{"id":1045,"date":"2015-04-09T01:57:23","date_gmt":"2015-04-09T06:57:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/?p=1045"},"modified":"2015-04-09T01:59:12","modified_gmt":"2015-04-09T06:59:12","slug":"joan-baez-and-the-rise-of-the-folk-protest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/2015\/04\/09\/joan-baez-and-the-rise-of-the-folk-protest\/","title":{"rendered":"Joan Baez and the Rise of the Folk Protest"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Joan<\/a>

Joan Baez with her guitar<\/p><\/div>\n

The 1960s were a decade of political development and social unrest. American folk music became a method of conveying political ideas and protest, and the singer-songwriter fell into the important role as the purveyor and curator of civil disobedience. This style of folk\u00a0music was adopted by college students who saw it as a meaningful vehicle for bringing about positive, humane change to the world.\u00a0“Like Zen Buddhism and organic foods, folk music swept the colleges as a hip fad. Indeed, since the 1930s folk music had a close connection to the radical left in America (especially communists and socialists), and had increasingly been taken seriously by folklore scholars as a guide to past social mores.”<\/p>\n

The prevalence of protest folk did not exist\u00a0without criticism.\u00a0Folk purists\u00a0believed that protest songs were “pretentious, portentous and ponderous” and that folk-protest writers were “political hacks who wouldn’t recognize either folk music or folk style if it were walking along beside them in a peace march.”<\/p>\n

Joan Baez<\/a> was a folk singer-songwriter who made a name for herself in the 1960s (and then on) performing folk ballads. As the social and political climate heated up in the United States and around the world, Baez became a civil rights and universal nonviolence activist.\u00a0“As the child of a decade of agitation, her attitudes and life-style evolved so smoothly that she seemed not to have changed at all. Joan blended into the protest tradition, into pacifism, into activism, into a publicized marriage and motherhood, into a vicarious martyrdom, . . . and finally into a national symbol for nonviolence.”1\u00a0She had a very appealing voice, which served her well in attracting audiences to her music.<\/p>\n