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

In her new book Traveling: On the Path of Joni Mitchell, veteran music journalist Ann Powers takes a deep look at the career of the iconic Canadian singer-songwriter.

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.

But she also spends a fair bit of time looking at another, less talked about part of Mitchell's career that's much weirder and much uglier: her repeated use of blackface in the late 1970s and early '80s.

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.

Elamin: 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. She was really influenced by Bitches Brew, the Miles Davis record. But this is where maybe the most disturbing part of Joni's career starts to surface. I know you struggled to write about Art Nouveau. Can you explain who Art is?

Ann: Art is Joni's muse and self-created inner self. That's a weird way to say it, but she long had said she lived for her art and art was her companion. Well, Joni loves wordplay and eventually art, with a small "a" becomes Art, a person. 

This is how it happened: in the mid '70s, Leland Sklar — the bass player — was having a Halloween party, and Joni didn't have a costume. She was walking down the road in Hollywood, and walks by a man who gives her like a "Hey, sister, you're lookin' good," thing. He's a Black man, and she claimed to have felt his spirit enter her, or she felt inspired by him. [She] went into a costume shop, figured "I'm going to dress like this man," and that included brown makeup that she applied to her face. She bought an afro wig. She bought a fedora … and the legend, which I find completely unbelievable, is that no one at this party recognized her [because] she was so convincing in this costume.

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 Don Juan's Reckless Daughter, 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. 

Art Nouveau appears again, briefly, in the concert film Shadows and Light. And then again in a short film, she made called The Black Cat in the Black Mouse Socks. So she keeps this figure alive, right? No one around her questions her. Very few critics even question her. And although the Art Nouveau costume is retired, she continued to talk about her connection with Black men.

Elamin: Like, partly spiritually, yes?

Ann: Yes, and even going so far as to say in a much later interview that a dentist had told her she had the teeth of a Black man. This is something that people have confronted, but usually just say, "Oh, it was the times." In my chapter, I try to say we need to face this head-on, and face the fact that our heroes — and someone who collaborated with many Black musicians and was quite a champion of making music across racial [lines], and every line — felt she could do this.

Elamin: You talked about how difficult and strange this chapter was to write for you, [and] as you were trying to work through this, you spoke with a professor named Miles Grier about facing this part of her history. What did he say that helped you write this chapter? 

Ann: I had read a piece that Miles had written years before. He was the first scholar who alerted me to this. You know, it's amazing, people don't know about this chapter in her life. 

Elamin: I didn't 'til I read your book! 

Ann: It's so wild. It was right there in plain sight, and yet people don't know. So I saw Miles present this paper, which you can find online. His thoughts on both her motivations and how that sits in the world were really definitive, and I didn't want to just paraphrase him. I wanted to have a dialogue.… [There are] two important points, he makes: one — and other scholars have made this point, too — is that Joni was kind of showing up her white male companions and saying "Look, you're putting me in this position, a marginalized position, similar to Black men."  But also, "I'm feeling objectified. I'm feeling like I have to pimp myself, as it were, to be realized as an artist. And by inhabiting this costume, I'm showing that in a really cartoonish way." So that's one thing. 

But another thing Miles said, that I think is so important, is … this symbolic transgression —  that does matter, and we have to talk about it — but ultimately, he wanted me to think about who is doing material work, and helping people materially, and who is actually uplifting Black collaborators. And he says Joni was, but let's talk about Bonnie Raitt, who supported people like Ruth Brown. Let's talk about some of these other artists who were really in there and making sure the economics were fair. I just wanted to have this dialogue, not foreground my voice, but to show that we can only move forward in dialogue across these lines. And also just because he has such great insights.

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Interview with Ann Powers produced by Jane van Koeverden.