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Protest Music and Folk Revival

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What is folk music? Is folk defined by the musical intentions of the musicians themselves, its political and social implications, or its consumption?  For artists like Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger and so many others, folk was a political endeavor. Another notable artist was Joan Baez, who was known for her captivating soprano voice and her impressive guitar skills.  However, Baez was more than just a folk singer with talent; she was an adamant peace and civil rights activist and much of her music reflected her political ideals.  Baez was considered to be a part of the folk revival movement.  She performed at the Newport Folk Festival in 1959, launching a very successful career.

According to Bruce Jackson in his The Folksong Revival he claims that the folk revival movement was just a fad. This blog is an attempt to reflect on Jackson’s opinion by providing reasons in which I think the folk music revival was not just a fad, but it was a necessary movement to propel the ideas of activists a that time.

“I think the revival can be fairly categorized as romantic, naive, nostalgic and idealistic…much of the revival was a fad or fashion” ~Bruce Jackson

Joan Baez and Bob Dylan April 1965

So why folk revival?  Today, many of us view folk as a simple song associated with possibly nostalgia, home, or sentimental feelings.   Most people envision folk as a smaller communal setting, but the Newport Folk Festival of 1959 suggests otherwise.  Newport was one of the larger gatherings to celebrate folk music and it’s artists.  One reason the folk revival may have gained traction was because of the desire people had to reconnect with their American roots. What’s a better way to do that than through folk music?  But, folk music has more value than just for the enjoyment of old times sake.

“Women Peace Protestors of Northern Ireland on a March in London” November 1976

Artists like Baez used their skills and political views to highlight the flaws of the cultural and political environment. Not only did Baez seek to share her ideas through folk inspired music, she gained traction with these ideas and helped spread her political views. Because Baez and many artists infused folk music with messages of peace and equality, it is clear that folk had an extremely important purpose in our social and political history.  Protest music was music that would reject certain ideals of actions.  For example, “We Shall Overcome” became the anthem to the civil rights movement.  In Joan’s rendition, she combines folk and jazz elements, connecting this song to different styles of music and boring from other traditions therefore catering to many people.

In the Oct 4, 1971 issue of the Chicago Daily Defender, the article “Joan Baez has a Problem” was written criticizing her disrespect for the American Flag.

Article criticizing Baez’s political opinions regarding the American flag- “Joan Baez has a Problem” October 4, 1971 in the Chicago Defender

“This piece of cloth has become an obscenity.  We know how to protect and reverence that Flag. But we don’t know how to protect human life.” ~ Joan Baez

The Folk Revival movement was not just a fad.  It was a means to react to and process the political and social injustices that the world was faced with in the 60s and even today, proving folk musics’ relevance and importance not only then, but also now.  In a time of racial and international tension, it is not surprising that folk music became popular. It provided a sense of comfort and connection to one another when the country seemed in all other ways divided. Folk advocated for all people of all backgrounds, races and statuses.

Work Cited

Bob Dylan Singer Songwriter with Joan Baez American Folk Singer. 27 Apr. 1965.

“Joan Baez has a Problem.” 1971.Chicago Daily Defender (Daily Edition) (1960-1973), Oct 04, 4. https://search.proquest.com/docview/494322582?accountid=351.

Matthew, Adam. “Folk Protest.” Popular Culture in Britain and America, 1950-1975, 2017.

Rosenberg, Neil V. “The Folk Song Revival.” Transforming Tradition: Folk Music Revivals Examined, University of Illinois Press, 1993, pp. 73–79.

Women Peace Protestors of Northern Ireland on a March in London. 29 Nov. 1976.

Newport Folk Festival Hosts Composer of the “The American Folk-Song Mass”

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As the folk tradition started to die out, American folk started to take flight when John and Alan Lomax recorded and collected music of the rural regions of the United State, particularly in penitentiaries. In the 1940s, artists around the country decided to takes these recorded folk songs and make their own recordings. A single vocal accompanied by a guitar became the standard folk song, and people decided to write their own songs in the “folk” style.1

Along with this surge of new folk composers came Father Ian Mitchell, “the guitar-toting Episcopal priest…, and his wife, folk-singing star Caroline.”2 Father Ian Mitchell composed The American Folk-Song Mass, consisting of several liturgical and some original text set to the twang of the guitar. The Chicago Defender stated that “Father Mitchel composed [The American Folk-Song Mass] because he got tired of ‘cloying, cornball, 19th Century hymns.’”3 Later, Father Mitchell released Catholic version of his folk-song mass, incorporating the texts of the Roman Catholic Liturgy. According to the liner of the Catholic version of the mass, Father Mitchell was later commissioned to compose the Funeral Folk Mass.

