American Masters (TV Series) Joan Baez: How Sweet the Sound (2009) User Reviews

Heart and soul and sadness

[Goingbegging · 8/10 · 19 January 2020]

This video opens on Joan Baez answering a question we didn't quite catch, but was probably asking her to define her role in the world. She replied "A human being first, an activist second and an entertainer third." I have learned to mistrust "human being" as a code for "Sit properly in church", and to me Joan fails the driving test with that particular opening phrase.

Her plea for non-violence and world brotherhood may have swayed some of the biggest crowds ever assembled, but it is doubtful whether the message has filtered through to many of today's genocidal dictators or chuckling drug-barons. Still, the devil always does have the best tunes, and these will outlive her polemics by a long way.

You can listen happily to 'The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down' without questioning why she appears to be sentimentalizing the slave-owning Confederacy, while refusing to sing to segregated southern audiences. It's plain, for example, that a troubled visit to Hanoi cured her sharply of her illusions about that people's paradise behind the iron curtain - perhaps a clue to her own summing-up of her quality: 'Heart and soul and sadness'. But if it blurred her beliefs, it did nothing to touch the huge conviction with which she sang. To this day, the pitch-pure tremolo just keeps washing over us and we can forgive her anything.

Fatally beautiful, she has somehow managed to live a full love-life without alienating her lovers. Her romance with Bob Dylan - so brief, so intense - largely stimulated her move across from blues into folk, and it was a richly productive partnership. Bob talks freely about it here, as does her husband David Harris about the jail sentence he served for draft-dodging, which originally bonded them. With this whirligig background, you might expect her only child Gabe to have grown up as a problem-kid, which he hasn't at all. Mother and son actually sing a duet at the close of the programme, where the harmony between them is unmistakeable.

Nice Documentary Could Have Looked at Baez More

[Michael_Elliott · 25 October 2009]

Joan Baez: How Sweet the Sound (2009)

*** (out of 4)

This American Masters documentary takes a look at the life and career of folk singer Joan Baez. We start off learning about her pre-fame days then move onto her protest movement, the Civil Rights, her relationship with Dylan and then everything that followed. Not only do we get comments from Baez herself but Bob Dylan, David Crosby and Roger McGuinn are also on hand. I'm a die hard Dylan fan but I've always been interested in the work of Baez. In some ways I wish this documentary had focused more attention on her but it seems the main focus of the film is to highlight her relationship with Dylan and to show that she enjoyed to protest various things including Civil Rights and the Vietnam war. I did enjoy hearing some of the recent comments by Dylan because, to be quite frank, he never really did comment much on their relationship. He doesn't go into to much detail but something is better than nothing. She still seems upset that he pretty much threw her to the side back when his career started to take off. We get various clips of the two performing together both in the 60s as well as the Rolling Thunder Revue tour from 1975-76. Also included is some concert footage from a current tour. In the end, I think this is a good introduction to Baez but I'm sure there's a lot more to be told.

Love is NOT just a four-letter word..

[dbdumonteil · 10/10 · 9 July 2010]

A wonderful documentary,which does the artist justice.Joan Baez has always defined herself as first a human being ,then a pacifist and finally a folk singer.So the movie focuses on Baez the human being and Baez the activist ;in this field ,I can't see another American artist who can be compared to her:in the seventies,when many of her peers gave up the music as message ,she carried on;on the music side,only two songs are detailed :"love song to a stranger"(1972)( she wrote in the booklet included in her "rare live and classic" box set that a woman in the audience shouted that she "should be ashamed of herself for writing this "filthy" song!!!)and "diamonds and rust"(1975) (we learn that when she began to write it,it was NOT about Dylan but HE happened to call).David Crosby ,Roger McGuinn and Dylan himself appear in the film;Crosby praises Baez's firm stand against the draft during the Vietnam War while the two others admire her guitar playing they both tried to imitate but never could.

But the best moments show Joan Baez and her husband of the Woodstock era ,David Harris ,then a draft dodgers' hero for whom she wrote "a song for David" (1970) ;we also see their only son Gabriel who remembers the good time he had in the Rolling Thunder Review.

There's also Luther king and "we shall overcome " -I taught the song to my pupils this year- ;there's also her family and the tragic loss of her sister Mimi;there's also Baez performing contemporary songs.

All this and more in a 90 min movie.A must for all this great lady's fans.

Watching this on Netflix led to a personal epiphany...

[scope-12 · 10/10 · 5 May 2012]

I've always loved Joan Baez' beautiful voice and in particular certain of her songs, like "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down," have haunted me with such purity. I am now filled with admiration for the woman because I saw how she used her talent and her fame to lend support to so many causes that were important. I was blown away by a review of that period of history that I lived through (I'm only eight years younger than she) in that I have almost forgotten, really sort of buried how horrible the Civil Rights movement was and how tenacious and brave the leaders and followers of that activism had to be in order to prevail against such hatred.

Most valuable to me was the personal epiphany I got at some midpoint of the film where I realized that there truly are only two kinds of people... yeah, I know the old joke: The kind of people that think there are only two kinds of people and the kind that don't. But, seriously, watching this documentary put me in touch with what I felt was a universal truth: There are people who believe in the humanity and brotherhood of all human beings, like the beautiful Ms. Baez, and there are people who only care about the humanity and rights of people who look or act exactly like they do. This fundamental difference leads to every way in which people treat (or fail to treat) others with dignity and respect. Thank you, Joan Baez, for dedicating your life and your lovely voice to illuminating that principle.