Blog: PopMatters

A long-awaited survey of the life and times of a cultural icon. Given Joan Baez's centrality to American cultural and political life over the past five decades, the greatest surprise about this documentary is that it wasn't made much sooner. While Bob Dylan's career has been the subject of a multitude of docs and bios, essays and retrospectives, Baez's work -- both as artist and activist -- has received comparably little scrutiny or contextualization. While her classic Vanguard albums have been carefully and conscientiously re-issued and re-mastered...