Forum From the Archives: Music Critic Ann Powers on ‘Traveling’ on Singer-Songwriter Joni Mitchell’s Path

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KQED

News, Politics, News Commentary

4.2 • 726 Ratings

🗓️ 2 September 2024

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When Ann Powers began to draft her expansive new biography of Laurel Canyon music legend Joni Mitchell, she says that “certain subjects emerged: childhood as an imaginary terrain where singer-songwriters could express their ideals and idiosyncrasies; sadness as a complicated form of women’s liberation; side roads and retreats as the secret sources of an artist’s strengths. And traveling, always traveling.” Powers’ book charts Mitchell’s influences, collaborators and milieu, weaving in reflections on the broader politics and trends of each decade during Mitchell’s career. It grapples with the sexism of Laurel Canyon’s heyday and Mitchell being labeled a “confessional” artist, as well as Mitchell’s own complicated relationship with feminism and with being the only woman at the table. We talk to Powers about Joni Mitchell’s life and art and hear how Mitchell has affected you. Powers’ new book is “Traveling: On the Path of Joni Mitchell.” Guests: Ann Powers, music critic and correspondent, NPR Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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0:00.0	Support for Forum comes from Rancho La Puerta, a wellness resort on 4,000 acres in the mountains of Baja, California, just 45 minutes from San Diego.
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0:27.6	Greetings, boomtown.
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0:43.9	From KQED.
0:48.9	You know,
0:50.2	you know, and you know, From KQBD in San Francisco, I'm Mina Kim. Coming up on forum, music critic and power prefers underdogs.
1:08.3	So when an editor approached her to write about the celebrated, idealized,
1:12.0	and beloved Joni Mitchell, she paused, since her feelings about Mitchell and her music were,
1:17.0	as Powers writes, more abstract than ardent. But there was something Powers heard and felt in Mitchell's
1:23.1	music that made her wonder if she could uncover something new and closer to who Mitchell really is.
1:28.7	The result is Powers' biography called Traveling on the Path of Joni Mitchell.
1:33.9	We listened back to our June conversation. Join us on Forum.
1:37.3	Music Sitting in a park in Paris, Sitting in a park in Paris,
	...

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