[GREENWICH VILLAGE: MUSIC THAT DEFINED A GENERATION screens Wednesday June 12th and Friday June 14th at 7:00 pm at the Cleveland Museum of Art.]
Review by Pamela Zoslov
The 1960s American folk music scene has
enjoyed so many commemorations that scenes of Pete Seeger and Peter, Paul
and Mary singing protest songs against a backdrop of Vietnam War
footage are by now entwined with our cultural DNA. So Laura
Archibald's new documentary, GREENWICH VILLAGE: MUSIC THAT DEFINED A GENERATION, has an overly familiar feeling. In the words of
folk-rock luminary David Crosby, “I feel like I've been here
before.”
The talking-heads doc focuses on New
York's Greenwich Village, the working-class immigrant enclave that in
the 1950s and '60s was a mecca for artists, musicians,
poets, misfits and idealists. With guitars slung
casually across their backs, these pilgrims made the Village the
birthplace of an exploding folk music movement. Their passionate, relevant songs became the soundtrack of the turbulent
'60s. “We had found a place where we all fit,” recalls Judy Collins,
whose angelic voice popularized so many of the era's loveliest songs.
Archibald bases her documentary on a
memoir by Suze Rotolo, an artist and activist best known as the girl
clutching the arm of Bob Dylan, her then boyfriend, on the cover of
The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan.
The words of Rotolo, who died in 2011, are read by actress Susan
Sarandon. A typical excerpt: "The sixties were an era
that spoke a language of inquiry and curiosity and rebelliousness
against the stifling and repressive political and social culture of
the decade that preceded it. The new generation causing all the fuss
was not driven by the market: we had something to say, not something
to sell." The grandiosity of these pronouncements can be
irritating, and yet the power of the music is undeniable.
The film
presents the recollections of influential club and music store
proprietors and a large number of musicians: Pete Seeger, still,
bless him, going strong at 94; Arlo Guthrie, heir to the mythopoetic
legacy of Woody Guthrie; Don McLean, Jose Feliciano, John Sebastian,
Tom Paxton, Buffy Sainte Marie, Kris Kristofferson, the Rhodes
scholar-turned-folkie, Michelle Philips, Tom Chapin, sisters Carly
and Lucy Simon, Eric “Thirsty Boots” Anderson, and the late
Richie Havens. Film footage of a relatively tame early-'60s protest rally
following a New York City ban on folk singing in Washington Square
Park, a trivial cause by later standards, presages the much more
anguished, violent protests to come as the reality of the war, and
the coffins of young American GIs, came home.
While covering the important events of
the era, from the blacklist that banned Pete Seeger and the civil
rights struggle that galvanized many of the musicians, the film's
narrative is unfocused and given to such bland statements as “The
1960s were an eventful time.” Certain assertions, such as that the
topical songs of Phil Ochs had a “limited shelf life,” are dead
wrong, unless you believe that the government has stopped lying about
war, we're no longer executing people, and racism and injustice are
quaint relics of the past.
The interviews are not very illuminating, but the musical performances are electrifying. The focus on New York artists makes for some significant omissions, but most of the performances here are electrifying: the strong, deep voice of Odetta, Richie Havens' famous “Freedom/Motherless Child” from Woodstock, Melanie's stratospheric, Woodstock-inspired “Lay Down (Candles in the Rain),” Ian and Sylvia's iconic Canadian ballad “Four Strong Winds,” The Lovin' Spoonful's more easygoing and commercial but no less musically solid “Do You Believe in Magic?” which give the viewer an idea of the folk scene's meteoric energy and lasting influence. The performance that thrilled me most was Richard Fariña performing, with his sweet-voiced bride Mimi, his bitterly comic “House Un-American Blues Activity Dream,” a denunciation of McCarthyism punctuated by a contemptuous kazoo, not long before a motorcycle ride in 1966 took the 29-year-old Fariña life. The music and untimely deaths of prophetic figures like Ochs and Farina represent hope and destruction, the twin pillars of the 1960s. 3 out of 4 stars.
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