Popular Is Not Enough: The Political Voice Of Joan Baez

ibidem-Press, Stuttgart

Dedicated to the sister to my soul since 1987,

Susanne Rundl, without whose friendship

I would be an entirely different person.

And to Janice Schiestl, my former teacher

and now dear friend, without whose support

this book would not have been possible.

[…] people play this very loud music so they won’t have to confront the quietness. They don’t want to think about death. A lot of my songs, especially the songs I first played, were about death […] (Joan Baez, 1976).

The prevailing ethos is: No negative thoughts, and everything is beautiful. You just jog, eat enough of the right yogurt, and everything is going to be all right […] (Joan Baez, 1987).

It was simply a case of saying I would quietly disappear from mainstream music or fight my way back in, as a result, I have made a commitment to my own career […] (Joan Baez, 1990).

I did have a flight booked and a hotel booked and the final agreement, yes. Maybe four days before the concert, then I was told that I was not approved […] (Joan Baez, 2007).

That’s my little song/ about a man gone wrong./ He’s nasty from his head to his feet./ When the dirt on this man / finally hits the fan,/ and no one gives a damn about his tweets,/ he’ll be finally and forever obsolete […] (Joan Baez, 2017).

Table of Contents

Introduction

1. Stepping Over Boundaries: Materials, Methodology and Theory

Introduction

1.1 Against Wrongful Restrictions: On the Advantages of Interdisciplinarity

1.2 Reconstituting Culture: On the Significance of Social Movements

1.3 Life Is the Method: On the Sisterhood of Biography and Society

1.4 Popular Is Not Enough: On Popular Culture and Politics

1.5 A Critical View of a Critical Theorist: How a Bad Frankfurt Pupil Can Still Be Politically Active

1.5.1 Music for More Than Music’s Sake: On the Credibility of Politically Engaged Artists

1.5.2 Words Do Not Change Society: Theory Versus Practice

1.5.2.1 On Fictitious Freedom

1.5.2.2 On the Credibility of Hazy Categories

1.5.2.3 On the Passiveness of Theories

2. “The Kingdom of Childhood”: Major Moments of the 1950s

Introduction

2.1 Religion Without Violence: Joan Baez and the Quakers

2.2 Becoming Someone Who Was Alright: On Singing Against Isolation

2.3 The Birth of a Passion: Iraq, 1951

2.4 Preparing for the March on Washington: Joan Baez and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

2.5 Another Teacher of Pacifism: Jewish Scholar Ira Sandperl

3. On Refusal Without Violence: Joan Baez and Henry David Thoreau

4. High School Activist and Folk Music Revivalist

Introduction

4.1 Conservative Nostalgia About the 1950s

4.2 Pedagogy of Paranoia: Activist for the First Time

4.3 The Soundtrack of the American Counterculture: Joan Baez and the Folk Music Revival

5. Postwar Fractures in Society: Joan Baez in the 1960s

Introduction

5.1 Doubted Demarcations: American Society and Change in the 1960s

5.2 Going Further than Allowed: Joan Baez and the Civil Rights Movement

5.3 When Students More than Studied: Joan Baez and the Free Speech Movement

5.4 Playing Domino: Joan Baez Against the Vietnam War

6. A Roller Coaster Decade: Joan Baez in the 1970s

Introduction

6.1 In the Shadow: The Comeback of Conservatism

6.2 No Matter What Their Crime Is: Joan Baez and Political Prisoners

6.3 The Normality of Otherness: Joan Baez and the Gay Liberation Movement

6.4 Life Saving Songs: Joan Baez in South East Asia After the Vietnam War

7. A Narcissistic Decade: Joan Baez in the 1980s

Introduction

7.1 The Political Meaning of Yogurt: Ramboism and Music in the 1980s

7.2 Causing Troubles: Joan Baez in Latin America

7.3 Organized Non-Violence Once More: Joan Baez in Poland

7.4 Singing for the Velvet Revolution: Joan Baez in Czechoslovakia

8. Gone from Danger: Joan Baez in the 1990s

Introduction

8.1 Still Speaking of Dreams: On Different Definitions of Energetic Change

8.2 Singing at the Frontier Lines: Joan Baez in Sarajevo

9. A Lifetime Achievement: Joan Baez in the 2000s

Introduction

9.1 War En Vogue Once More: Consequences of 9/11

9.2 Veterans and Mothers Against the War Once More: Joan Baez and Cindy Sheehan

9.3 Censorship Once More: Joan Baez Not Allowed to Sing at Walter Reed Army Medical Center

10. In Times of Nasty Men: Joan Baez in the 2010s

Introduction

10.1 In the Hall of Fame: Musical and Political Accolades

10.2 In Times of Nasty Men: Opposition to Donald Trump

Conclusion

Bibliography

Acknowledgements

Curriculum Vitae

Introduction

