"Peter, Paul & Mommy" was the name Mary Travers’ daughter Erika once gave her mother’s famous group. During more than three decades in the spotlight, Travers has been managing a balance among many roles, including recording artist, concert performer, human rights activist and, of course, mommy. Her daughter Alicia manages a restaurant in Connecticut and Erika has two little girls of her own. In the gardens of Mary’s eighteenth century Connecticut home, a tree for each of her two granddaughters has been planted alongside the two trees growing for Mary’s children. Hers is a family where a sense of continuity runs deep.

The daughter of politically aware newspaper reporters, Mary grew up in the stimulating Greenwich Village arts community. A love of music and a strong social consciousness came naturally, and by the time Mary was a teenager, she was singing on Pete Seeger’s records. Many gold and platinum albums later, she’s stayed true to the urban folk tradition and to an activist’s sense of responsibility.

During the turbulent civil rights movement, Mary marched in Selma with her Southern-born mother, two generations bridging age with the continuity of concern. She recalls that "while others of my peer group were rejecting the values of their parents, I was in the then unfashionable position of sharing mine with the woman who had taught me. I remember at Selma, actor Dennis Hopper saying to me, ‘That’s your mother? How hip.’ I thought so."

As if to prove the axiom that the more things change the more they stay the same, decades later Mary was arrested at an anti-apartheid protest with her mother and daughter Alicia. When she saw the press photos, Mary thought that the photos caption should read: "How to Bridge the Generation Gap".

Just as activism has linked the members of her family, folk music has been a bridge for the different generations that have loved the music of Peter, Paul & Mary. "In our concerts, the audience feels a sense of community and continuity", says Mary. "Because folk music is non-ageist, it tends to bind families together. It’s lovely to look out at the audience and see a parent hug their little boy or little girl during a song from their college years, and to see that the child knows the words. That sense of sharing feeds back to the artist, and it’s one of the joys of having a long career. It’s also why the music doesn’t get old."

With Peter, Paul & Mary having marked their thirty-ninth anniversary together, Mary is clear on the creative challenges. "If you’re serious about singing – or acting, which are two art forms that get repetitive – the way to keep the music fresh is to recognize that it is totally impossible for it to ever be the same, night after night. You open your mouth and you’d like a certain sound to come out of it, but it doesn’t always come out exactly like you thought it was going to come out! You’re constantly adjusting to reality, and making changes based on that reality. If you’re in great voice, your adjustments will be to risk more, because you’re having fun and you know you’ve got a lot of room to play in. If you’re voice is tired, then you have to make the excitement happen not with volume, but with real smarts. If it’s important to you, it’s never the same; you’re always reaching."

During the time periods that Peter, Paul & Mary have devoted to pursuing individual interests, Mary has found hers to be wide ranging. Along with recording solo albums, performing with symphonies, hosting a syndicated radio show, and writing newspaper columns, she also created the BBC series "Rhymes & Reasons," which dealt with social traditions and changes in modern times.

Such a versatile life has given Mary Travers a unique perspective on the subject of social change. "We’ve learned that it will take more than one generation to bring about change," she observed. The fight for civil rights has developed into a broader concern for human rights, and that encompasses a great many people and countries. Those of us who live in a democracy have a responsibility to be the voice for those whose voices are stilled."

Self-described as "a field worker," Mary’s efforts on behalf of human rights have grown over the years. Her commitments have included an active role in the Washington based Center for the Development of International Policy, an organization that sends fact-finding missions to countries where American Foreign Policy has impact. Travers had participated in missions to El Salvador and Nicaragua. In 1983, with the Union for American Hebrew Congregations, she visited the Soviet Union to learn first-hand about the problems facing Russian Jews, and gave intimate concerts in many of their homes.

"Those performances were the equivalent of bringing a house gift," she explains. "Someone can bring flowers or a bottle of wine when they visit; in my case, I brought my craft as a singer. It was very nice to be able to give that gift. And the priceless gift these people gave me in return didn’t have to be declared at customs."

Peter, Paul & Mary have been to Nicaragua to witness the situation there first hand, and Mary has traveled to El Salvador with her daughter Erika, a former Vista Volunteer. Mary also accompanied exiled South Korean Democratic leader Kim Dae Jung back to his country in 1985 and met with may victims of political repression. "It is one thing to read about the world," she says of these trips, "but quite another to see and hear for oneself."

In an interview with the New York Times, Mary noted that "singing ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ all the places we’ve been, it takes on a different meaning everywhere. When you sing the line, ‘How many years can a people exist, before they’re allowed to be free?’ in a prison yard for political prisoners in El Salvador; if you have sung it to a group of union organizers – who have all been in jail – in South Korea; if you’ve sung to Jews in the Soviet Union who have been refused exit visas; if you’ve sung it with Bishop Tutu protesting apartheid, the song breathes, it lives, it has a contemporary currency."

Mary Travers sees a positive sign in the popular successes of new folk artists, and of musicians who are performing songs of conscience. "The fact that there are singer-songwriters dealing with substantive issues is encouraging," she asserts. "It’s important for young people to perceive that there are acceptable avenues of dissent, because we live in a world where dissent is hard-pressed; treated as if it were unpatriotic. I’ve always liked the concept of the loyal opposition. It allows for dissent to be a respectable part of the whole."

Along with the pitfall of pessimism, which Mary views as "a self-fulfilling prophecy," she considers one of the greatest dangers to be apathy. "All of us are subject to being passive to the social ills around us. It’s a struggle not to become, by staying silent, an accomplice."

"Fortunately for me," she adds, "my work is an extra reminder. Folk music has always contained a concern for the human condition. And since it brings people into it from different points of view, that can help illuminate what a consensus might be to important issues."