How should we think about Joni Mitchell's blackface period?

  • 📰 CBC
  • ⏱ Reading Time:
  • 45 sec. here
  • 2 min. at publisher
  • 📊 Quality Score:
  • News: 21%
  • Publisher: 63%

Entertainment Entertainment Headlines News

Entertainment Entertainment Latest News,Entertainment Entertainment Headlines

For more than half a century, Joni Mitchell has stood out as one of the most distinctive voices in Canadian music.

In her new Joni Mitchell bio, veteran music journalist Ann Powers covers one of the uglier chapters of the singer’s career. Here’s how she handled it. Powers looks at things like how Mitchell broke through as a woman in the sexist boys' club that was L.A.'s Laurel Canyon music scene, and how — later in her career — she came to be seen as a role model and inspiration for subsequent generations of women artists.

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud on your favourite podcast player.What I appreciated is that you spent quite a bit of time with a chapter in Joni's career that a lot of people don't want to talk about. Or don't want to think about? I'll give the context here: Joni started experimenting with jazz in the '70s.

One costume, that's a silly, terrible error, and there is a photograph documenting it. However, she didn't leave it at that. She was so delighted in her charade that she then donned the costume again for the cover of her album, on which she also appears on the back cover with her head superimposed on the body of a First Nations person in full regalia. So she's definitely playing with fire, the fire of identity here.

 

Thank you for your comment. Your comment will be published after being reviewed.
Please try again later.
We have summarized this news so that you can read it quickly. If you are interested in the news, you can read the full text here. Read more:

 /  🏆 32. in ENTERTAİNMENT

Entertainment Entertainment Latest News, Entertainment Entertainment Headlines

Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.

Joni Mitchell's style 'found its roots in Calgary,' biography author Ann Powers saysJoni Mitchell's travels – musically and literally – became a fitting metaphor for Ann Powers' new biography of the Canadian singer/songwriter. And her year in Calgary in the 1960s was a big part of Mitchell's development.
Source: CTVCalgary - 🏆 26. / 68 Read more »