God Bless Joni Mitchell

And now for commentary on a positive story.

There was big news made at last week's Newport Folk Festival, and it wasn't the issuance of the new commemorative postage stamp honoring Pete Seeger.  It was folk legend Joni Mitchell's surprise appearance at the Sunday show.  Joni, being unable to stand as the result of a 2015 brain aneurysm, was perched onstage in a comfortable chair that looked almost like a throne (sorry, all you pop divas, Joni is the real queen!), and she sang a set of songs with support from Brandi Carlile, Wynonna Judd, and members of folk-rock bands such as Dawes and Mumford & Sons - among others - provided sympathetic instrumental backup.

Joni sang in quiet, lackadaisical delivery, but the main point was that she was able to perform at all.  And she did a masterful job, barely missing a beat.  The light and airy voice from her classic records  and the LA sass from albums like Court and Spark and Hejira was replaced by a huskier, humbler voice with a lower register, but it was still Joni as we know her, no small thing.  It was the biggest news from the Newport Folk Festival since Bob Dylan went electric in 1965.  

Joni Mitchell is 78 and a symbol of a time when less was more in popular music . . . when lyrics meant something.  Most of the performers the Newport Folk Festival today are not, like Joni did, likely to define popular music in an era when the beat is more important than the words or even the melody, when being provocative means singing about the moisture between your posterior and your reproductive organs.  But this performance from Joni Mitchell and the not-quite-famous (except for Wynonna Judd) musicians backing her - many of whom were young enough to be her children (or even her grandchildren in some cases, no doubt) reinforces that, though no one outside the folk-rock scene may care, there are still people who care about music as a craft.  And at Newport, they paid loving homage to a woman who defined the standard for what a well-crafted song is.

Here's Joni Mitchell with Brandi Carlile and her friends in a performance of "Both Sides Now, possibly Joni's signature song.  (Though, if you want to insist it's "Chelsea Morning," I won't argue. 😊)