It is hard to imagine a music documentary that
is more historically important than Festival.
Filmed over three years (1963-1965) at the Newport Folk Festival, this
documentary not only offers life-changing glimpses of three generations of
American musicians, but it actually captures some of the moments that see the
American cultural, social and intellectual landscape shifting from 1950’s black
and white to 1960’s technicolor. Hard to believe, right? When the movie opens on
a scene of Jim Kweskin’s Jug Band performing casually backstage and director
Murray Lerner begins to question them on the importance of folk music and the
meaning of the festival, harmonica player and future cult leader Mel Lyman
launches into some wild-eyed rapping about this music’s place in current
society, and in those few minutes you can almost see the scales falling from
society’s eyes as one generation of highly educated, idealistic youth takes the
baton of cultural relevance and runs akimbo toward an uncertain finish line and
the mushroom cloud that lay beyond it. It, and so many other moments in this
incredible documentary, provides insights of such societal prescience that it
is almost forgivable to forget the multi-generational panoply of great American
music also playing out on screen. That, ultimately, is what makes Festival different and better than so many music documentaries; it is the
fact that Murray Lerner took years of work to get the balance between music and
society just right.
Other than Bob Dylan’s historic first electric
performance of “Maggie’s Farm” from
1965, there are no full songs presented in Festival. Rather, Lerner skillfully allows us to
float through three years of festivals - the music, the crowd, the conversations,
the styles, the unreal cars (if you love cool cars from the 60’s, it’s worth
watching the movie for the brief glimpses of Corvettes, Mustangs and Jaguars
that the seemingly endless sea of middle-class white kids arrive in), and the
overall gestalt of the times. It is
an inescapable fact that the audience is almost entirely white, collegiate and
representative of all the historical advantages post WWII America has come to
represent. The seeds of the mid- to late-60’s cultural revolution awaiting are
blowing throughout this film. There are no hippies, no revolutionaries (except
on stage), no bomb throwers, but the potential to become just that is clear in
each earnest pronouncement the post-beatnik audience members mouth with
heartbreaking innocence. Because the film jumps around so willfully and with
such artistic intent (largely thanks to editor Howard Alk, who would go on to
work on a number of important music films), it avoids most of the traps of
other concert films, remaining interesting and unpredictable throughout. No
obligatory drum solos, sycophantic journalistic talking heads or music video
collage tricks to take the realism and grit out of the music. And ultimately,
the beautiful music is what makes this film so special.
Festival, by the simple act of
letting events play out before the camera, manages to capture and contrast
three distinct generations of American musicians. First are the heritage acts
that have always inhabited this festival. However, because this was the mid
60’s, those acts were primarily made up of musicians whose history stretched
back to the pre-war age of American regionalism. Thus artists like The Blue
Ridge Mountain Dancers, Eck Robertson, The Swan Silvertones and most
importantly, the bluesmen like Howlin’ Wolf, Son House and Mississippi John
Hurt provide a priceless glimpse into
a lost America. There isn’t really one authentic bit of this “old weird
America” as Greil Marcus called it left in 2018 - not one bit! That fact alone
makes these images indispensable. The second, and most prevalent category of
performer represented, is the one that most closely mirrors the audience - the
contemporaneous stars of the folk and infant folk-rock boom. Peter, Paul &
Mary, Joan Baez, Judy Collins, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Johnny Cash, Odetta and Pete
Seeger among others offer proof of
the sincerity of their music and their message. It is clear why each would go
on to forge distinctly important careers. They are young and at the peak of
their powers. The sight of Johnny Cash’s profile or the sound of Odetta’s
powerful voice are enough to take your breath away. And these moments happen
over and over in this film.
Of course the unspoken but clear sub-context is
the fact that all this “real,” “homespun “ music was about to come crashing up
against the cultural tidal wave that that the next five years of American
history would prove to be. That wave is represented in the person of one Bob
Dylan, whose appearances at all three festivals provide increasing levels of
hysteria amongst the audience, and culminate with his 1965 electric set.
Director Murray Lerner later went back and created a full-length documentary on
just Dylan’s part called The Other Side of
the Mirror. I highly recommend
watching it as well; however, there is a magic poignancy to Dylan’s appearances
within the context of the other two categories of performer outlined above.
Having hindsight, knowing what we know now, it is indeed touching and
fascinating to see Dylan paying tribute to and breaking the mold in the same
moment. It adds the perfect air of suffocating inevitability to the seemingly
joyous proceedings. Optimism ruled the day, but dark clouds gathered on the
horizon. Completely essential viewing!
-
Paul
Epstein
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