world for over three decades. She currently performs with the swing band Girls From Mars and the Dear Ella Trio (on vocals, guitar, banjo, and cajón). Many people committed to social change, including Pete Seeger and his wife, Toshi, have helped support Annie and Peter’s lifelong work of bringing hope and change through song to people all over the world. Their friendship with the Seegers and their passion for building community through song is documented in the filmWe Began to Sing. More about Annie and her music career can be found on her website.

Peter Blood, well-known for co-creating Rise Up Singing and Rise Again songbooks with Annie Patterson, also edited folk legend Pete Seeger’s autobiography, Where Have All the Flowers Gone: A Singalong Memoir. Peter’s lifelong dedication to civil rights, peace, and social justice, along with having incredible mentors like Pete Seeger, has inspired him to keep developing resources for building community through song. He is currently expanding an online search engine called The Music Box, found on his and Annie’s website. This database contains information and video links for thousands of artists and songs (including all those in their songbooks). A Quaker historian and teacher, Peter currently spends part of each year traveling among Friends, helping them rediscover their radical prophetic roots. He has developed an online library of writings, talks, and other resources about Quakerism on his website. 

Polly Wells made her first documentary at 22 and has contributed to more than 100 factual programs for U.S. and Canadian television, including The Secret Files (PBS), Nazi Hunters (National Geographic), and The Age of Anxiety (CBC). Most recently she produced and directed the independent documentaries We Began to Sing, featuring folksinger Pete Seeger, and It Happens When We Sing. She has degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

Candida Paltiel is an independent documentary filmmaker and producer with a passion for social justice stories focused on individuals, communities, and environments in transition. She has directed and produced works for major Canadian and international networks over three decades. She was the Artistic Director of Planet in Focus, Environmental Film and Video Festival where she also launched major screen based environmental initiatives. She has curated, judged, and presented environmental films at MOMA in NYC; Eco Cinema in Salvador de Bahia in Brazil; the Sarajevo Snow Festival in Bosnia and Herzegovina; Cinema Ambiente in Turin, Italy; the Ya’an Panda Festival in Szechuan, China; and the Maori Film Festival in Otaki, New Zealand. For Wells Production Associates, Candida has co-produced two documentary films with Polly Wells: We Began to Sing and the more recent release, It Happens When We Sing. She is based in Toronto, Canada.