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.

Genres

Cast

Johnny Cash

Self (archive footage)

Bob Dylan

Self (archive footage)

Joan Baez

Self (archive footage)

Pete Seeger

Self (archive footage)

John Lee Hooker

Self (archive footage)

Mimi Fariña

Self (archive footage)

Bill Monroe

Self (archive footage)

Judy Collins

Self (archive footage)

Howlin' Wolf

Self (archive footage)