Folk Music Renews Its Political Message at Festival

You’d expect a festival of modern American folk music to touch on issues of the day, and two songs performed at the Newport Folk Festival tour’s Greek Theatre stop on Sunday commented on the current White House scandal. Just one thing: Both were written more than 40 years ago.

Nanci Griffith tweaked a sing-along of the Weavers’ anthem “If I Had a Hammer” to today’s headlines by admonishing the crowd to “think about justice” while watching the video of President Clinton’s grand jury testimony. Earlier, country-rock band Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy, after singing Woody Guthrie’s wry “Christ for President” lyric, noted, “I’m sure [Guthrie] had no idea” what would plague that office today.

This seven-hour event could have used a little more of that kind of pointed timeliness. Still, there was considerable depth in the highlights. Michael Doucet, leader of the Cajun band Beausoleil, commented during a blistering set of dance tunes that theirs was “the most apolitical” music on the bill. But the very act of preserving and reinvigorating the music of a culture that not long ago was on the verge of extinction is a political act. And Joan Baez, a veteran of the tour’s namesake Rhode Island festival, showed a commitment to refueling the folk repertoire with songs by such young artists as Irish singer Sinead Lohan and the Indigo Girls.

The best of the non-topical artists offered highly personal takes on the human condition, Richard Thompson and John Hiatt in particular representing the cream of the crop of modern singer-songwriters.

Thompson introduced three new songs that confirmed his status as the preeminent practitioner of English-derived balladry and sharp portraits of the human heart and soul, and Hiatt, in a boisterous crowd-pleasing mood, showed equal depth in the rich American country-folk traditions. They rendered lesser sets by Marc Cohn and Bruce Cockburn largely unnecessary, and Thompson’s guitar prowess outshone the out-of-place flashiness of banjo player Bela Fleck and his gimmicky jazz-fusion group.

Griffith focused on material from her two “Other Voices” albums honoring fellow songsmiths but with a personal twist. Her vivacious performance of Thompson’s “Wall of Death,” a song about living life to its fullest, took on extra meaning given that Griffith is being treated for thyroid cancer. That’s powerful testimony itself.