This image released by Magnolia Pictures shows Joan Baez in a scene from the documentary “Joan Baez: I Am a Noise.” (Albert Baez/Magnolia Pictures via AP)
Executive produced by Patti Smith, “Joan Baez I Am a Noise” begins with the artist digging through a large collection of notebooks, drawings, videotapes and recordings. She is excavating one of the most remarkable and notably political artistic careers in American history. A lifelong advocate for civil rights and a staunch, early opponent of the war in Vietnam (and later the war in Iraq), Baez has combined musical stardom with political outspokenness in ways that few have before or after her heyday. For people who grew up in the 1960s, Baez, who made her debut on Harvard Radio and in clubs in Boston and Cambridge in the late 1950s, was a powerful voice in more ways than one.
A tall, slender,…