When artistic expression engages with political activism, unavoidably arising doubts tend to result in forthright lack of differentiation. The choice of artistic genre, political attitude, ideological background and specific political demands of those who are involved in offering their audiences a mixture of art and activism repeatedly leads to heated debates about the authenticity of politically active artists. This case study aims to find an answer to the question of whether a generalization about such credibility can be considered as intellectually satisfying or not. Its line of argumentation points out that lavishing care and attention on passionately upheld convictions like the alleged impracticality of popular music in relation to activist work might perhaps be not enough to adequately analyze the connection of artistic expression with political activism.

The current study explores the coalescence of Joan Baez’s work as a singer and songwriter with her endeavors as a political activist throughout the last sixty years. It aspires to illustrate an American popular singer’s significance as a political activist—for her audiences, for her opponents, as well as for those victims of politically organized violence who have profited from her work. Baez has never clearly separated her artistic work from her efforts as a political activist and in this sense has continually falsified Theodor W. Adorno’s rigid pessimistic view on the political potential of popular music. Her attainments during the most successful decade of her career—the 1960s—have been co-influential for a whole generation’s political conscience. Baez later resorted to this fame when she used her reputation to publicly speak, act and sing out against war and other kinds of organized violence from either the right or the left side of the political spectrum. More than once, she has been able to save numerous lives in the course of her activities (see, for example, Chapter 6.4).

The journalistic material on Joan Baez throughout more than half a century would fill libraries; the growth of published serious scholarly material about Baez, however, is still in its infancy. Countless scientific sources on topics like the Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam War, political prisoners in Latin America and all the numerous other dimensions of her work positively refer to Baez and repeatedly point out the significance of her work. They are, nevertheless, not dealing with the topic of Joan Baez on a general level. One very well written and highly recommandable exception is German musicologist Jens Rosteck’s book Joan Baez. Porträt einer Unbeugsamen (in German, Osburg Verlag, 2017). The most comprehensive bibliographical source of information to start any form of research on Baez, however, is Charles Fuss’ highly recommendable informative bio-bibliography of 1996 (see also Fuss, 1996).

The number of sources specifically dealing with Baez’s work, on the other hand, is limited: Mexican scholar Avital Bloch, for instance, has added comprehensive essay contributions about the different points of view from which Baez’s work can best be analyzed in the wide field of Peace Studies. In the book Impossible to Hold: Women and Culture in the 1960’s, her essay “Joan Baez: A Singer and Activist” analyzes the complex ways her rise to fame answered difficulties resulting from the cultural and political generation gap between the 1950s and the 1960s (see also Bloch, 2005). Her contribution “Peace Activism and Paradox of Gender Values: Joan Baez and Vietnam” to the anthology American Studies and Peace, which was published after the 25th conference organized by the Austrian Association of American Studies in Salzburg in 1999, is an essay about Baez’s image as a woman and the multifaceted significance of a changing perception of femininity for Baez’s development as a peace activist (see also Bloch, 2001).

These versatile American Cultural Studies attempts to grasp the relevance of Baez’s work find a comprehensive scholarly addition in the field of pedagogy, where Fletcher Ranney Dubois published his study A Troubadour as Teacher: The Concert as Classroom?, which analyzes Baez’s role as a teacher of activism to her young audiences in music halls (see also Dubois, 1985). The study Joan Baez and the Issue of Vietnam: Art and Activism versus Conventionality (Jäger, 2003) exemplifies the significance of art and activism in the development of resistance against war with an analysis of Baez’s activities in regard to the atrocities in South East Asia during the Vietnam War. The ten chapters of this current study attempt to take the logical next step: analyzing Baez’s most incisive artistic and political activities throughout her career. This analysis depicts the multi-layered accomplishments of Baez as a popular singer and investigates their relevance for her efforts as an influential political activist.

