Joan Baez reflects on remembering trauma, activating her voice and the "wrecking ball" of politics

[marmar]

Joan Baez reflects on remembering trauma, activating her voice and the "wrecking ball" of politics
This singer discusses her new documentary "I Am a Noise" – an "honest legacy" of her activism, career and problems

By KENNETH WOMACK
Contributing Writer
PUBLISHED OCTOBER 8, 2023 8:00AM (EDT)


(Salon) An emotionally lacerating documentary about fame and family trauma, "I Am a Noise" provides an unflinching portrait of singer and social activist Joan Baez that will leave audiences gripped to the screen.

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Baez was determined that the documentary represent “an honest legacy,” both the heights of her 1960s-era activism, as well as the “wrinkles” that impinged upon her personal journey. In this way, the filmmakers balance Baez’s groundbreaking collaboration with Bob Dylan alongside her painful discovery about childhood abuse and its lifelong implications. To her great credit, nobody’s voice is silenced. Her son, who once took issue with her absence from his life, “was eloquent and forgiving” with his renowned social activist-mother. Even though she now understands her father’s role in the roots of her childhood trauma, Baez nevertheless ensured that “my parents get their say.”

With "I Am a Noise," the filmmakers deftly contextualize Baez’s personal struggles within the larger story of her public life. Take her eyewitness account of attending Martin Luther King’s stirring “I Have a Dream” speech in Washington, DC, in 1963. “When King would speak,” she recalled, “I would weep. He used to joke about it, saying ‘Look at this. Joan Baez in the front row. Every time I say nonviolent, she bursts into tears.’” It was such moments, she told me, “that made it more clear where my place was, where I felt at home, and what I could do with my voice.”

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While she agreed that today’s convoluted political climate seems vastly different, Baez pointed out that the journey towards creating lasting social change inevitably takes on a familiar pattern. “People have to follow their instincts and their hearts and find what it is they can do, what they can engage in — whether it’s working as a volunteer or eventually taking the serious risk that’s involved in making social change for the betterment of this planet and for the people living on it.” ..............(more)

https://www.salon.com/2023/10/08/joan-baez-i-am-a-noise/

[ificandream]

1. Love Joan Baez. She is a saint.

[Bayard]

2. Wonder what she thinks of the current state of the country.....