Music Joan Baez
She’s retiring from touring, but singer Joan Baez keeps her protest flag flying on a new album.
Midway through a daft little movie called The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, there’s a daft little scene with Bill Murray and Cate Blanchett in a hot-air balloon, soundtracked by a daft – and repetitive – little tune about two unrelated individuals called Nicola and Bart.
When I first watched the film, that tune stuck in my head, and on further investigation, I discovered it was the work of Joan Baez and prolific film composer Ennio Morricone, for a 1971 film about Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, two Italian-born American anarchists sentenced to death for murder in the 1920s.
Baez’s lyrics are brief and stirring – like an inscription on a tombstone – and their delivery as a hymnal crescendo of a single verse repeated eight times in three minutes creates a solemn, urgent and, ultimately, glorious tribute. Here’s to you, Nicola and Bart Rest forever here in our hearts The last and final moment is yours That agony is your triumph. Baez’s ability to make bold political statements is, of course, nothing new. Her name is synonymous with the early 60s counterculture anthem We Shall Overcome, and she has spent the best part of six decades loudly promoting anti-war, civil rights, LGBTQ and environmentalist causes and opposing the death penalty.
But the effectiveness of her songs lies mostly in their simplicity, as demonstrated in Here’s to You, Nicola and Bart and the choice of songs for her latest album, Whistle Down the Wind.
The 77-year-old has said her 25th album has been designed as a “bookend” to her eponymous 1960 debut LP, and there are clear English folk-style offerings to balance her earliest influences, the most obvious being Silver Blade, a response to Silver Dagger, the opening track on Joan Baez.
But she has also said the world tour to support Whistle Down the Wind will be her last, and it’s clear she’s determined to sign off with a flourish, one that harnesses three vital aspects of her art: working with a spectrum of collaborators, playing to her age and experience and once again using bold, simple language to express complex political messages.
By using songs by the likes of US roots musicologist Tim Eriksen, confrontational UK transgender artist Anohni, Americana stalwarts Josh Ritter and Joe Henry (who also produces) and the legendary Tom Waits, Baez shows that nearly a decade after her last outing, she’s still relevant.
Then, by choosing to interpret songs such as Waits’s Last Leaf and Mary Chapin Carpenter’s The Things That We Are Made Of, she introduces a nod to her own mortality – similar to that which earnt Leonard Cohen so many plaudits for 2016’s You Want It Darker – while delivering it with such panache that the listener can’t help but be enthralled.
If Whistle Down the Wind is a curtain call, it is one that has a powerful point to prove and one delivered with grace, sincerity and, above all, strength.
As the #MeToo movement finds a global voice and US students struggle against a powerful pro-gun lobby, protesters can learn a thing or two from Baez about simplicity and purpose. Two tracks, Civil War and I Wish the Wars Were All Over, are uncomplicated narratives with a familiar, timeless message. The centrepiece of the album, however, is a version of
Zoe Mulford’s The President Sang Amazing Grace, about Barack Obama’s eulogy for the victims of the 2015 Charleston church shooting.
It is as plain, beautiful and affecting as Here’s to You, Nicola and Bart and demonstrates that Baez’s understanding of the power of clarity and storytelling is as relevant in 2018 as it has been over the past six decades.
WHISTLE DOWN THE WIND, Joan Baez (Southbound)