The first chapter demonstrates the necessity to step over boundaries when setting the course for the subsequent analysis. It illustrates the theoretical background for my examination of the marriage between popular music and political activism and explains the five main features of my research. First of all, it outlines reasons for the requirement to be open-minded to scientific interdisciplinarity, because rigid limitations to one scientific branch narrowly support the search for truth, but often articulate nothing but mere argumentative inflexibility. Particularly a complex topic like the relationship between the artistic and political dimensions in the professional activities of Joan Baez necessitates the closing of ranks between several scientific branches. As a scholar of American Cultural Studies and Political Science, I look for help in the expertise of my colleagues in the fields of History, Musicology, Philosophy and Sociology with humility. The second sub-chapter points out the relevance of social movements for a politically active artist like Baez. She has repeatedly supported the most various kinds of social movements—providing publicity for them through her famous name and actively supporting them in their specific demands. Afterwards, a closer examination of the biographical method (or life history) explains its advantages for a chronological discussion about Baez’s most significant endeavors as an artist and activist. The fourth step is to undermine the disparaging interpretation of popular culture as nothing but entertainment for duped masses—especially in the face of the many-sided work of Joan Baez. The last sub-chapter then presents a theoretician, who would certainly not have been a great fan of this study’s heroine. It offers a closer investigation of Theodor W. Adorno’s philosophical stance on the relationship between art and society in general and between popular culture and political activism in particular, giving reasons why Joan Baez can be regarded as an exception to his bluntly pessimistic view and as a falsification of his totalitarian generalizations. Sociologist Bühl correctly points out that Adorno would have been more authentic as a theoretician if he had concentrated much more intensely on an analysis of popular music—which Adorno brusquely dismissed as nothing but an inferior derivative of serious music (see also Bühl 128). The last argument of my first chapter is intended to support this hypothesis, leading into an analysis of Baez’s work, which in the end contradicts Adorno’s pessimism about society.

After building up these theoretical columns of my research, the second chapter offers first basic information about the biographical background of Joan Baez, emphasizing the importance of several occasions and developments during her childhood and youth for her later artistic and political future. One of the main instances in this regard was the fact that her parents turned to Quakerism when Baez was a little girl. The passionate and literal interpretation of Christian non-violence within this religious denomination is the topic of chapter 2.1, as this kind of understanding about non-violence tremendously influenced Baez for many years to come. Another aspect during her childhood, which turned out to become a significant factor for her later professional life, was an intense feeling of isolation, which—compared to other teenagers—was aggravated through her dark skin (an inheritance from her Mexican father), turning her into a victim of discrimination on an ethnical level. Her most successful way to overcome such minority complexes was to share her talent as a singer and ukulele player with her fellow pupils. Apart from these general religious and psychological facets of her early childhood and youth, Baez also underwent concrete immediate experiences, which turned out to become significant driving forces for her later political view of the world. In 1951, when she was ten years old, Baez accompanied her whole family to Iraq, where her father took over a one-year job to help building up a Physics Department at the University of Baghdad. Baez repeatedly referred to witnessing the poverty of the Iraqi nation as the birth for her social conscience. Only a few years later, back in the United States, she met one of her most influential heroes in regard to political activism and social conscience for the first time—Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., with whom she later was about to work together on behalf of the Civil Rights Movement. Another incisive personality, who entered Baez’s life on this relatively early stage, was Jewish scholar Ira Sandperl—he was to become her friend, mentor, and co-activist for decades to come. A brief sub-chapter about this friendship with an obvious political background concludes the second chapter about significant influences during Joan Baez’s early childhood and youth.

The third chapter presents a summarizing examination of the philosophical impetus behind Baez’s political view of the world. It outlines the tenor of Henry David Thoreau’s transcendentalist posture on a citizen’s duty to cling to acts of political disobedience when it comes to what is referred to as injustice in society. Thoreau points out the relevance of organized non-violent activities in order to be politically active. This approach was an authentic encouragement for Baez’s entire career as an activist. Thoreau’s stance on disobedience also formed a philosophical basis for the leader of the Indian Liberty Movement, Mohandas K. Gandhi, and enormously encouraged the leader of the later Civil Rights Movement in the United States, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Both of these influences were often referred to as inspirational by Baez—this is the reason why a closer observation of Thoreau’s arguments is a fruitful means of supporting an analysis of Baez’s synthesis of her artistic work with her political activism. The subsequent seven chapters then chronologically present this analysis, step by step focusing on each decade of Joan Baez’s musical and political career.

This considerable chronology starts with chapter four about the 1950s, when Baez, still a teenager, committed the first public act of disobedience and took her first steps as a local folk musician in the Coffee House scene in Boston during the end of the decade. It offers a short synopsis of culture and politics of the United States during the 1950s and describes the radical Cold War paranoia which was the background of Baez’s tender beginnings as an activist. It refreshes basic information about the Folk Music Revival during the end of the decade, which turned into the most relevant musical root for Joan Baez as a singer.

Chapter five about the most triumphant decade in the career of Baez starts with a summarizing outline of the most significant developments within American culture and politics during the 1960s, when more than ever since World War II, current moral, social, ethnical and political demarcations in a fragmented society were experienced with growing doubts by a majority of American citizens. The second sub-chapter continues the observation of Baez’s friendship with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and explains the contribution of her fame as a singer of national and international renown to the success of numerous demonstrations on behalf of the Civil Rights Movement—the famous March on Washington in August 1963 being just one example. Afterwards, a discussion of Baez’s commitment to the so-called Free Speech Movement highlights the fact that this movement started with just a few courageous students and teachers on American campuses and soon turned out to become the basis for the later massive anti-Vietnam War Movement. Baez also became a sincere spokeswoman for the anti-war protest activities, which were aimed to loudly articulate dissent against the American intervention in South East Asia and turned into a significant factor for ending the increasingly unpopular war in Vietnam.

