Keeping it Fresh With Joan Baez
Baez is coming to town on October 12, to the Flynn Center in Burlington, where the unique magic of her performance will likely galvanize an audience of long-time fans, new converts, and those who come not knowing what they are in for. This is Joan Baez. Her concerts feel like a collective moment and a private audience. That is her greatest gift, the true art of singing the intimate melody, while eliciting from each and every listener the sense that he or she is part of a greater whole. She’s always done it and she still does. Joan Baez is at once a social icon and a familiar voice, easily maneuvering through intricate melodies and complex social commentaries with one of most melodic voices ever to grace a stage or a CD. She’s also 62 and has just wrapped a series of concerts in the UK for a Landmine Free World. Baez is a beacon for those who believe that the world can be changed, that activism is not dead, and that the only way to be safe as a social activist is to surround yourself with those like you and to sing from the heart. Keeping it FreshBaez is in good company among the young artists today. Just as she brought forward the music of Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie, Johnny Cash and many more in the 60s, Baez brings some of today’s richest talent to this CD. "The word that fits best is fresh," Baez says as she describes her work with younger musicians, singers, and songwriters. As a performer, "I can’t afford to not be fresh," Baez acknowledges. But this CD is far more than a nod to marketing moguls or posterity. Like scores of her concerts and collaborations, the CD features the songwriting of some of this generation’s brightest lights. Natalie Merchant, Steve Earle, and Ryan Adams are just a few of those whose songs are featured and achingly portrayed on Dark Chords on a Big Guitar, Baez’ latest studio offering. Truly, the depth of the writing, the emotion, and the clarity of the portraits that emerge from these songs rival the great folk anthems for which Baez is famous. Here Baez fuses the moment and the melody with her clear, haunting, and beautiful voice. These songs are given a soulfulness for which they were born when she blends them with her own unique vocal alchemy. Yet, the call to consciousness belongs to this generation. Baez admits that it’s getting easier to find young talents and the music that continues to astound and bind us. "Happily, now, it’s beginning to find me," she says. This is because Baez has left her calling card in the living rooms of the world. "I'm in the psyche of all of them," she says. "I haven’t met one yet who didn’t say ‘Oh my gosh, I heard your music all the time I was growing up.’" They know to whom they’re offering up their treasures when Baez selects their work. "It’s wonderful for me," Baez says. It is even more wonderful for all of us, given how committed she is to bringing the best of today’s talent to the fore. Being a BeaconNowhere more than here, in the U.S., is it more obvious how brave one must be to be a social advocate these days. It simply isn’t popular, as Tim Robbins reminded us this past summer when his appearance at the Baseball Hall of Fame was abruptly cancelled. Baez, however, has never stopped advocating for the downtrodden and forgotten of our society. She was awarded the American Civil Liberties Earl Warren Award for her work in human and civil rights. She even founded and directed the Humanitas International Human Rights Committee. Baez’ voice is trusted and her commitment to peace is unwavering. Baez tells the story of a recent meeting with a group of Vietnam vets in Yosemite. One man approached Baez and "so sincerely and tearfully thanked me for having gotten them through Vietnam," she says. When she joined them at their table, she told them, "I have really only one thing to say to you guys, and that is I’m glad you’re alive." It was an intensely emotional moment for all of them. Baez then asked the former soldiers how we might best support the troops that are overseas now. "Bring them home," they told her. The power of that message from those who have served was not lost on Baez. It reminded her that she is on the right path and that her message matters to those who hear it. While Baez is deeply opposed to the current policies that govern U.S. action at home and abroad, she is quick to insist that she does not work from a them-and-us mentality. "Rightly or wrongly, I think that comes from my Gandhian background and hearing King chastising the members of his congregation who were saying rude things to the white picketers outside," she says. "I don’t categorize well," she says, explaining that she doesn’t focus on the differences between men and women as they respond to issues. Her life and her songs are dedicated instead to erasing lines of difference. While she may take the stage with a powerhouse of female talent, including Emmylou Harris, The Indigo Girls, Dar Williams, and Sinead O’Connor, she’s just as likely to step on stage with