Back to the Future in Newport

A sea change of sorts is taking place for the 2009 Newport, RI Folk and Jazz Festivals with respect to the fact that newly minted corporate sponsors have pulled out (JVC sponsored the Jazz Festival, while Dunkin' Donuts sponsored the Folk Festival) to be replaced by the venerable George Wein, who started the two events. Ironically, besides returning to the original promoter, both venues are bringing legendary talent back to Rhode Island.

Headlining the Folk Festival from 7/31/09-8/2/09 for its 50th anniversary are four giants of the folk world. Pete Seeger returns to the concert he helped to create, underscoring his lifelong commitment to change the world for the better through his music. Joan Baez, Judy Collins and Arlo Guthrie will join Seeger in a nod to the Festival's traditions, evoking the earnest, unjaded quality of the protest movements that characterized the early 1960s, the forced complacency of the white middle class in the 50s fractured by racism, sexism and the other institutional barriers which the Boomers decided to decimate. The "pure" folk music of these particular artists was clean and respectful, suggesting that the need for change could be lifted out of the isolated "beatnik" cultural pockets of the era and injected into the mainstream without the scruffiness and anarchism; it was OK to protest even if you were a product of the prep school/Ivy League circuit. The groundswell of change that would topple the Patti Pages, Doris Days and Frankie Laines who lulled America into the musical coma of the 1940s-50s started at the Newport Folk Festivals.

George Wein's Jazz Festival turns 55 with Tony Bennett, Etta James, The Dave Brubeck Quartet and Branford Marsalis topping the bill at Fort Adams from 8/7/09-8/8/09. Bennett has become an American icon, the top "brand" of jazz influenced vocalists, his mellow phrasing and rich voice instantly recognizable. I don't think I've ever heard another blues/jazz singer who can infuse lyrics with more power than Etta James. She is able to mutate a song into a rich vocal tapestry, cajoling, demanding, lamenting and prying the mood out of the melody. Dave Brubeck looks like the quintessential 1950s geek, bespectacled, short-haired,well dressed and well spoken , the most unlikely portrait of a musical innovator. Yet he and Paul Desmond among others lifted jazz out of the inner city and dropped it in the nation's living rooms, a bridge between black music and the white middle class, similar in a way to the rise of Elvis Presley. Branford Marsalis brings a rich New Orleans traditional background to blend the past with the present, personalizing the style to insure it survives the 21st Century.

The overwhelming sense of irony is reflected in the Folk Festival lineup. Although the "folkies" have been pushed aside by age and their "quaint" form of protest music, the recent economic and social upheavals have revived some of that sentiment. You'd have to go to to Fort Adams in Newport this summer to see if that's true, if the quintessential "old" has become new again.