these dimensions by simply attacking the intellectual incapability of listeners of popular music is not enough for a satisfying debate. Weaver goes a step further and articulates his conviction that “[…] now, popular culture has a much more dramatic influence on how culture is defined […]” (Weaver 2). The political efforts of Joan Baez during the last 50 years—as analyzed in this study—undermine this significance. Gamman and Marshment chime in on this issue—more sophisticatedly than Weaver—and expect the critical reader to be careful with possible definitions of popular culture:
It is not enough to dismiss popular cultures as merely serving the complementary systems of capitalism and patriarchy, peddling ‘false consciousness’ to the duped masses. It can also be seen as a site where meanings are contested and where dominant ideologies can be disturbed (Gamman and Marshment in Strinati 216).
This is the point where Baez’s position as a political activist comes in. My argument is: the most significant momentum of Baez’s work as a creator of popular culture artifacts is her politics. This does not mean that she only recorded textually straightforward political songs; it puts her most famous and most important songs (and performances of the same) into a specific cultural context which transforms her artistic work into the continuing tenor of a unified political message. This hypothesis flagrantly contradicts with the position of American Studies scholar Lipsitz, who is convinced that
[…] artifacts of popular culture have no fixed meanings: it is impossible to say whether any one combination of sounds or set of images or grouping of words innately expresses one unified political position […] (Lipsitz Time Passages 13).
In order to falsify Lipsitz’s thesis, this study discusses the musical work of Joan Baez from her political point of view. The analyses of various political initiatives which Baez has supported as an activist throughout her career and the role of her work as a popular singer for this kind of activism exposes a doubtless fact: Artifacts of popular culture certainly can express a unified political message. Popular music can be political. Robin Denselow is convinced that the political potential of popular music is not at its end, as many political elites might probably wish, because
Pop musicians have learned that they have the ability to use their music as well as their position for commenting on political developments, […] collecting large sums of money, and mirroring the course of history […] as it has been done by troubadours of folk-music movements all around the world2 (see Denselow 382, transl. by Jaeger).
Joan Baez was (and still is) a representative of these folk music movements and continues to support political issues which were and still are dear to her. This kind of relationship between music and politics is old and full of complex obstacles; narrowing the topic down to songs against violent authorities, for example, still offers us a history of many hundred years (see also Stern 1978). An outstanding 20th century theorist evoking troublesome discussions about the relationship between society and art, who comes to word in the following sub-chapter, is musicologist and philosopher Theodor W. Adorno. In his 1970 posthumously published study Aesthetic Theory (Trans. Robert Hullot-Kentor. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), many critical facets can be referred to the work of Baez. She is juxtaposed to Adorno’s critical argumentation against politically engaged art (and artists) as a popular singer who wrote and recorded and performed songs with either political content and/or within political contexts. The following pages shed a critical light on the question of whether Baez would have been a successful pupil at the Frankfurt School.
1.5 A Critical View of a Critical Theorist: How a Bad Frankfurt Pupil Can Still Be Politically Active
Although Theodor W. Adorno can certainly be called an outstanding intellectual of the 20th century, he was “[…] a troubling figure […]” (Paddison 2), who evoked ambivalent reactions in the fields of philosophy, sociology and musical theory. Beside his often underestimated work as a composer and his lifelong passion for social research, he is most famous for his elaborations as a philosopher. Paddison concludes in characterizing Adorno’s intricate theoretical work with yet another hint at the significance of interdisciplinary work (as pointed out in chapter 1.1): “[…] the interdisciplinary character of Adorno’s work is all-pervading, even in those texts which, on one level, seem straightforwardly ‘musical’ […]” (Paddison 16). One essence which can be attached to most of his interdisciplinary work is an incisive commentary on politics. His membership at the famous Frankfurt Institute for Social Research, which was founded in 1923, was just one example of this kind of political focus. Paddison describes the aim of the Frankfurt Institute and points out the political tenor in Adorno’s lifelong work:
The Institute, which was initially independent of the university, operated as a kind of community of scholars, taking an interdisciplinary approach to current social issues of importance. The fundamental of their shared concerns was the rise of Fascism in Europe and of authoritarianism in general […] (Paddison 7).
These straightforwardly political concerns were delivered by Adorno in passionate analyses of “[…] musical models in both the classical and the popular or light music traditions […]” (Witkin 2). Mechanisms (form and/or content) in the creation of artifacts (classical or popular) for him are comparable to mechanisms in society. This is one reason why an interpretation of Baez’s political dimension of her work as a popular singer under the influence of Adorno’s theory can be a fruitful intellectual attempt although Adorno most probably would have accused Baez of trying to be manipulative. Witkin summarizes Adorno’s reason for disseminating his attitude on popular culture’s attempt to stultify its consumers:
His rejection of music ranging from Stravinsky to Louis Armstrong was not based upon the fact of their popular appeal nor their power to stimulate emotion […]; it was, rather, based upon his belief that such music was ‘manipulative’, that it colluded in the weakening and undermining of the subjects it appealed to, that its claim to spontaneity or genuine expression was untrue […] (Witkin 2-3).
Baez’s artistic and political efforts differ from Adorno’s theoretical work and his “[…] vast speculative pessimism […]” (Said in Witkin 10) not only in regard to this accusation of lacking legitimate artistic allowance. The most perceptive differences between the theoretician/philosopher and the activist/singer can be exposed, because they worked in different times. The last decade in the life of Theodor W. Adorno—the 1960s—was the first decade in the career of Joan Baez. An undeniably similar aversion to any form of authoritarianism and an interest in the question of how problems of society could be defined and possibly be solved (plus the relationship of this form of interest to artistic expression), however, can be traced in the work of both Baez as well as Adorno, who most lengthily discusses the relationship between art and society in his study Aesthetic Theory, posthumously published by his widow.
The following pages summarize the most significant similarities and differences between the work of Baez and the aesthetic theory of Adorno. A brief philosophical outline of the relationship between society and art in Adorno’s theory heads a short synopsis of the concept he and his colleague Max Horkheimer coined for what they describe as the Culture Industry and culminates in an explanation of Adorno’s critical attitude towards politically engaged art. As a next step, critics of Adorno come to word, in order to disapprove of the passiveness of his elaborations. Despite Adorno’s skepticism about popular culture and politically engaged art, a closer analysis of the passive nature of his theoretical explanations serves to prove the significance of an activist like Joan Baez, who uses her artistic work in order to support political initiatives—without necessarily turning this kind of activism into an ideological instrument keeping authoritarian mechanisms in society alive; an accusation in the writings of Adorno which he puts on every politically engaged artist in a generalizing manner (see also Sauerland 3). Although
