The following eighth chapter analyses artistic and political challenges for Baez during the 1990s, when she had to face the necessity to re-arrange her professional priorities. Several younger producers and new and fresh songwriting talents supported her successful attempts to hold on to a musical career, including the release of studio and live-music albums and a Grammy nomination as well as numerous promotion tours through the United States and Europe and many other regions around the globe. The general growing political dissatisfaction in the United States, as outlined in the first sub-chapter, among other dimensions, was driven by a generation conflict which labeled young people with the not very flattering X—standing for a lack of orientation. Such youth and their changing musical taste created an artistic surrounding in which it was a mentionable success for an artist like Baez (whose music often was wrongfully labeled as still purely folk) to professionally survive. The political dimension of her work forced Baez to more selective engagements, but she did not stop lending her voice to political issues. The second sub-chapter exemplifies this professional integrity in her earlier activities with an analysis of her trip to Bosnia in the middle of the Balkan War. It accentuates her experiences as well as her passionate attempts to draw international attention to the horrors of the war in former Yugoslavia.
The ninth chapter welcomes Baez in the New Millennium. It triggers off the analysis of her activities in the first decade of the 21st century with another summation about the most important driving forces within the culture and politics in the United States and examines the question in what ways these developments are relevant for Baez’s professional life. Secondly, a discussion about her return to the anti-war movement explains in what ways the massive international protest activities against the war in Iraq differ from the organized protest movement against the Vietnam War during the 1960s and the 1970s. It gives, however, reasons why those two different historic dimensions are still comparable. The last sub-chapter observes the necessity to point out that democracy and censorship do not fit together and discusses Baez’s experiences in this regard in 2007.
The tenth chapter finishes the analyses of Baez’s political significance and non-violent authenticity with a closer look at her activities in the 2010s. It summarizes her most relevant accolades during the final decade of her career during one of the most troubled political phases in the United States. Her song “Nasty Man” on the 45th President of her home country eloquently sums up the reason why her work is the lifelong prove for the fact that being popular is not enough.
1. Stepping Over Boundaries: Materials, Methodology and Theory
Introduction
The aim of this first chapter is to sketch the theoretical background for my line of argumentation. Additionally, a description of the main method outlines the reasons why the biographical method (or life history) is the most profitable approach to the work of Joan Baez. In this manner, sources and materials used to verify the main thesis are explained. On the following pages, five sub-chapters examine these columns of my research in more detail.
The first step is to plea for open-mindedness regarding the interdisciplinary approach that I take with my analysis, because it can be very unsatisfying to limit research possibilities to one scientific branch only. Secondly, an excursion adds an explanation about the cross-border element of social movements, in view of the fact that they offer Baez’s main professional platform, where she melts the borderline between her artistic and her political work. The third sub-chapter offers a summarizing investigation of the biographical method, discussing necessary conditions and advantages of the life history, which is the main methodological approach to my analysis of Baez’s combination of art and activism. The fourth step is a closer look at the challenging relationship between popular culture and politics. It explains the reason why I refer to Baez as a popular singer and how far this classification can be a helpful means for a discussion about her political endeavors. As a last step, the incorporation of Baez’s work with Theodor W. Adorno’s aesthetic theory juxtaposes the activeness of Baez’s efforts to the passiveness of Adorno’s theory as well as his slack use of musical categories—falsifying his resigned approach to the authenticity of politically active artists (particularly in the field of popular culture). The most valuable way of building these columns of my analysis is to consider more than one scientific discipline for my research.
1.1 Against Wrongful Restrictions: On the Advantages of Interdisciplinarity
Picking out singer and activist Joan Baez as the central theme for a dissertation reveals a manifold number of risks and poses numerous questions. Satisfying answers to these questions can not be found by sticking entirely to one particular discipline only—meaning: to one specific body of knowledge, which is being delimited from other scientific disciplines. Moran analyses an important aspect of this kind of systematic delimitation: “[…] in fact, the very notion of the term [discipline] as a recognized mode of learning implies the establishment of hierarchy and the operation of power […]” (Moran 2). This is the reason why interdisciplinarity can be regarded as an attempt to overcome structures of limited power; limited to a small number of selected scientists of one single discipline as well as limited in its potential of achieving knowledge. In other words: the often underestimated “[…] teamwork […]” (Rodgers, Booth and Eveline 2003) of different scientific disciplines is a helpful means of producing knowledge, because knowledge is achieved via the verification of hypotheses—regardless on which hierarchical level of a scientific discipline’s power within the academia.
The stability of putting knowledge into structured schemes—enabling us to go back to organized information more easily—shall by no means be generally put into question. Barker, all the same, correctly emphasizes the fact that “[…] many cultural studies practitioners have felt ill at ease with the forging of institutional disciplinary boundaries for the field […]” (Barker Making Sense 6). The most incisive boundary that I attempt to overcome is the often far too strict line between the humanities and the social sciences. McClung Lee refers to the process of melting this particular boundary as “Humanist Sociology”, explaining reasons why it can be fruitful to approach research from a humanist’s as well as a social scientist’s point of view: “[…] interdisciplinary contacts, including ones with stimulating artists, are useful to build resistance against closure tendencies, against overlooking alternative views of reality […]” (McClung Lee x). Consequentially, the unbending attention to one scientific discipline only includes the danger of overlooking alternative ways to the verification of hypotheses.
Ignoring possible elitist attitudes, which—in a generalizing manner—dismiss such a form of interdisciplinarity as scientific “[…] vulgarization […]” (McClung Lee 151), my intellectual focus follows what McClung Lee describes as “[…] searching for reality in its historical and cross-cultural contexts and […] what appears most relevant […] to our society […]” (McClung Lee xi). This definition can well be applied to the work of Joan Baez. Social movements offer the most interesting platform and potential for a successful expression of this continual attempt to non-violently fight against (what is considered to be) social injustice.
1.2 Reconstituting Culture: On the Significance of Social Movements
Social movements offer a concrete manifestation of the melting borderline