Music of Joni Mitchell, Album Blue Released in 1971 - Essay Example

?JONI MITCHELL Introduction Joni Mitchell, born Roberta Joan Anderson, 1943, is a Canadian musician, song and painter (Bego 2005). She is revered as one of the greatest talents in popular music, with a vast number of songs in her unique genre. Thus, Mitchell’s “seamless melding of folk, rock and jazz” (Sonneborn 2002: 147) are exemplified in her classic albums Blue (1971) and Court and Spark (1974). The artiste grew up in poverty, suffered serious ailments as a child, as a young, unwed mother married folk singer Chuck Mitchell, and gave up her daughter for adoption after her marriage broke up. Joni Mitchell believed that the painful life experiences in her youth helped shape her as a sensitive song-writer and singer. Her songs communicate her emotions powerfully, and she connects with her listeners directly and honestly. The album Blue consist of songs that are confessional in nature, where Joni Mitchell reveals her anguish of self discovery concerning her past actions based on selfishness and dogmatic beliefs, which led to her losing important relationships. The artiste is commended by her listeners and critics for her lack of subterfuge or self-justification (Bego 2005). Thesis Statement: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the music of Joni Mitchell and her album Blue released in 1971; to determine whether there is a relationship between popular music and wider social, cultural and political issues; to examine the album Blue’s genre, and its lyrical and music creativity. Further, the album’s impact on popular music and on wider culture as a whole will be determined. The Relationship Between Popular Music and Social, Cultural and Political Issues Joni Mitchell’s songs in the album Blue are acknowledged to be poetic and forthright, with a complexity of emotions depicting raw feelings, the beauty of love, the sadness of loss, and the singer’s confession of her own part in creating her failed relationships. Thus, Blue is considered to be the “quintessential confessional singer/ songwriter album” (Bego 2005: 100). Generally, popular music goes through changing genres and styles, and forms one aspect of popular culture, along with advertising, films, and other parameters of public interest. During the last few decades of the twentieth century, popular culture in the west became established through its music as a “predominant, social, cultural, political and economic force” (Walker 2007: 18). The sales of audio-visual recordings, the performance of live shows, and related processes produce high economic returns. This has created an ostensibly limitless earning capacity for pop megastars, thereby raising them to the very heights of socio-political and cultural prominence. The increasing power of popular culture, mostly led by popular music has been evident over the last five decades. Until Rock ‘n’ Roll emerged in the mid-1950s, popular music utilized core elements of music, particularly in melody and harmony. This progressed to the recent historical diatonic traditions of western art music. From well-established rhythm and blues traditions, emerged Rock ‘n’ Roll’s vigorous and powerfully hypnotic rhythm and dance. Diatonic melody and harmony was decreasingly relied upon. In the beginning, after an initial hostility to what many people considered as overtly sexual depictions of the rhythm, the words and the music, rock ‘n’ roll was accepted as an alternative style of popular music, and in the duration of a few decades, it became the preferred cultural mode and norm of music expression. Thus, “from an interesting 1950s socio-cultural phenomenon to mainstream cultural domination by the 1990s” (Walker 2007: 18), the transformation of popular music appears radical in its magnitude. As a result of the changes, in the 21st century now, the term “music” has become synonymous for many people with rock and pop music. Musicians and singers frequently express their political protest through their musical performances. Protesting through music became a popular norm from the 1960s onwards. This particularly related to political protest by famous musicians such as Bob Dylan and Joan Baez who sang about change, social reform and new political dawns. However, much of their music reflected wishful thinking rather than the reporting of actual facts. Thus, although popular music has been used for conveying social comments and to call for political action, none of this music actually impacted events to any extent, argues Walker (2007). Thus, music is found to reflect the feelings of ordinary people in their different situations of exploitation, and its purpose is to find a place in people’s hearts and minds, albeit with fanciful and unrealistic ideas. As a consequence of increasing inclination towards popular music, the serious, classical or art music in the western traditions, along with the traditional aboriginal music from all over the globe have been marginalized culturally. Thus, “historical cultural artefacts such as western art music are relegated to the margins of society” (Walker 2007: 19), thereby creating a decline in the number of people who realise the value of cultural history and its art forms. This is in contrast to what some social theorists from the 1960s feared, that the music of ordinary folk or popular music had been marginalized due to the continuing supremancy of white, middle-class males. In western societies, the age-old fact of male dominance in all fields: social, cultural, political and economic, causes gender inequality resulting in women’s suffering. Similarly, men belonging to a lower socio-economic strata with a lack of