Steve Earle, Billy Bragg, or Bono. She once replied to a brown beret at a Cesar Chavez rally, when asked if she felt like a Chicana, "No more than I feel like a Scotswoman." That may not have been the message he sought, but it’s a truth Baez lives by. Baez knows that to have independent thought, we must have independent media. She praises the recent attempts to chisel away the power of the giant media conglomerates. "In this political rush that was hurled upon us, any little wind like that seems large," she says. It gives her cause to hope that perhaps the current administration and its divisive efforts will be toppled. "I’m beginning now to think that maybe Bush can’t pull it off. I hope so. The only problem is that he has so much money, and this public is so gullible and so terrified of everything." Baez’s wish for all of us is that we would look at the causes of international terrorism, and why it is centered on the U.S. "The point is why did it happen in the first place?" she asks in reference to the attacks of September 11. The point, she insists, is to look at "what’s gone wrong and, that if anybody’s brave enough, to look into the enormous degree that we have been involved in making things wrong, from the CIA starting in Guatemala in 1954, overturning democratic government. Nobody wants to hear that stuff." And yet, it’s in hearing, thinking, and responding that we we'll begin to affect change. Staying CommittedThis degree of activism, commitment, and personal investment in performance and social change would drain anyone. Baez knows that she must recharge to maintain her energies, and she does it through nature. When asked where she lives and why, she responded simply "It’s a rather modest house, but it’s surrounded by oak trees." No, she doesn’t have tons of acres, but she’s got "lots of canopy." The towering oaks that surround Baez’ home ground and embrace her. She even sleeps in one of them on summer nights. She camps with her 90-year-old mother, which is why she was recently in Yosemite, and she still performs barefoot – if the shoes aren’t tied on!! All this endears Baez to her audience, making her accessible, underscoring the fact that she is bared and open with those who hear her. That’s where her power resides, in a voice that rings so true, so deeply, that it can carry a message where regular words have lost their meaning. When asked if her first fans – the former idealists of the 60s – can rekindle their idealism, Baez remembers those she’s met at her concerts. Her greatest gift to us may be that she can rekindle activism, breathe life back into a gentle spirit that is lost and covered up by years of hardened wage-earning and corporate pandering. These 50- and 60-somethings who once held the concert flames for peace, are still in there, Baez says. "I have people say to me after a show, that wasn’t even a political show, ‘Thanks for reminding me.’ And they don’t even say of what, but they usually have tears in their eyes. Maybe that’s part of our job on stage, to breathe new life." Making it NewThat’s exactly what she and her new band will do as they rework and rediscover the music that Baez brings to the Flynn. "What’s different for me is what’s been building. It seems to have landed for me in the drummer who is now our musical director, George Javori. He has now collected a couple of musicians who I have not met. So I’m walking into four days of rehearsal knowing half the band and am so excited because the music will be different again. It will be another step beyond the CD." Music that soars and dips, invites, and inspires is what Joan Baez brings to her audience. Cited as having a wish to transcend mere survival, Baez has created a life work that does just that. She has created a continuum of which we are all part, then reminded us of our job to continue laying the spikes and rails that will link us all. Baez acknowledges that she, herself, participates in a continuum, drawing from the spirits that flow around her "King, he’s always there, with his humor, which not very many people saw, Gandhi, the originator;" and the memory of reading Anne Frank in Baghdad at the age of ten. The greatest example of this need for the continuum and the spirits that lead us comes in Steve Earle’s "Christmas in Washington", off Dark Chords on a Big Guitar. The message resonates through a gorgeous melody enhanced by Baez’ own plaintiff call for Woody Guthrie to come back to us and help us find our way. So come back Woody Guthrie Joan Baez is still reaching out to change and better the world, one consciousness at a time. |
She’s
marched with Martin Luther King, studied the teachings of Gandhi, and
worked with Bono, yet it’s her voice that has the power to persuade
and convince. Joan Baez has toured the world singing a message of peace
and truth for the past 40 years. Her voice today is perhaps even richer,
pouring straight through the music and into each of us, as if we were
the only listeners in the room. That is how she carries truth, through
her beautiful voice.