According to the Chicago Defender, Father Ian Mitchell and his wife Caroline signed on to the Newport Folk Festival, best known for hosting renowned folk singers such as Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, and Joni Mitchell, to perform songs from their newly released album Songs of Protest and Love. However, I hardly consider Father Mitchell’s music to actually be “folk.” Father Ian Mitchell was “a city-dweller who spent three years in the wastelands of Utah,” seemingly making him more apt to folk styles.4 All he did was take liturgical text and sing them with a different melody with a guitar accompaniment. According to Oxford Music Online, “the [folk] revival spawned a large number of singer-songwriters who accompanied themselves on the acoustic guitar but had little in common with those concerned primarily to bear witness to the tradition.”5 I believe that Father Ian Mitchell falls into this category and his “folk-song” mass should be considered “Mass: Plus Guitar, Minus Organ.”

1 Laing, Dave. “Folk Music Revival.” Grove Music Online. www.oxfordmusiconline.com (accessed Mar. 12, 2015­)

2 “Newport Folk Festival to Feature “Singing Priest”.” Chicago Daily Defender (Big Weekend Edition) (1966-1973), July 12, 1969. http://search.proquest.com/docview/493434506?accountid=351.

3 Ibid.,

4 Mitchell, Ian. Rev. “The American Folk-Song Mass” F.E.L Records. Back Cover.

5 Laing, Dave. “Folk Music Revival.”

Newport Folk Festival: Inspiring Anarchist Revolutionaries?

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Folk music is ingrained in a sense of community and expression of the common man that many young people of the 60s and early 70s found as representative of the times and themselves.  Folk artists played simply–typically a voice and guitar, with perhaps a harmonica.  Listeners could collectively identify with the simplicity, and would feel connected to their peers.  Folk music conveyed a peaceful time of long hair, free love, and a bohemian lifestyle.

But underneath the easy-strumming guitar and speak-singing voices were lyrics against the establishments that folk artists were so against.  In 1967 festival singer Tim Buckley’s song, “The Earth is Broken,” government figures are called thieves.

 

But soon love is broken, they’ll take you away

Oh the wars they been growing as no relief

And the old men who ruled them oh they’re just like thieves

They rob from the sunshine, oh the air ain’t so clean

Our rivers are dirty where once we could see

 

A smile from your lady friend looking down

Look at that river hey did you ever shiver

Well the earth is broken there is no one to save

 

The “Home on the Range” era of sunny skies and seldom-heard discouraging words is definitely over.

Screen Shot 2015-03-09 at 9.59.20 PMIn this article from East Village underground magazine The Other, Jerry Rubin presents his account of the 1967 Newport Folk Festival.  Rubin is so against the idea of paying for music that he decided to attend the festival by creating a fake press pass. Screen Shot 2015-03-09 at 9.37.51 PM “Music concerts should be free,” he says.  “Profit is pornography.”  Rubin then gets himself kicked out of the festival by passing out “a copy of the free Yippie newspaper…(spiritual thoughts from our anarchist-revolutionary point of view)” to a pair of nuns.  The magazines are deemed to have pornographic images themselves, and the festival cops escort Rubin out, Rubin blaming it on his hippie appearance.

What this account illustrates is the atmosphere of festivals like the Newport Folk Festival.  They were attended by a variety of groups, but all came to experience the community spirit so often found in folk.  In unity, concert attendees were able to band together and share ideas.  In addition, the values of folk music are passed to the people.  While folk music quietly discusses political issues, listeners took these complaints to heart and acted out against the closest representation of the establishment–in Rubin’s case, the festival security.  The sense of community gave a feeling of strength to festival-goers which was heavily expressed in their actions.

While folk music is overall peaceful, its political undertones were strong enough to convince listeners to act out upon the messages they heard.  Political events of the time period combined with the inclusive underground communities created an acceptable atmosphere of dissent and resistance.

 

Sources:

Rubin, Jerry.  “Yippie go home!”   East Village Other, Vol.3, no.3.  December 15, 1967.  Accessed from Popular Culture in Britain and America, 1950–1975.

http://www.rockandroll.amdigital.co.uk/Contents/ImageViewer.aspx?imageid=1099190&searchmode=true&hit=first&pi=1&themeF=Civil+Rights+And+Race+Relations%7cMusic&vpath=searchresults&prevPos=1065501

 

The folk music monarchy: Bob Dylan & Joan Baez

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Perhaps the biggest stars of the 1960’s Folk craze, Bob Dylan and Joan Baez captured audiences performing duets in addition to their successful solo careers. Their relationship is filled with ups and downs, each giving and taking from the other over the years. This tumultuous relationship may have its roots in their motivations for performing this music.