education, were also marginalized and discriminated against. Large segments of society in all western countries have been impacted by socio-cultural and economic discriminations based on class, race, gender, and education. However, it is incorrect to consider the serious or art music created by these societies through history, to be symbols of the socio-political or economic exploitation. A further misconception is that those who like this music are themselves racists, exploiters or worse. Thus, Walker (2007: 20) argues that in reality, regardless of the style or genre of music, irrespective of whether it is rock or classical, musicians and those who love music, do not follow the dictates of “politicians, leaders of society, financial moguls, or those supporting unequitable social or economic structures”. The main attribute of music that is universally appealing is that it inhabits its own universe. Essentially, music cannot cause social or economic inequalities or revolutions of any kind. Society is responsible for these issues, through social and political actions. Therefore, music only exists within the parameters of socio-political conditions in society. Joni Mitchell’s Album Blue: its Lyrical and Musical Creativity By the early 1970s, Mitchell was able to earn a reputation as an uncommonly gifted song-writer. Her songs were diffidently artistic, mostly experimental in nature, and were appreciated for their aesthetic melodies and clarity of imagery. Some of Mitchell’s more complex and introspective songs have been considered to be almost classical in nature, and compared to art songs. Her unique and original compositions both as a lyricist and composer are exemplified in the songs of the album Blue, 1971 (Pendle 2001). “Few records in popular music are as intimate as Joni Mitchell’s Blue album” (Creswell 2006: 575). The record mainly expresses the end of her relationship with singer/ songwriter Graham Nash. At the age of twenty-seven, Mitchell was adjusting to the direction her life was taking, with professional success and fame, and at the same time private grief over the daughter she gave up for adoption. After her first three albums including Song to a Seagull (1968), Clouds (1969), and Ladies of the Canyon (1970), by the time Mitchell recorded her fourth album Blue (1971), she had reached another turning point in her life. It is the terrible opportunity that people are given to realize to their terrible consternation that they were at the bottom of the pit, and needed to take crucial decisions regarding one’s values, and to decide the aspects of oneself that one needed to eliminate as they were no longer necessary, being childhood’s end. Thus, Blue denoted a new beginning and a change in direction in Mitchell’s life. The title song relates to the pressures on youth in a world of dangers in the form of drugs, alcohol, guns and sex. In “foggy lullaby… your song from me” the melody is identified as the indecisive Dorian-mode, while the harmonies have blue notes, and there are varied line lengths, thereby intensifying the meaning of the lyrics of the song. Further, in the song Little Green the artiste uses the word green to represent the child born too early to parents who are themselves children. The child Green, whose name ascertains that winters cannot fade her, is encouraged to be a rebel or nonconformist. Music includes a nervous percussive beat heard during the song, implies that such a path is not smooth, and may be filled with sorrow (Pendle 2001). The finest composition in the album Blue is A Case of You. The emotions are delicately expressed with a sparing use of words, however the deep devotion that the singer feels for the love she needs, is poignant in that she knows fully well her loss. “Mitchell’s language is carefully balanced in the rhythm of the song” (Creswell 2006: 576). When asked to name whom she considered her peers, the singer named lyricists Dylan and Leonard Cohen; and conveyed her fascination for Shakespeare’s use of language that seemed to be trippingly on the tongue, and also his concept of dark soliloquys. The song can be stated to be Mitchell’s best and darkest soliloquy, and had a tremendous power to touch the heart of anyone who had lost love, or had experienced unrequited love. At the time Blue was being made, Joni Mitchell’s emotional stability was at a downward spiral, and her nervous breakdown was resulting in the singer’s suffering from depression. With her survival mechanisms falling away at her realization of the phoniness around her, all her defenses were down while making the album. Thus, several listeners have pointed out to Mitchell that Blue is great music particularly if one is very low (Creswell 2006). Analysis of Joni Mitchell’s Album Blue in Relation to its Genre A significant genre in popular music that developed from 1970, and continues to the present day is that of the “Confessional”. Prior to 1970, songs on unrequited love or longing were known to be universal rather than related to particular experiences. This conventional code held true until song writers were writing for other singers. “The emergence of song writers who performed their own material in rock and roll enabled a new stance towards the material” (Shumway 2003: 218). Thus, beginning in 1970, emerged a new genre of popular song sung by a new genre of artiste that depicted intimacy in human relations from a personal perspective. The new artiste is the singer-song writer, and the new genre is the “confession”. In this genre, the first singer was James Taylor with his hit song Fire and Rain. The song expressed loss, and not longing, and depicted self-analysis that was widely believed to be autobiographical. Though