Popular Is Not Enough: The Political Voice Of Joan Baez

The tenth chapter finishes the analyses of Baez’s political significance and non-violent authenticity with a closer look at her activities in the 2010s. It summarizes her most relevant accolades during the final decade of her career during one of the most troubled political phases in the United States. Her song “Nasty Man” on the 45th President of her home country eloquently sums up the reason why her work is the lifelong prove for the fact that being popular is not enough.

1. Stepping Over Boundaries: Materials, Methodology and Theory

Introduction

The aim of this first chapter is to sketch the theoretical background for my line of argumentation. Additionally, a description of the main method outlines the reasons why the biographical method (or life history) is the most profitable approach to the work of Joan Baez. In this manner, sources and materials used to verify the main thesis are explained. On the following pages, five sub-chapters examine these columns of my research in more detail.

The first step is to plea for open-mindedness regarding the interdisciplinary approach that I take with my analysis, because it can be very unsatisfying to limit research possibilities to one scientific branch only. Secondly, an excursion adds an explanation about the cross-border element of social movements, in view of the fact that they offer Baez’s main professional platform, where she melts the borderline between her artistic and her political work. The third sub-chapter offers a summarizing investigation of the biographical method, discussing necessary conditions and advantages of the life history, which is the main methodological approach to my analysis of Baez’s combination of art and activism. The fourth step is a closer look at the challenging relationship between popular culture and politics. It explains the reason why I refer to Baez as a popular singer and how far this classification can be a helpful means for a discussion about her political endeavors. As a last step, the incorporation of Baez’s work with Theodor W. Adorno’s aesthetic theory juxtaposes the activeness of Baez’s efforts to the passiveness of Adorno’s theory as well as his slack use of musical categories—falsifying his resigned approach to the authenticity of politically active artists (particularly in the field of popular culture). The most valuable way of building these columns of my analysis is to consider more than one scientific discipline for my research.

1.1 Against Wrongful Restrictions: On the Advantages of Interdisciplinarity

Picking out singer and activist Joan Baez as the central theme for a dissertation reveals a manifold number of risks and poses numerous questions. Satisfying answers to these questions can not be found by sticking entirely to one particular discipline only—meaning: to one specific body of knowledge, which is being delimited from other scientific disciplines. Moran analyses an important aspect of this kind of systematic delimitation: “[…] in fact, the very notion of the term [discipline] as a recognized mode of learning implies the establishment of hierarchy and the operation of power […]” (Moran 2). This is the reason why interdisciplinarity can be regarded as an attempt to overcome structures of limited power; limited to a small number of selected scientists of one single discipline as well as limited in its potential of achieving knowledge. In other words: the often underestimated “[…] teamwork […]” (Rodgers, Booth and Eveline 2003) of different scientific disciplines is a helpful means of producing knowledge, because knowledge is achieved via the verification of hypotheses—regardless on which hierarchical level of a scientific discipline’s power within the academia.

The stability of putting knowledge into structured schemes—enabling us to go back to organized information more easily—shall by no means be generally put into question. Barker, all the same, correctly emphasizes the fact that “[…] many cultural studies practitioners have felt ill at ease with the forging of institutional disciplinary boundaries for the field […]” (Barker Making Sense 6). The most incisive boundary that I attempt to overcome is the often far too strict line between the humanities and the social sciences. McClung Lee refers to the process of melting this particular boundary as “Humanist Sociology”, explaining reasons why it can be fruitful to approach research from a humanist’s as well as a social scientist’s point of view: “[…] interdisciplinary contacts, including ones with stimulating artists, are useful to build resistance against closure tendencies, against overlooking alternative views of reality […]” (McClung Lee x). Consequentially, the unbending attention to one scientific discipline only includes the danger of overlooking alternative ways to the verification of hypotheses.

Ignoring possible elitist attitudes, which—in a generalizing manner—dismiss such a form of interdisciplinarity as scientific “[…] vulgarization […]” (McClung Lee 151), my intellectual focus follows what McClung Lee describes as “[…] searching for reality in its historical and cross-cultural contexts and […] what appears most relevant […] to our society […]” (McClung Lee xi). This definition can well be applied to the work of Joan Baez. Social movements offer the most interesting platform and potential for a successful expression of this continual attempt to non-violently fight against (what is considered to be) social injustice.

1.2 Reconstituting Culture: On the Significance of Social Movements

Social movements offer a concrete manifestation of the melting borderline between culture and politics. Apart from being driven by instantly recognizable political issues, Chester and Welsh summarize their essence in the following definition: for them, social movements are networks, which “[…] have employed confrontational, imaginative, and highly symbolic repertoires of collective action based upon the ethos of ‘direct action for direct democracy’ […]” (Chester and Welsh, 97). Chapters 4 until 10 of this study present a chronological analysis of the way Baez has supported a variety of social movements throughout her career. Their significance for social change can not be underestimated, as they form appropriate forces for the development of culture; or—in the words of Eyerman and Jamison—they are “[…] central moments in the reconstitution of culture […]” (Eyerman and Jamison 6). While social movements are driven by particular political intentions—their efforts can shape significant breaks in the cultural development of society.

