No overview of the festival’s illustrious history is complete without mention of the so-called “Electric Dylan controversy”. The day Bob Dylan rocked Newport came on Sunday July 25, 1965. Dylan was at the time one of the cutting-edge folk singers in the entire USA and his set at Newport was hugely anticipated. That he chose to go electric came as a complete surprise to the audience, who responded (predictably, you could say) with rejection and boos, for the most part. Folk music wasn’t for plugging in, most seemed to feel, but Dylan had sewn a seed and opened eyes. Folk was never the same again after the event. Indeed the event itself was rendered something of a spectacle during its own enactment thanks to Dylan’s reaction to the crowd’s negative reaction to him. It was a chain resonance that ended when Dylan ordered his group, the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, off stage with the words, “Let’s go, man. That’s all”. Of course, Dylan was coaxed back onstage by another Newport legend, Joan Baez, to play some of his more conventional material. But nobody ever forgot what happened when Dylan went electric, and the rest is history.

Joan Baez is a name it is impossible to ignore when we discuss folk music and its association with politics. Born in New York but finding an initial platform in the academic haunts of Cambridge, Masachusetts, Baez quickly rose to prominence with her original brand of topical jabs at various aspects of society’s ills. She hit the 1959 Newport Folk Festival as an unbilled act, but everyone noticed the girl with the wit and punch. That was the first ever Newport Folk Festival and it is fitting that Baez was present, for she has always been at the fore of new movements and ideas. In particular, she has championed the cause of non-violence, but it was her storming appearance at Newport that earned her the recognition she deserved. She recorded an eponymously-titled album after Newport, and was to spearhead the hippie movement due to being so far ahead of the rest of the pack. It was Baez who discovered Bob Dylan and presented him to the world by covering his material and inviting him onstage to accompany her. Baez wish that Dylan would become as political as she was never realized, though in her old age Baez has confessed that if she had it all to do again, she’d never have pressured Dylan to be anything other than what he was.

Another big Newport Folk Festival name is Pete Seeger. Seeger captures and expresses the “anti-establishment” mood of folk music in general. Seeger is one of folk music’s elder statesmen, and he was also active in bigging up Bob Dylan. Partly due to his position on the Board of Directors of the Newport Folk Festival. Rumor had it that Seeger had been on of the main objectors to Dylan’s “electric” shocker in 1965, but Seeger these days says that Dylan’s plugged in sets are “absolutely great”. Today, Seeger is a 91-year old folk icon – and it amazing to think he was already 40 years old when that first ever Newport Folk festival took place in 1959!

A newer arrival on the Newport scene is Billy Bragg. Bragg, a clear musical descendant of Seeger, played the 50th Newport Festival and was quite the comedian, cracking a series of political jokes between his covers of various Wilco and others. In fact, Bragg worked with Wilco and Nancy Merchant on a project to record some of Woody Guthrie’s lyrics. The project was conceived by Guthrie’s daughter, Nora, and was released as Mermaid Avenue in 1998, and Mermaid Avenue II in 2000.

Other bands and artists to perform at Newport include The Decemberists, Josh Ritter, Campbell Brothers, Kate Taylor and Willy Mason. Newport is changing, there’s no doubt about that, but it is changing with the times. Make sure you have your Newport Folk Festival 2010 tickets soon, because this year is destined to sell out faster than ever.