it is a song about love, it is more about the singer and not about the abstract concept of love (Shumway 2003). The confessional genre was next seen in Joni Mitchell’s album Blue (1971) in which the singer reflected intensely and painfully on past relationships. For the song River Mitchell wrote: “I’m so hard to handle./ I’m selfish and I’m sad”, blaming herself for the lover leaving. The nature of this frank self-analysis makes the lines a personal statement, and not a universal or standard one. Another song in the album, A Case of You further underscores the confessional genre in Mitchell’s work. The song describes unique incidences in a relationship that is now over, but about which the singer feels conflicting feelings. The longing expressed in this song is for a specific person, and is “caused by the specific interaction of the two persons involved” (Shumway 2003: 218). Mitchell’s later records are not as confessional as her album Blue. However, her approach of self-analysis continues in many of her songs. In 1974, Bob Dylan’s confessional album Blood on the Tracks made the autobiographical or case historical nature of the songs’ lyrics clearly evident. The songs in the album are mostly narrative, reflecting extended stories. While Dylan is less vulnerable in the album Blood on the Tracks than Mitchell is in Blue, the former’s songs are also associated with the singer’s personal life, “distinguishing them from his early, folk-like songs that were more popular when performed by other artistes. Thus, the songs in albums like Blue and Blood on the Tracks are termed as relationship songs, rather than love songs. At the same time, according to Smith (2004: 61), the real Blue sentiments are expressed more in Mitchell’s Hejira, which has an abundance of confessions, usually attributed to Blue. The genre of music associated with the album Blue released in 1971 is considered to be a mix of folk, rock and jazz (Sonneborn, 2002). “Joni Mitchell was the most innovative song writer to emerge in the late 1960s” (Pendle 2001: 402). As a musician for over four decades, she developed her style to range from folk to rock to jazz to jazz fusion. Her creativity showed a penchant for minor mode melodies and texts with multi-layered images. As a mature artiste, she has been able to shift smoothly between the various styles, in different songs in the same album. According to Rogers (2000), Mitchell’s “goal as a singer is to embody the words and rise above the emotional fakery of pop music” (p.45). In the male dominated world of the music industry, she showed the tenacity and grit to continue her work, because of her strong convictions. Joni Mitchelll began a collaboration in 1978 with jazz bassist and composer Charles Mingus (1922-1979), in which she was to write lyrics to his tunes. However, due to Mingus’ untimely death, the incomplete project remained so. Further, Mitchell’s next album, Mingus, dedicated to him was in a jazz style. She painted the jazzman’s picture on the cover of the album. In the 1980s, Joni Mitchell’s work was significant for its incorporation of social consciousness. The songs view the political system of America with pessimism, and address the problems of aging. Turbulent Indigo was the musician’s best artistic composition since the 1970s. The poetic, sad album depicted the madness of the contemporary world. For the cover of the album, Mitchell painted a self portrait akin to Van Gogh’s whose disorderly and tumultous brush strokes were considered to indicate madness. Joni Mitchell’s lyrics are richly expressive and honestly portray her feelings experienced at that moment in time; however, they reveal little about the past or the future. Since she does not consciously develop her artistry, her work is at once “challenging, surprising and unpredictable” (Henderson 2005: 84). Independent to a high degree, she has retained creative control over her records. Her music invites people into her world, even into her soul. Thus, Mitchell’s confessional poetry produces tremendous intimacy with her listeners; and as a result numerous critics and fans have actually claimed to know her through her music. Perhaps the musician’s greatest achievement is the immediacy or current relevance of her work. Her strong conviction that music and all great art should be genderless and raceless is reflected in her quest for universality through her music. Impact of Mitchell on Popular Music and Wider Culture as a Whole Whitely (2000) views Joni’s Mitchell’s music and lyrics in her albums Clouds (1967) and Blue (1971) within a feminist theoretical framework. Moreover, the songs are rich in word painting through melodic and harmonic contouring, as well as in vocal technique. Mitchell’s self-exploration of her own feelings, fears, regrets and sadness shows her futuristic perspective, because they reflect the 1990s post-feminist emphasis on women, and the importance of attempting to understand and accept their feelings. Besides her confessional phase, Joni Mitchell continued with her mission to tackle corruption, injustice, gender discrimination, and to oppose those who promoted divisiveness in society. She considered her album Turbulent Indigo (1994) as a quest for justice. Mitchell passed through different phases, exploring various types of music, some of which were more successful than others. In Both Sides Now (2000) and in Travelogue (2002) she appeared to have freed herself from her past, and stood away, examining the inner workings of the songs (Smith 2004). Artists such as Prince, Jimmy Page and Seal express their admiration for Joni Mitchell’s work, and emulate her style in their own compositions. Similarly, younger female