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ibidem-Press, Stuttgart
Dedicated to the sister to my soul since 1987,
Susanne Rundl, without whose friendship
I would be an entirely different person.
And to Janice Schiestl, my former teacher
and now dear friend, without whose support
this book would not have been possible.
I think one of the saddest and stupidest things in our world is the segregation and discrimination of different races […] (Joan Baez, 1955).
There’s a consensus out that it’s OK to kill when your government decides who to kill. If you kill inside the country you get in trouble. If you kill outside the country, right time, right season, latest enemy, you get a medal […] (Joan Baez, 1968).
[…] people play this very loud music so they won’t have to confront the quietness. They don’t want to think about death. A lot of my songs, especially the songs I first played, were about death […] (Joan Baez, 1976).
The prevailing ethos is: No negative thoughts, and everything is beautiful. You just jog, eat enough of the right yogurt, and everything is going to be all right […] (Joan Baez, 1987).
It was simply a case of saying I would quietly disappear from mainstream music or fight my way back in, as a result, I have made a commitment to my own career […] (Joan Baez, 1990).
I did have a flight booked and a hotel booked and the final agreement, yes. Maybe four days before the concert, then I was told that I was not approved […] (Joan Baez, 2007).
That’s my little song/ about a man gone wrong./ He’s nasty from his head to his feet./ When the dirt on this man / finally hits the fan,/ and no one gives a damn about his tweets,/ he’ll be finally and forever obsolete […] (Joan Baez, 2017).
Table of Contents
1. Stepping Over Boundaries: Materials, Methodology and Theory
Introduction
1.1 Against Wrongful Restrictions: On the Advantages of Interdisciplinarity
1.2 Reconstituting Culture: On the Significance of Social Movements
1.3 Life Is the Method: On the Sisterhood of Biography and Society
1.4 Popular Is Not Enough: On Popular Culture and Politics
1.5.1 Music for More Than Music’s Sake: On the Credibility of Politically Engaged Artists
1.5.2 Words Do Not Change Society: Theory Versus Practice
1.5.2.1 On Fictitious Freedom
1.5.2.2 On the Credibility of Hazy Categories
1.5.2.3 On the Passiveness of Theories
2. “The Kingdom of Childhood”: Major Moments of the 1950s
Introduction
2.1 Religion Without Violence: Joan Baez and the Quakers
2.2 Becoming Someone Who Was Alright: On Singing Against Isolation
2.3 The Birth of a Passion: Iraq, 1951
2.4 Preparing for the March on Washington: Joan Baez and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
2.5 Another Teacher of Pacifism: Jewish Scholar Ira Sandperl
3. On Refusal Without Violence: Joan Baez and Henry David Thoreau
4. High School Activist and Folk Music Revivalist
Introduction
4.1 Conservative Nostalgia About the 1950s
4.2 Pedagogy of Paranoia: Activist for the First Time
4.3 The Soundtrack of the American Counterculture: Joan Baez and the Folk Music Revival
5. Postwar Fractures in Society: Joan Baez in the 1960s
Introduction
5.1 Doubted Demarcations: American Society and Change in the 1960s
5.2 Going Further than Allowed: Joan Baez and the Civil Rights Movement
5.3 When Students More than Studied: Joan Baez and the Free Speech Movement
