I Am a Noise Not a Conventional Music Documentary

 

 

 

Joan Baez: I  Am a Noise (2023)

Directed by: Miri Navasky, Maeve O’Boyle, and Karen O’Connor

Magnolia, 113 minutes, not-rated.

★★★ ½

 

Although she was one of my favorite interviews, I have mixed feelings about Joan Baez: I Am a Noise. Some reviewers have called it a nostalgia trip, but that’s inaccurate. It’s a look into Baez’s psyche that reveals things that few of her fans knew about, including her long struggle with depression.

 

Baez (b. 1941) is the middle of three daughters born to Albert (1912-2007) and Joan Baez, Senior (1913-2013): Pauline (1938-2016), Joanie, and Margarita (1945-2001), best remembered under her married name, Mimi Fariña. Joan had dark thoughts mixed with joy from an early age, partly because she experienced prejudice due to her mixed heritage–her father was Mexican and her mother white–and because Albert, a physicist, worked for UNESCO and the family moved a lot.

 

Here’s where things get very murky and the documentary could be sharper in clarifying. It’s tempting to suspect that Joan was bipolar, but that term never appears in the film. Was there family trauma? Mimi alleged that Albert inappropriately kissed her, which both he and his wife vigorously denied and which bears hallmarks of a therapist’s “planted” memory. The film settles for an explanation of mutual family hurts, but of what family is that not true?  

 

What emerges is that Joan had swings of amazing creativity–in drawing, poetry, and journaling as well as music. Much of this is told via home movies and tapes from family members and from Joanie’s guided imagery/meditation therapy sessions. Again, it’s hard to know to make of this. Even the documentary title is mired in ambiguity. It is a quote from Joanie in which she insists she’s a noise, not a saint. Ahh, but what a noise.

 

What we know for certain is that she played ukulele as a child, saw Pete Seeger when she was 13, and bought her first guitar in 1957. What happened next would confuse saint and sinner alike. In 1958, she played her first gig at Club 47 in Cambridge, Massachusetts–Albert got a job at M.I.T.–and was soon playing there twice a week singing a repertoire of Child ballads and songs inspired by Seeger, Marion Anderson, and Odetta. In 1959, Baez appeared at the Newport Folk Festival and an instant star was born. She was dubbed the “barefoot Madonna,” made the cover of Time, had three gold albums, and was the hottest ticket in “the folk revival.” Baez admitted to once having had a female lover, but the one that changed her dramatically occurred when a scruffy songwriter appeared in her life: Bob Dylan. She caught him in his protest phase and they were an item from 1961-65.

 

Baez grew up in a pacifist Quaker household, but Dylan was part of her move into social justice movements–until he wasn’t. There has long been a vampiric aspect to Dylan and he drifted away from Baez and social causes about the time Baez did a deep dive–civil rights, the peace movement, environmentalism…. She befriended Harry Belafonte, marched with Dr. King, married draft resister David Harris with whom she had her son Gabriel, and was soon as well-known for outspoken activism as for her glorious voice. Those on the right lampooned her as “Phony Joanie.” She told me that they hated her because she wasn’t phony like them. Yep!

 

Things grew cloudy again when the Vietnam War ended. She was part of the drug-fueled Rolling Thunder tour of 1975-75, dabbled in now-embarrassing disco-laced pop, and was creatively and personally adrift for a time. She told me that a key moment back occurred when she sang in Czechoslovakia and knew from her reception that the Iron Curtain would soon fall.

 

I Am a Noise has musical clips, but it’s not a music documentary. It’s more a confessional and how she found inner peace, dealt with the pain of losing her brother-in-law, rivalry with Mimi, estrangement from Gabriel, Mimi’s death, that of her parents, and retirement. I’m no psychologist, but I’d hazard that much of what happened to Joan Baez is that she never got the chance to work out her childhood blues before stardom claimed her incomplete self. I couldn’t be happier that she now feels centered. A confession: I was never a huge fan of her vibrato-heavy soprano. My fondness runs for alto voices, but whatever one prefers, she has never been a Phony Joanie!

 

Rob Weir