Chapter six about the 1970s suggests a sharp cultural—and later also political—comeback of conservatism in the United States, particularly during the years after the military defeat in Vietnam. In such a tightening climate, no one wanted to talk about war or anti-war activities anymore and a politically active singer like Joan Baez increasingly had to face difficulties in getting the attention of the same audiences as during the successful first decade of her career. Nonetheless, Baez continued working with her very own combination of being a popular singer and a political activist at the same time. The next three sub-chapters explain how she adapted her activities to other political realities and started to focus on political developments in numerous countries abroad. A human rights organization like Amnesty International profited immensely from Baez and her fame during the 1970s, when she—as only one example—supported the process of freeing political prisoners in Latin America. Baez articulated another significant dimension of her social conscience when she publicly supported the first activities of the Gay Liberation Movement—outing herself as having had bisexual experiences and releasing several self-penned songs which explicitly dealt with the topic of homosexuality long before it became en vogue to be out and proud about it. The end of the decade found Baez returning to the topic of Vietnam, when she ignored the national suppression of the traumatic experiences in Vietnam and—against all odds—publicly protested against organized violence in South East Asia only four years after the end of the Vietnam War.

Chapter seven outlines Joan Baez’s most important musical as well as political endeavors during the apolitical times of the 1980s. Her musical career started to tumble over the prevailing ethos of the decade that commercial success was the one and only thing that counted for an artist. A politically active singer, who was increasingly seen as a remnant of times long gone by, had to face difficulties to keep up with a career in a climate which primarily propagated national economic and political narcissism. The first argumentative step of this chapter is again a synopsis about the then current cultural and political state of affairs in the Unites States, which offered nothing but this kind of collective bow in front of nothing else than profit. Baez, however, did not give in to these professional difficulties and continued with what she had done before. The second sub-chapter explains the overtly political background of her musical tour in Latin America in 1981. A few years later, Baez visited Poland—once more as a singer with much more to offer than the 1980s’ ethos of the big commercial hit. The third sub-chapter has a closer look at this 1985 trip by Baez to Poland and her meeting with the leader of the politically very successful workers’ movement Solidarnosc and later President of the country, Lech Walesa. The last incisive effort of Baez during this rather difficult decade of her career was a highly political performance in Czechoslovakia in 1989, several months before the Velvet Revolution, a successful non-violent political development, which President Vaclav Havel later explicitly connected to the Joan Baez concert earlier that year. This undertaking concludes the analysis of Baez’s artistic and political activities during the 1980s and most outstandingly marks the reason why the combination of popular music and political activism includes much more than Adorno’s pessimism.

The following eighth chapter analyses artistic and political challenges for Baez during the 1990s, when she had to face the necessity to re-arrange her professional priorities. Several younger producers and new and fresh songwriting talents supported her successful attempts to hold on to a musical career, including the release of studio and live-music albums and a Grammy nomination as well as numerous promotion tours through the United States and Europe and many other regions around the globe. The general growing political dissatisfaction in the United States, as outlined in the first sub-chapter, among other dimensions, was driven by a generation conflict which labeled young people with the not very flattering X—standing for a lack of orientation. Such youth and their changing musical taste created an artistic surrounding in which it was a mentionable success for an artist like Baez (whose music often was wrongfully labeled as still purely folk) to professionally survive. The political dimension of her work forced Baez to more selective engagements, but she did not stop lending her voice to political issues. The second sub-chapter exemplifies this professional integrity in her earlier activities with an analysis of her trip to Bosnia in the middle of the Balkan War. It accentuates her experiences as well as her passionate attempts to draw international attention to the horrors of the war in former Yugoslavia.

The ninth chapter welcomes Baez in the New Millennium. It triggers off the analysis of her activities in the first decade of the 21st century with another summation about the most important driving forces within the culture and politics in the United States and examines the question in what ways these developments are relevant for Baez’s professional life. Secondly, a discussion about her return to the anti-war movement explains in what ways the massive international protest activities against the war in Iraq differ from the organized protest movement against the Vietnam War during the 1960s and the 1970s. It gives, however, reasons why those two different historic dimensions are still comparable. The last sub-chapter observes the necessity to point out that democracy and censorship do not fit together and discusses Baez’s experiences in this regard in 2007.