For a public figure like Joan Baez, artistic work alone is not enough to lead a satisfying professional life. She uses her fame as a singer and songwriter of national and international renown to support initiatives which successfully co-create a political climate in which the constant attempt to revive organized non-violence turns into a (repeatedly successful) means of overcoming organized violence. One of the most important conditions for such a course of action is the implementation of social movements, which represent the main professional platform for an artist and activist like Baez. Eyerman and Jamison constructively define the importance of social movements, already connecting it to the field of popular culture: “[…] through their impact on popular culture, mores, and tastes, social movements lead to a reconstruction of processes of social interaction and collective identity formation […]” (Eyerman and Jamison 10). This study directs its main attention to the various ways a politically active singer like Baez can influence these processes. Two questions summarize the challenge of this research aim: How shall the humanities—which include the analysis of popular culture—deal with specific political positions? How shall the social sciences—which include the analysis of specific political positions—deal with artifacts of popular culture? Eyerman and Jamison mark the reason why these two questions include a cultural and political dimension at the same time and depict the role which social movements play in the melting process of these two dimensions:

[…] by combining culture and politics, social movements serve to reconstitute both, providing a broader political and historical context for expression, and offering, in turn, the resources of culture—traditions, music, artistic expression—to the action repertoires of political struggle […] (Eyerman and Jamison 7).

The process of using cultural resources (while being politically active) has to be examined carefully on the edge of potential ideological abuse. Artistic influence on social movements undeniably has to face the possibility of instrumental use: this danger, nonetheless, is no reason to stop any further debate about the combination of popular music and political activism, because “[…] to the extent that social movements are able to transcend these instrumental (and commercial) usages, music as exemplary action becomes possible.” (Eyerman and Jamison 24). Organized political activity and artistic expression (in our case: the work of a popular singer) can be intertwined, transcending possible ideological or party-political abuse.

Reproaching this coalescence within social movements with commercial interests and lack of political credibility does not dismiss all of its potential. Eyerman and Jamison seriously doubt whether, for example, music theorist Theodor W. Adorno is right with his assumption that people (who are those people?) merely listened to the radio and not to the music on the radio (see also Eyerman and Jamison 137). The aim of this study is to verify the truth behind this doubt (chapter 1.4 has a particularly close look at Adorno’s approach to popular culture and the authenticity of politically active artists). On the one hand, songs can be able to enhance the political struggle of social movements, which, on the other hand, “[…] provide a cohesiveness, a kind of social glue, that reconfigures the relations between culture and politics […]” (Eyerman and Jamison 78). Throughout her whole career, Baez has offered her own work to the work of social movements and has thereby non-violently added relevant “[…] social glue […]” (Ibid.) to their passionate political efforts. The main methodological approach to analyze this contribution is the biographical method.

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

The primary driving force to discuss one single artist regarding the main thesis of this study is to understand “[…] that the subject’s life story reflects a set of meaningful experiences which, when told, create an emotional bond between the teller and the listener […]” (Denzin 198). In our case, what reflects these experiences is not only told but also sung and/or expressed in political activities as well. The emotional bond is created between Baez as a singer and her listeners and/or between Baez as a political activist and those, who politically agree with her positions. The most fruitful methodological approach to analyze these reflections and their consequential emotional bonds is the biographical method (or life history).

The argumentative essence of the biographical method is the view that a closer analysis of a single person’s life can offer a depiction of “[…] the intersection between the lives of people and the history of their society […]” (Bogdan and Taylor 7). In his liner notes to Baez’s 2005 live-Album Bowery Songs1, which can be interpreted as a musical reply to the Presidential election of 2004 (see also Levy liner notes 2006), Levy summarizes this aspect in regard to Baez by attaching significance to “[…] crucial moments during her long and storied career - which is to say […] crucial moments in America's history over the past four decades and then some […]” (Ibid.). This linkage between Baez’s professional activities and the background of the cultural and political development in the United States is analyzed in this present study. In order to successfully apply the biographical method to this kind of research, analytical means “[…] range from letters to autobiographies, from newspaper accounts to court records […]” (Denzin 183). This definition eloquently summarizes the methodological devices used in my study. Denzin offers another possibility of defining the biographical method:

The life history, life story, biographical method presents the experiences and definitions held by one person, one group, or one organization as this person, group, or organization interprets those experiences. Life history materials include any record or document […] that throws light on the subjective behavior of individuals or groups […] (Ibid.).

