Tickets and Conscience

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Today I want to put two names in the same frame—Joan Baez and Taylor Swift—not because they sound alike or have the same values but because they tell us how the culture around music, fandom, and accessibility to their shows have changed in less than one lifetime.

Same art form. Very different worlds.

This episode is about those two worlds.

No boxing match.
No “who’s better.”

Just what it means that one night with Baez cost you five dollars, and one night with Swift might cost someone else a small fortune.

In one: Joan Baez at Catholic University—five dollars a ticket. A guitar, a voice that sounds like it dropped in from a kinder universe, and the feeling that history, morality, and music are all sitting beside you.

In the other: Taylor Swift in a sold-out stadium—tens of thousands of phones glowing, a three-hour epic of costume changes and choreography, and ticket prices that can look like a month’s rent.

Before I go any further, a brief portrait of Joan Baez - she was born January 9, 1941, in Staten Island, New York and raised in a Quaker family with a strong social conscience. She emerged at the end of the 1950s folk revival, her pure, ringing vibrato and unadorned guitar style making traditional ballads and spirituals feel both ancient and immediate. Her breakthrough came with performances at the Newport Folk Festival (1959–60) and early albums that brought folk music—and later protest music—to a mass young audience.

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