FEATURE FILM

Newport and the Great Folk Dream

Powerful music leaps from the air and can change the actual world. At the Newport Folk Festivals in the early 1960s, the molecules were electric with rebellion and democracy, with anger and hope. Musicians drove that change — Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and Pete Seeger but also banjo players from coal country, remote Georgia gospel artists, rural Canadian fishermen, and the opportunities created for the urban kids to mingle with those they’d not ordinarily encounter.