When you first see Joan Baez in her new hat, you might not recognize her. Urban, contemporary, and glamorous, the look is a clear departure from the street clothes Baez wore when she made her musical debut at the Newport Folk Festival 31 years ago.

Back then, Baez believed that a commercial approach to her career would poison her radical political beliefs and conflict with her Quaker upbringing. Today, with no desire or plan to retire, Baez knows she has to wear a pretty jazzy hat to appeal to contemporary audiences, and at 50, she’s willing to take a few risks, break a few rules in order to do that.

“I don’t particularly want to retire right now,” said Baez, who will sing at the Newport Folk Festival again in August. “If I don’t make a very serious effort, most of the people who I’ve encountered in my lifetime will think I’m a nice, interesting person who has done a lot of things and that my career was in the `60s.

“I’m well-respected by most people for doing what I thought was right, whether they liked it or not. But I’m not ready to glide quietly into the backdrop. I have much more to offer and I think my voice is in some ways better than it’s ever been.”

Accompanying Baez’s career decision is a general lightening of her spirit and dedication to having more fun with her image and lifestyle. She credited some of the change to a love relationship, but many of the differences, she said, are due to recent changes in Eastern Europe.

Specifically, Baez was moved when she read that Czechoslovakian president Vaclav Havel called her 1989 visit to Bratislava a pivotal event in the history of his country.

“I decided to take that seriously,” said Baez, “and think that some of the things I did were worthwhile and work on my music a while.,”

Most remember Baez for her unfailing commitment to non-violence during the 1960s and 1970s. During those years, she went to jail for civil disobediencies, marched with Martin Luther King, traveled to Vietnam, and refused to pay taxes that would reinforce defense spending.

Unlike many, however, Baez does not reflect upon that era with nostalgia.

“Quite honestly, I didn’t have any fun then. I was much too serious, much too rigid. It kept the music coming…but it didn’t give me a chance to really come alive and enjoy myself much until pretty recently.”

She did a photo session, for instance, during which she wore Victoria’s Secret lingerie and placed a rose in her mouth. When Baez’s mother saw the photos in a magazine, she felt her daughter was betraying fans and jeopardizing a well-established career.

“I was assuming that there was too much shoulder showing,” said Baez, “but in the end it turned out that it was the expression on my face. (It) was slightly flirtatious and it wasn’t the mother earth. I wasn’t out with a bunch of refugees and my mother thought it was the end of the earth.”

Even though the newness of the image makes Baez feel uncomfortable at times, she is glad she did the photo session because it gives expression to a playful side of her that has always been hidden from the public. “I’ve always been afraid that if I showed that,” she said, “people would think I wasn’t serious about my politics.”

Baez said she hasn’t abandoned her beliefs about non-violence and social justice which, she insists, are the same now as they were when she was 13. If she wants to continue her musical career, however, she believes she must embrace her music and politics with equal fervor.

“I usually felt it was part of my obligation to be ready to respond to anything in any field,” said Baez. “And now I’m taking seriously the issue of revolutionary change within me.”

If only peripherally, Baez does keep abreast of current events both at home and abroad. One of her favorite news clips is from an Italian newspaper that called Traci Chapman her black daughter.

“I was very honored,” she said with a laugh.

It may well be, however, that Chapman and the new wave of female folkies are the inheritors of the hat Baez used to wear.

The Aug. 4 Joan Baez concert at the Maine Center for the Arts