Joan Baez Is Alive and Controversial and Taking Singing Lessons
by Megan D. Price, Rutland Daily Herald, June 28, 1979
They filed in by ones and twos, in three-piece suits and polyester pantsuits, in torn jeans and shaggy beards to listen to the voice that has salved and rallied them through 20 years of growing up and growing older.
In the second appearance of a nationwide tour here at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center Monday night, an affable, some might say “older,” folksinger named Joan Baez greeted the crowd of 4,000 with the gracious ease of an often-idolized sometimes-despised veteran of the public arena.
Her one-night stand was her first appearance at the Performing Arts Center in more than four years.
Scheduled to begin at 8:15 p.m., the songstress did not keep fans waiting with a warm-up band. Dressed simply in a print blouse and purple slacks with open-toed sandals, Baez entered the amphitheater with her guitar slung loosely over her shoulder and a warm smile and wave to the crowd below. Her prompt arrival in the center stage spotlight was met with immediate applause from the audience as she broke into song with Bob Dylan’s “One Too Many Mornings.” In true Baez style, she broke away throughout the evening from the traditional lyrics of her recorded refrains and toyed with other words, allowing a new interpretation of songs she has made famous.
Following the introductory melody, Baez paused to ask the audience, “Was that too loud or is it just my old-fashioned ear?” That launched the singer into a humorous monologue about the problems of an aging folk singer.
“‘Does it bother you getting old?’ the reporters ask me now,” Baez quipped. The 38-year-old performer paused momentarily before giving her answer with feigned hysteria: “Yes!” She added that she is debating “whether to have my face lifted or my body lowered.”
The concert continued with Baez’ unique blend of flawless singing and improvisational monologue. Taking requests from the dark beyond the lighted proscenium, the veteran performer would eventually settle on a tune with the general agreement of the fans present.
With the setting of the sun, a 15-minute intermission was called. Members of the audience threw on jackets and huddled in blankets while Baez returned ready to improvise her final set beneath the floodlights.
The almost reverential awe of the audiences that traditionally follow Baez concerts was present as she sang “Love Is Just A Four-Letter Word,” “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” and “Joe Hill.” The over-30 crowd shared the bittersweet strains of “Jesse” and “Diamonds and Rust.”
An audience that has lost many of its musical idols to drugs, alcohol and professional decline held to Baez’ sweet soprano as to a candle on a cold dark night.
This voice, which rallied thousands against the Vietnam War a decade ago, gave Monday’s crowd no reason for complaint. The pretty Scottish-Mexican balladeer has matured into a powerful four-octave soprano unafraid of tackling folk, rock, or jazz.
Baez is one of a handful of performers whose claim to vocal fame involves more of her own talent than that of an electronic wizard behind the scenes. To hear a singer live is to hear them stripped of studio enhancement. Baez’ is a voice that such exposure does not betray. To hear her perform solo before thousands is to hear a songstress of the old school sing.
To the chagrin of her following, Baez remarked in an interview immediately following the concert that for the first time in her career she is taking voice lessons. “My ‘achingly pure soprano’ was suddenly just aching,” she laughed in private backstage. “I’ve been noticing the change for four years or so. My upper register just wasn’t there like it used to be. I think it was partly a matter of age and partly a matter of laziness. It’s work to sing up there.” And so the highs that have not been much in evidence in recent years are returning with this tour.
The political Baez made headlines May 30, when she sponsored an open letter to the government of North Vietnam. In the full-page newspaper advertisement which appeared nationwide, she accused that government of continuing the “cruelty, violence and oppression” practiced earlier by foreign powers.
A long-time devotee of “radical non-violence,” Baez said Monday, “I don’t like that word ‘pacifist.’ It’s non-violence.” The very prototype of the politically active folksinger in America, she was accused of abandoning her earlier principles as a result of her open letter.
“My politics are simple,” Baez explained to reporters following the concert. “I don’t think you get to kill anybody, anywhere in the world.” The singer who 10 years ago went to jail protesting American involvement in Vietnam is today speaking out for the “boat people” fleeing the communist government that assumed control in that country.
Baez insists that her recent actions imply no turnabout in her political conscience. “There is a saying,” she said. “Violence begets violence begets violence…The Vietnamese have been fighting invaders for centuries. No, when America pulled out of Vietnam, I didn’t expect utopia.”
According to the singer’s sources, “Stalinists” are now ruling the war-torn country. The Vietnamese people are victims of a new, unsettled nationalism that is resulting in hundreds of thousands of its people behind detained in torturous “re-education” camps, she said.
Baez feels a partial solution to the boat people’s plight is the intervention of the U.S. together with a “moral change in conscience of Americans.” She is urging her fans and concerned citizens to write the Vietnamese government, urging them to allow the presence of Amnesty International, a group dedicated to relieving political oppression. The organization would investigate the allegations being made of prison conditions in Vietnam and issue a report on conditions there, she said. Baez also hopes U.S. officials might agree to accept some of the homeless boat people in this country.
The dangers of nuclear power, capital punishment and the genocide of peoples in foreign lands are issues now involving the singer-activist. “People still expect me to be sitting on the railroad tracks in the lotus position, holding a bucket of organic honey, making the peace sign and waiting for the oncoming train,” she has said.
That simplistic interpretation belies the complex humanist with the voice of an angel.
“Politics should be exciting,” Baez said as her press conference ended. “Politics should make you feel that your life is meaningless without it.”
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