Joan Baez
Farewell, Angelina

THE REVIEW

If we were to identify the most yearned-for among human rights with a female face, freedom, such a choice would devoutly fall on Joan Baez.

Pacifist and dissident, icon of the American anti-nationalist protest movement of the '60s, Joan Baez perfectly embodies the figure of the committed musician, combining the American folk revival with a deep dedication to socio-political issues of global interest. On her vocal and guitar strings marched the utopia of social change and the decade's longing for catharsis.

If history often presented her for her activism and for her consistency (big words nowadays), it should be clarified that her musical journey went hand in hand with civil struggles: musically raised in Boston, Baez rose to fame in 1959, very young, when she became known and appreciated at the Newport Festival for her profound interpretative pathos and the clarity of her guitar style in the rediscovery of the purest folk traditions. Interpreter then, and not yet a composer, she gave her most significant pragmatic and innovative contribution to folk music by introducing the world’s traditions into the Greenwich Movement culture, with the interpretation of songs typical of different countries’ cultures.

Here folk music ceased to be folklore and was imbued with every sort of musical ethnicity, thus anticipating that concept of sound globality so dear to World Music; the protest voice of the world's youth was taking on a universal accent. And Baez, Quaker blood and a style that was as much of the American canyons as the English hills, began to draw widely from world repertoires, moving polyglot between an Argentine “Bamba” and Neapolitan “Nu bello cardillo”, between a French “Plaisir d’amour” and a Japanese “Blowing in the wind.”

Her tenacious and charismatic personality merged with an innate artistic harmony, quickly making her a true American emblem in a context where she would only be equaled by Dylan; and it was precisely the meeting with young Bob that influenced both their careers: Baez, who discovered the compositional talent of that rising star, began to perform Dylan's songs extensively in albums and concerts across America, and Dylan himself, a true creative forge, who benefited from the support of an artist already nationally established as a launch pad. An inevitable love story would spark between them, as legendary as it was discussed, the end of which in 1965 would also be documented by director Pennebaker in the film “Don’t look back.”

In the same year, between a personal love at sunset and a global conflict at dawn, Joan Baez reached what is probably her artistic pinnacle: “Farewell Angelina.”

With folk-rock not yet in vogue, a certain wind of change in the musical world had been heralded by artists like the Byrds, the Leaves, Dylan himself, and the often forgotten Beau Brummels, so that in such sound pollution Baez, in her new album, abandoned those conservative standards that had characterized her in the past in favor of more complex arrangements, calling upon other musicians for the first time: Bruce Langhorne on electric guitar, Russ Savakus on bass, and Ralph Rinzler on mandolin.

The choice of the first three tracks to interpret fell on Dylan: the eponymous “Farewell Angelina”, a Dylan unreleased, is a poignant ballad built around the story of a young man who must leave his beloved to go to war; Baez's rendition is of such emphasis as to make it one of the greatest successes of folk in general. “Daddy, you been on my mind”, with country hues, and “It’s all over now, baby blue”, a folk in falsetto, are sad goodbye stories, again from Dylan's pen, in which Baez's vocal talent and intensity stand out. In “The wild mountain time”, a classic by Romoff, and “Colours”, a Donovan cover, Langhorne’s guitar drones are masterfully woven with Baez's melodies, and some additional touches could very well have made them hits.

“Ranger’s command” by Woody Guthrie, the father of folk-revival, enchants with its lyrical purity and Baez's sweet vocal lines; “A satisfied mind”, with an evident country accent, seems to foreshadow by a few years the musical choices Baez will undertake in the late '60s; conversely, “The river in the pines”, a traditional track, is almost a return to the simple and unadorned sounds of the past. The territories of world folk are explored with “Sagt Mir Wo Die Blumen Sind” and “Pauvre Ruteboeuf”, softly epic in Baez’s identification. And finally, Dylan returns in the closing track, a “A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall” somewhat gloomy in its relevance, being a bit the doctrinal summary of the protest movement that has extended over the years to this day, constant protest but unfortunately useless, since the world's problems have remained unchanged.

And if today her hair is no longer long and raven, and her crystalline soprano voice is no longer what it once was, she, a unique case in a musical environment where metamorphism has always been a necessity, has continued her consistent path of protest against the American system. Her social commitment, moral integrity, her living for and with the people, and not for convenience or façade, remain intact and current, today as in that August of '63, when she dreamed alongside Martin Luther King.

Five stars are for the folk-singer by definition, for the artistic mother of Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon, and Patti Smith, five stars of humility and consistency, five stars shining in a firmament of peace and freedom.