What I Like - Newport Folk Festival
Funny word. It means so many different things, really, depending on who’s using it.
I’ll try not to get too political here, because what I really want to talk about is music, but it’s hard to write about Newport, Rhode Island, without getting into philosophy and, inevitably, politics.
Newport, like the colony of Rhode Island, was founded on the principles of freedom – not your Puritanical, witch-hanging kind of freedom, but real freedom. Nothing speaks more to the history of Newport than its sprawling Common Burial Ground, where white and black colonists were buried together from the late 17th Century onward. Newport welcomed colonial Jews and freethinkers at a time when only pillories or worse awaited them elsewhere in the brave new land.
But Newport’s license bred pirates and eventually slave traders, inverting the early ideal into new tyrannies. By the middle of the 19th Century, Newport had become the summer home of men who made the worst pirates look like petty thieves, the robber barons of the great age of capital growth in America, when employees were regarded as chattel and fortunes were made on the bent backs of workers. Newport’s mansions rise like mushrooms on the grave of laissez faire capitalism, restored now so anyone who can afford a ticket can walk among the rubble of gilded memories.
Flash forward to from the 1890s to 1959. The sons and daughters of old-line American liberalism have rediscovered the music of the masses. Woody Guthrie, Okie bard and hard (fellow) traveler, spawned a generation of troubadours, fed by folklorists and the roots of the twin rising giants of country-western music and rock and roll. African American music, Irish immigrant tunes, labor organizing songs, blues, Appalachian murder ballads – these earnest youngsters were playing the music at the heart of the American experience.
In 1957, under the guidance of George Wein and Pete Seeger, folk music found its stage in Newport against the wall of a 19th century fort. Traditional musicians were joined by commercial artists like Joan Baez and Judy Collins. A few years later at Newport, Bob Dylan re-invented folk music and evolved it into electrical poetry. The folk explosion of the late 50s faded fast but its influence ran deep through the hippy culture of the late 60s and into the liberal populism that still dominates the left wing of American politics.
This year marks the 50th Anniversary of the Newport Folk Festival and the event was a celebration not only of American music, but of the very principles that make America an ideal of freedom. Pete Seeger, unredeemed populist and tireless campaigner for free speech and social reform, is still going strong at 90, and his spirit dominated the two-day event. Other veterans of the fest -- Joan Baez, Rambling Jack Elliott, Arlo Guthrie, Mavis Staples, and Judy Collins – appeared onstage to remind a crowd of 10,000 music lovers that age does not dim the messages of tolerance and compassion that the folk movement of the 50s often embodied. Some of the clusters of blanket-sitting listeners must have spanned four generations of music-lovers.
But the 50th fest was much more than just a nostalgic reunion of old compadres. American music is undergoing a shift back to lyrical forms and the real stars of the fest were the young bands and performers who are taking up the torch, infusing popular music with meaning and intelligence. David Rawlings and Gillian Welch played an amazing set, mixing new songs with old. The Decemberists, brilliantly inventive, musically diverse, and grounded in a humanistic (if bizarre) ethos, delivered a stunning set on the first day of the fest. The Fleet Foxes brought their astonishing harmonies and poetic words to a reverent crowd. Josh Ritter played a Sunday morning set that approached religious dimensions. His muted performance of his song “Girl in the War” held thousands of listeners in a spell of attentive, reflective rapture.
In the waters of Narragansett Bay, circling the fort, while the show unfolded, the moneyed citizens of Newport gathered their yachts close enough to hear the music. Never mind the irony of people in million dollar boats “stealing” music, they were part of the magic and if Billy Bragg’s blatant Socialism or Pete Seeger’s message of brotherhood reached them even a little, they were more than welcome in the fire circle. They were, after all, brothers and sisters in the tribe of man.
Newport may be the quietest music festival on earth, the crowd truly there to hear the music. And maybe the real lesson of the festival is in the audience's attentive silence, respectful of the music and the musicians. Maybe that’s where freedom really lives. In an age where communication is too often used to polarize and alienate, when discourse has been replaced by smug pundits telling their guests to “shut up,” maybe what we need is just a little silence, to hear each other talk.
And sing.
(If you want to hear some of the great performances from the Festival, check out NPR's coverage for the Festival)
Posted by Angela Caperton at 8/5/2009 9:29 AM 
Categories: Music, folk music, What I Like
Tags: Music What I Like
Categories: Music, folk music, What I Like
Tags: Music What I Like
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