The voice that gives voice : female folk revival singers around 1968

This chapter explores Folk Music Revival, a movement born in many countries during the 1960s when vocal icons became spokespeople for particular local musical cultures. It was also influenced by ideological motivation such as socio-economic egalitarianism, pacifism and Third-Worldism. Among American singers, a pivotal female voice had a significant role, that of Joan Baez who had a great influence everywhere in the world and also in Italy. In this country, the Folk Revival was dominated by charismatic women who were experts in their local rural or regional repertoires, such as the Sicilian Rosa Balistreri - and ‘outsider’ singers and folk researchers inspired by these traditions, in particular Giovanna Marini who also influenced many other younger women. Their songs became a sort of ‘manifesto’ for political demands. This contribution focuses on the experiences of Baez, Marini, and Balistreri, three women with a very strong personality who expressed very different subjective aptitudes in their vocality, musicality, and performance style. The ideological motivation of these artists’ work led to aesthetic empowerment of the female voice, a ‘voice that gives voice’, both in the linguistic sense through the social and/or political meaning of the lyrics, and in a stylistic sense through the resumption or re-invention of particular elements of rural origin.