Joan Baez and the Issue of Vietnam: Art and Activism versus Conventionality (review)

This earnest paper—not a book really—raises some important issues about the role of artists in war resistance. It asks us to think about where people's ideas come from, what sustains them as activists, how artists and musicians get their voices heard, and what effects they have on others. While it promises far more than it delivers, if it convinces readers to focus on these issues as they pertain to the 1960s it might encourage a more sophisticated and much needed conversation in the long run.

Markus Jager writes that the aim of his study is "to show that the combination of art and activism plays a significant role in the development of resistance against war" (11). He sets out to use Joan Baez's activities in relation to the Vietnam War as an example. The problem is that the author does not provide enough context to illustrate the relationship between art and resistance. The focus is on Baez as a lone individual, much admired by the author but not part of a tradition of art and activism that went through a significant shift during the folk revival that began in the late 1950s.

The book is structured around Baez's life and political activity. We learn about some of the early influences that caused her to become a pacifist. Then, in very short chapters, we are told of her activities including war tax resistance, founding the Institute for the Study of Nonviolence, working in the draft resistance movement during the Vietnam War, singing at Woodstock, traveling to Hanoi, and criticizing the Vietnamese government's human rights record after the war. In addition, there is brief mention of critics who tried to prevent her from reaching a mass audience, from the CIA to the Daughters of the American Revolution.

Much of this information comes from Baez's autobiography, which leaves the reader hoping for some deeper insight than she herself provides. Yet the theory is quite thin, relying on tantalizing quotations from David Hadju's Positively 4th Street and the work of Simon Frith and R. Serge Denisoff. Thus, shortly after telling us about Joan Baez signing with Vanguard Records, the author quotes Denisoff saying "finally, traditional and contemporary protest songs, hidden away all these years, caught the attention of a large mass of young people" (30). But there is no discussion of why these songs were "hidden away" or of what it meant to have protest songs become part of popular culture. Indeed, a few pages later the author writes "She was among the first politically active artists …" (32). But unless one takes into account the long tradition of protest music in the United States—or just the twentieth century for that matter, from the songs of the Industrial Workers of the World to those of Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly, Pete Seeger and others who paved the way for Joan Baez—she appears as a lone heroine. If we are to deepen our understanding of art and resistance, we need to address hard questions about protest music and popular culture and the importance of community in organizing against war.