An important advantage of the life history to be of interpretive help in this regard is that it “[…] closely approximates the fit between theory, method, and interpretation […]” (Ibid.). It can give insights to the complexity of social realities, for which theories no longer are enough (see also Fuchs-Heinritz 7). In addition to that, the biographical method demands an interdisciplinary approach (see also Völter, Dansien, Lutz and Rosenthal 8); a cognition which goes hand in hand with what I point out in chapter 1.1 and with the research of Bohnsack and Marotzki, who are convinced that an interdisciplinary character displays one of the primary conditions for qualitative methods (see also Bohnsack and Marotzki 7). Although these different faces of the life history also create the risk of subjectivity, as the selection of events—when discussing the life of an individual—does not follow certain empirical rules, it does not necessarily mean that a scientific debate is a priori impossible. As DuBois explains by introducing the term ‘lifelines’ and pointing out possible empirical support in an analysis, which is based on the biographical method:

[…] Any one person has, theoretically, a multitude if not infinitude of lifelines. […] The various lifelines are drawn at various times and in various circumstances by persons and organisations with very varied and sometimes opposing interests […]. The lines however are not arbitrary. There are safeguards for veracity. There are statements which can be proven false (e.g. so and so was not at such and such a place at such and such a time) […] (DuBois 21).

The reference to such ‘lifelines’ already hints at what Baez claims in the preface to her own autobiography, where she states that writing “And a voice to sing with” (New York: Summit Books, 1987) meant tracing the “[…] threads of my personal, political, spiritual, and musical lives—how they came together and how they fell apart, depending on the times and the circumstances […]” (Baez Voice 13). This statement sums up the background of this study: it is not intended to give a subjective overall description of Baez’s life or be some sort of unauthorized biography; its aim is rather to discuss several of her ‘lifelines’—in order to explain the motivation for analyzing the significance of her work as an activist and the question which role her artistic work has played for her political efforts. In order to do so, all materials and sources are relevant for the debate, as Denzin also concludes:

A central assumption of the life history is that human conduct is to be studied and understood from the perspective of the persons involved. All materials that reflect upon this perspective should be employed […] (Denzin 183).

The following sub-chapter discusses the question of how far the various manifestations of Baez’s political perspective are influenced by her work as a popular singer. Popular culture theory does not offer a clear-cut possibility to define the cultural and intellectual significance of popular culture. Pop-musicologist Fuhr correctly suggests accepting the fact that particularly popular music is not to be grasped with explanation models, which attribute a problem to a single cause (see also Fuhr, 131). Fuhr is another expert, who agrees on my assumption in chapter 1.1 on the advantages of interdisciplinarity. He is convinced that a scientific analysis of popular music can only be fruitful as an interdisciplinary project (see Ibid.). A scientific debate about popular culture—and popular music in particular—is more a scientific conflict. Anyone who attempts to work on popular music should be “[…] living out the tension […]” (Middleton in Ibid.) between the cultivated side of academic training and the popular side of his subject matter. Taking this suggestion into account, it is necessary and worth a try to find an answer to the question why a singer like Joan Baez can be defined as a popular singer and why it is her deep-felt conviction that being popular is not enough.

1.4 Popular Is Not Enough: On Popular Culture and Politics

Popular singers, who are repeatedly involved in political initiatives, constantly have to face the accusation of lacking political authenticity—of being interested in nothing but promotional work for successfully selling their records. In order to falsify this accusation, one has to get a clearer picture of the political impetus driving the artist’s work. The analysis of Baez’s political momentum is done on a phenomenological basis. Bogdan and Taylor define the research aim of a phenomenologist:

The phenomenologist is concerned with understanding human behavior from the actor’s own frame of reference […] the phenomenologist examines how the world is experienced […] (Bogdan and Taylor 2).

Before discussing Baez’s political frame of reference and the question of how she experiences the world, basic biographical pieces of information are essential. How did the affiliation of artistic and political components turn Baez into a mover? What motivated Baez to meld her artistic with her political activities? As Bogdan and Taylor also point out: “[…] all personal documents are valuable […] once the researcher has taken the motivation into account […]” (Ibid.). Baez is analyzed as a popular singer with a political motivation. The reason for labeling her as a popular singer can be seen in the following explanation of Strinati:

[…] popular music can be seen to be marked by a trend towards the overt and explicit mixing of styles and genres of music in very direct and self-conscious ways. This has ranged from the straightforward remixing of already recorded songs from the same or different eras on the same record to the quoting and ‘tasting’ of distinct musics, sounds and instruments in order to create new sub- and pan-cultural identities […] (Strinati 233).