Concert Poster for Joan Baez and Bob Dylan

Concert Poster for Joan Baez and Bob Dylan1

At first sight, Dylan describes the first time he saw Baez singing on TV while he was still in Minnesota, “I couldn’t stop looking at her, didn’t want to blink. . . . The sight of her made me sigh. All that and then there was the voice. A voice that drove out bad spirits . . . she sang in a voice straight to God. . . . Nothing she did didn’t work.” 2 Unfortunately Joan didn’t reciprocate Dylan’s admiration for him. She recalls being unfazed by what she heard when she first saw Dylan perform in 1961 at Gerde’s Folk City (a popular venue for the Greenwich village folk music scene artists in the 1960’s).

Joan Baez is originally from Staten Island, NY. Her father Albert, co-invented the electronic microscope as well as published a Physics textbook still commonly used today. Because of her father’s work in health care and with UNESCO, the family moved many times, living in towns across the U.S, as well as in England, France, Switzerland, Spain, Canada, and Iraq. Joan became involved with a variety of social causes early in her career, especially civil rights and an advocate of non violence. “Social Justice”, Baez says, “is the true core of her life looming larger than music.”3

Joan Baez performing “Mary Hamilton” at the Newport Festival in 1960, one of her earliest performances.

In contrast, Bob Dylan was born Robert Allen Zimmerman in Hibbing, MN. Dylan began attending the University of Minnesota in 1959, only to drop out a year later and move to New York City to pay tribute to his idol, Woody Guthrie who had taken ill from Polio at the time. Dylan’s motivations for writing and performing folk music seem less rooted in social justice and more in its connection to the human spirit. At the 1965 Newport Festival Dylan walked on stage with an electric guitar in hand and the Paul Butterfield Blues Band backing him up. He was booed offstage after only three songs, at which point he returned with an acoustic guitar and a message for all the folk purists: “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue.”4 Dylan was later quoted as saying he switched from Rock n Roll to Folk because “it was more of a serious type of thing. The songs are filled with more despair, more sadness, more triumph, more faith in the supernatural, much deeper feelings.”

Bob Dylan covering “This Land is Your Land” in Minneapolis in 1961 before moving to New York City to meet his idol, Woody Guthrie.

It seems that Baez felt a stronger connection with the movement surrounding the folk revival of the 1960’s, while Bob Dylan saw it as more of a form of political expression as much as a way to make his living and see his name in lights. Perhaps this difference was so decisive, that it ultimately caused their romantic as well as professional relationship to end?

1 Ehrenreich, B. (2001, May). Positively 4th street: The lives and times of joan baez, bob dylan, mimi baez farina and richard farina. Mother Jones, 26, 105. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/213812109?accountid=351

2 “Joan Baez: How Sweet The Sound.” American Masters. October 14, 2009. PBS. Retrieved March 7, 2015. 

3 “The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum.” Bob Dylan Biography. January 1, 2015. Accessed March 9, 2015. https://rockhall.com/inductees/bob-dylan/bio/. Retrieved from Popular Culture in Britain and America, 1950-1975. http://www.rockandroll.amdigital.co.uk

2 “Joan Baez: How Sweet The Sound.” American Masters. October 14, 2009. PBS. Retrieved March 7, 2015. 

Flocking to Folk Festivals

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In the 20th century folk song was afforded new status as a legit musical form. Previously folk song was sidelined by other more “artful” musical forms from famous composers such as Brahms or Beethoven (even though their music did often draw on popular contemporary songs or folk songs for themes or ideas). Academics, musicians, and composers all studied folk music with new vigor when they realized folk music was something worth paying attention to. Composer Hubert Parry spoke highly of the emotional value of folk music saying it is one of “the purest products of the human mind” (Crawford, 598).

Of particular interest in the folk music festivals that were founded in the early 20th century to around the 50s or 60s. Many of these festivals still exist today in some facet and it wouldn’t be hard to hear “modern” folk music somewhere like the Newport Folk Festival.

Academics became concerned with folk music that was being performed in their time because they were concerned with their musical past disappearing and being replaced with the popular music of the age. Ironically, today we would probably consider their popular music our folk music now.

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Bog Trotters Band from Virginia http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/ppmsc.00412

The best way to share music is of course performance and creating a festival where many performers and listeners come together is a great way to share and learn new things about folk music. These festivals were highly attended in the height of their popularity. For example in 1968 70,000 people paid entry for the Newport Folk Festival in Rhode Island (Link to article: <http://search.proquest.com/docview/118382353?accountid=351>).

Folk Festivals were a huge part of why folk music was successful and pointed to the large demand for folk music in American consciousness. Without these festivals for sharing music across regions and states folk music might have stayed in its small box without having room to grow. If there had not been a strong community around folk music it indeed would have died in the libraries no matter how meticulously it was cataloged.