Image: Joan Baez – supplied.
Author: Melody Menu
For a music icon who rose to fame seemingly overnight at the age of eighteen, you would expect Joan Baez to have some demons. However, what is revealed through the 2023 documentary Joan Baez I Am A Noise is not what you would expect. Weaving together scenes of domestic life at home amongst thirsty hummingbirds in leafy California with time spent on tour with her band throughout her 2018 ‘Fare Thee Well’ tour, the film intersperses these elements with striking cartoons and text from Baez’s teenage diaries and home video footage. While the three Baez sisters – Pauline the eldest, Joan in the middle and Mimi the youngest – dance and talk, play and fight, their candour masks an undercurrent of anxiety within the film.
A mindfulness voiceover transitions the viewer from the present day into archival footage and eventually into dialogue from Baez’s own therapy sessions and letters from her psychiatrist. Discussions range from being born into social consciousness through being raised as a Quaker, describing childhood bullying and panic attacks for being “half Mexican,” and the impact of her fame on her family dynamic. The film is generous in the time it gives to Baez’s siblings and parents and later to her son, drummer and occasional tourmate Gabriel Harris. The ripple effect of music and fame on families is something often omitted in music documentaries, and placing the emphasis on Baez in the context of her family rather than just Baez herself could be attributed to the film’s three female directors, Karen O’Connor, Miri Navasky, Maeve O’Boyle, and is a refreshing take on the music documentary genre. It took a village to make this folk singer and activist, even if that village wasn’t as idyllic as it first appeared.
The film describes elder sister Pauline as wanting to disappear in the face of Joan’s fame, and Mimi as wanting to compete with her sister’s success by becoming a singer-songwriter herself, most notably with her collaborator and husband Richard Fariña. In a self-deprecating moment, Joan Baez admits that she doesn’t do well with one-on-one relationships, preferring one-on-two thousand when she comfortably and expertly takes her audience on a journey through her music night after night. This is most noticeable when the film dissects her relationship with ex-husband David Harris and their son Gabriel.
More than once, Baez refers to herself openly as “crazy” and describes feeling addicted to activism and needing a cause, particularly as a new mother with a husband in prison and struggling with her mental health. Gabriel sums up his mother as being “busy saving the world” when he was young; justifying or condemning his mother’s behaviours, it is left up to the audience to decide. Despite the complexity of their relationship, there are tender moments between the two, particularly towards the end of the film as Baez, Gabriel and the rest of the band smudge themselves with sage, a cleansing ritual to cast out negative energy.
“Everyone has three lives: a public life, a private life and a secret life.” Beginning with this famous quote by the Colombian novelist Gabriel García Marquez, Joan Baez I Am A Noise explores the intersection of Baez’s fame, family and familial trauma with dignity and grace. The film opens the door to mental health conversations and challenges the idea that trauma should be shrouded in secrecy or left unacknowledged. If Joan Baez can dance through her trauma, why not you too?
Joan Baez I Am A Noise (2023) – directed by Karen O’Connor, Miri Navasky, Maeve O’Boyle and produced by Mead Street Films. Shown on the 11th of June 2023 at Hayden Orpheum Cremorne as a part of the 70th Sydney Film Festival.
Melody Menu 