These key characteristics can certainly be correlated to the musical work of Joan Baez. Starting as a folk singer in the midst of the Folk Music Revival at the end of the 1950s, she led the anti-Vietnam War movement as a singer of protest songs during the 1960s, spread the human rights cause of Amnesty International via her international fame as a singer during the 1970s and 1980s and achieved the status of a musical icon during the 1990s, still releasing new musical records and extensively touring the world in the 2000s and 2010s. All these careerstations were marked by exactly this kind of “[…] explicit mixing of styles and genres of music in very direct and self-conscious ways […]” (Ibid.). This kind of artistic characterization is argued in more detail throughout the whole study. Only one important aspect shall be noted here: popular culture has always been the matter of deep-seated scientific conflicts. Strauss, as only one example, bluntly dismisses popular culture by elaborating on the following simplification: “[…] popular culture was created to entertain the masses while the elite ruled […]” (in: Weaver 8). Eagleton, on the other hand, elevates the fact that such a dismissal is not necessarily the most sophisticated way of looking at the topic:

If one thinks of the range of artistic works, both ‘high’ and popular […] it is remarkable what common witness they bear on the question of what moral ends are to be promoted […] (Eagleton 105).

This argument leads to the hypothesis that popular music can be capable of asserting more than entertainment to its consumers. Artifacts of popular culture are able to be more than just popular in the elitist dictionary sense of being “[…] aimed at ordinary people and not at experts or intellectuals […]” (in: Sinclair 1277). This definition implies that no one who listens to popular music can be an expert or intellectual of whatever kind. Such a simplification does not fit into the research motivation of all scientific disciplines: objectivity. Berger convincingly objects to this knowledge-limiting attitude the intellectual interests of scholars, who study popular culture. These multi-layered interests prove to be

[…] the role that popular culture plays in society—[…] the way popular culture socializes young people, the psychological impact of popular culture on individuals, the depiction of women and members of other groups (ethnic, racial, socioeconomic) in popular culture texts […] (Berger 161).

Ignoring these dimensions by simply attacking the intellectual incapability of listeners of popular music is not enough for a satisfying debate. Weaver goes a step further and articulates his conviction that “[…] now, popular culture has a much more dramatic influence on how culture is defined […]” (Weaver 2). The political efforts of Joan Baez during the last 50 years—as analyzed in this study—undermine this significance. Gamman and Marshment chime in on this issue—more sophisticatedly than Weaver—and expect the critical reader to be careful with possible definitions of popular culture:

It is not enough to dismiss popular cultures as merely serving the complementary systems of capitalism and patriarchy, peddling ‘false consciousness’ to the duped masses. It can also be seen as a site where meanings are contested and where dominant ideologies can be disturbed (Gamman and Marshment in Strinati 216).

This is the point where Baez’s position as a political activist comes in. My argument is: the most significant momentum of Baez’s work as a creator of popular culture artifacts is her politics. This does not mean that she only recorded textually straightforward political songs; it puts her most famous and most important songs (and performances of the same) into a specific cultural context which transforms her artistic work into the continuing tenor of a unified political message. This hypothesis flagrantly contradicts with the position of American Studies scholar Lipsitz, who is convinced that

[…] artifacts of popular culture have no fixed meanings: it is impossible to say whether any one combination of sounds or set of images or grouping of words innately expresses one unified political position […] (Lipsitz Time Passages 13).

In order to falsify Lipsitz’s thesis, this study discusses the musical work of Joan Baez from her political point of view. The analyses of various political initiatives which Baez has supported as an activist throughout her career and the role of her work as a popular singer for this kind of activism exposes a doubtless fact: Artifacts of popular culture certainly can express a unified political message. Popular music can be political. Robin Denselow is convinced that the political potential of popular music is not at its end, as many political elites might probably wish, because

Pop musicians have learned that they have the ability to use their music as well as their position for commenting on political developments, […] collecting large sums of money, and mirroring the course of history […] as it has been done by troubadours of folk-music movements all around the world2 (see Denselow 382, transl. by Jaeger).

Joan Baez was (and still is) a representative of these folk music movements and continues to support political issues which were and still are dear to her. This kind of relationship between music and politics is old and full of complex obstacles; narrowing the topic down to songs against violent authorities, for example, still offers us a history of many hundred years (see also Stern 1978). An outstanding 20th century theorist evoking troublesome discussions about the relationship between society and art, who comes to word in the following sub-chapter, is musicologist and philosopher Theodor W. Adorno. In his 1970 posthumously published study Aesthetic Theory (Trans. Robert Hullot-Kentor. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), many critical facets can be referred to the work of Baez. She is juxtaposed to Adorno’s critical argumentation against politically engaged art (and artists) as a popular singer who wrote and recorded and performed songs with either political content and/or within political contexts. The following pages shed a critical light on the question of whether Baez would have been a successful pupil at the Frankfurt School.