Joan Baez: Great American Troubadour

Joan Baez is a polarizing figure in my life now that I am grown... I have mixed feelings about her... unlike the way I felt about her when I was young.  I played her songs in bars and open mike nights in Chicago - "Diamonds & Rust," "Love Song to a Stranger," and her imitations of Bob Dylan were always amusing to me.

Seeing her on "American Masters: How Sweet the Sound" was touching, inspiring and also perplexing to me.  I think she enjoys being an enigma and I got the impression that her own reflections caused her to need to reflect even more.  She's a wandering troubadour - a minstrel, a poet and a woman of the global world who lives everywhere yet lives nowhere in particular.

I really admire her as an artist, a mirror of our times... I admire her ability to reflect upon her life and put things into perspective.  I admire the way, in this documentary, she takes us on a sobering journey through her past and you hear her mention the word "learn" a lot as she tells us that she learned the lessons of life the hard way... she didn't choose an easy path or easy people with whom to associate.  Yet she's very much in the present and open to new songs, which she pours over and new concerts, which she organizes strategically to fit in with her improved priorities.

She admits that when she was young, she was "promiscuous" but doesn't really tell us what that means.  She tells us of the pain she believes she caused (Dylan and others) and the pain she herself felt so intensely as a political activist.  This is the story of a woman who grew up and learned from everything she'd experienced and then blossomed into a silver-haired, contemplative traveler of the universe whose eyes have not faded and still see with crystal clarity.

You are able to truly feel her pain in Vietnam as she herself was caught in an air raid and ended up in a bomb shelter... and Sarajevo with the cellist playing in the streets, how she hugged him with all of her might and then sat in his chair and sang "Amazing Grace" with the extraordinary instrument of her calling - that gorgeous, lilting, sweet voice.  This is a mature, smart woman with a great gift of musicality who was always certain of her calling and she is determined to live it to the end.

Watch her here...
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