singer-songwriters such as “Tracy Chapman, Sinead O’Connor, and Tory Amos” (Echols 2002: 208) were influenced by Mitchell’s music. Joni Mitchell’s huge body of musical work includes extensive contribution to the “flower power” culture of passive resistance and non-violence ideology as a symbolic way of opposing war. Mitchell’s songs also promoted a shift in the social fabric to incorporate feminist perspectives; thus the long-lasting effects of her music are incalculable (Schinder & Schwartz 2008). Popular music in the 1960s was closely connected with counter-cultural movements such as those related to the hippies, the New Left, and Women’s Liberation besides others. Though Mitchell had repeatedly clarified the absence of any connection between her gender performances and feminism, “debates surrounding the meanings, roles, and performances of woman and womanness became ever more heated and fractious by the late 1960s” (Henderson 2005: 91). By 1968, the Women’s Liberation Movement was associated with the powerful slogan “The Personal is Political”, to emphasize the view that all political action and social change starts with the individual as the nucleus. The gender differentiation and relation between man and woman were redefined, and increasing protests, marches and influential writing through the media sought to challenge inequalities between the sexes. Continuing into the first half of the 1970, there was growing awareness of the requirement for women in the public sphere. Joni Mitchell suited this political and cultural background, with her confessional style of music where she focused on her personal life deeming it to be of importance, her support of women’s causes, and as a pioneer among the first women song writers and singers. Similar to Bob Dylan, popular music singer and other media personalities, Joni Mitchell also represented timing and talent which led to her introspective method of song writing. However, Mitchell was not limited to being a celebrity musician, “she was a spokesperson for a particular way of life” (Smith 2004: 39) similar to others like Woody Guthrie, Hank Williams, Loretta Lynn, etc. The lifestyle, the philosophy and the ambitions of youth at that period of time were reflected in her songs and performances, As the poster person for the peace and love movement, she advocated causes that were genuinely close to her heart. Thus, she was the “flower child” promoting a peace and love worldview. These elements are evident in her albums Clouds (1969) and Ladies of the Canyon (1970), which reflected the life of artists, stars, and hippies in Laurel Canyon, California. The songs incorporated well conceived meditations on love and loss, vanity and exploration of feelings and emotions. In these first few records, Mitchell was attempting to cope with her sudden fame, the loss of her child she had given up to adoption, “her first husband, and a succession of suitors and lovers with whom she struggled to reconcile her need for companionship with her fear of enclosure” (Henderson 2005: 92). There is joy but also sadness in the poetry, and the style appears slightly “folky”, being played on acoustic instruments. Conclusion This paper has highlighted the music of Joni Mitchell, and her album Blue released in 1971. The relationship between popular music and wider issues related to society, culture and politics was investigated. It was found that although popular music cannot change the course of politics or history to a significant extent, it can strengthen social causes such as Women’s Liberation, or anti-war campaigning by the Flower Children or hippies, thus impacting socio-cultural factors. The genre of Mitchell’s album Blue was examined. The evidence indicates that the album’s genre of confessional style of lyrics was integrated with a combination of three genres of music, consisting of jazz, rock and folk. The songs’ lyrical and musical creativity is considered to make it a classic among music albums, and its popularity has continued for decades following its release. Joni Mitchell rose to success as a renowned pop music star during the folk music boom in the 1960s. She was a prolific song writer and talented singer, among the first women in the profession; and worked hard to maintain her place in the male dominated music industry. Mitchell’s straightforwardness and honesty in expressing her innermost emotions gave her a place in the hearts of her listeners. The singer’s poetic lyrics, her feministic stand, and honest self-expression established her as a role model for following generations of music artistes, and she also became a youth icon embodying the causes they upheld. Joni Mitchell’s extensive musical work includes her contribution to the “flower children” culture of passive resistance and non-violence ideology. Additionally, Mitchell’s songs also promoted a shift in the social fabric to incorporate feminist perspectives of gender equality. Therefore, it is concluded that the long-lasting effects of her music are incalculable. . Bibliography Bego, M. (2005). Joni Mitchell. The United States of America: Taylor Trade Publications, University of Michigan. Creswell, T. (2006). 1001 Songs: The great songs of all time and the artists, stories and secrets behind them. New York: Da Capo Press. Echols, A. (2002). Shaky ground: The 60s and its aftershocks. The United States of America: Columbia University Press. Henderson, S. (2005). “All pink and clean and full of wonder?” Gendering Joni Mitchell, 1966-1974. Left History, 10 (2): pp.83-103. Pendle, K. (2001). Women and music. Edition 2. The United States of America: Indiana University Press. Rogers, J. 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