Joan Baez (placeholder)

Folk singer, songwriter, political activist


Joan Baez was born on Staten Island, New York, to a Quaker family of Mexican, English and Scottish descent. Her father Albert Baez, a physicist, refused lucrative defense industry jobs, probably influencing Joan’s political activism in the American and international civil rights and peace movements of the 1960s to the present. The family, frequently having to move by reason of his work, lived in different towns across the United States, in France, Switzerland, Italy, and the Middle East, where they stayed in 1951. Baez, at the time only ten years old, was deeply influenced by the poverty and the inhuman treatment the local population in Baghdad suffered. In the late 1950s, Dr. Baez accepted a faculty position at MIT, and moved his family to the Boston area, at the time the center of the up-and-coming folk music scene, and Joan began performing locally in Boston/Cambridge area clubs, and attended Boston University. Her most noted venue was the Club 47 Mount Auburn, in Cambridge, where she performed twice a week for $20 per show. It was with other performers from the same club that she recorded her first album, Folksingers ‘Round Harvard Square.



Baez’ true professional career began at the 1959 Newport Folk Festival and she recorded “Joan Baez”, her first album for a major company, the following year on Vanguard Records. The collection of traditional folk ballads, blues and laments sung to her own guitar accompaniment sold moderately well. Her second release, Joan Baez, Vol. 2 in 1961 went gold, as did, Joan Baez in Concert, parts 1 and 2 (released in 1962 and 1963, respectively). From the early to mid-1960s, Baez emerged at the forefront of the American roots revival, where she introduced her audiences to the less prominent Bob Dylan (the two became romantically involved in late 1962, remaining together through early 1965), and was emulated by artists such as Joni Mitchell and Bonnie Raitt.



During this period, as the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights struggle in America both became more prominent issues, Baez focused more of her attention on both areas, until eventually her music and her political involvement became inseparable. Her performance of “We Shall Overcome” at Martin Luther King’s March on Washington permanently linked her with the anthem, and was frequently highly visible in civil rights marches. Her performance of “I dreamed I saw Joe Hill” is also anthological. She also became more vocal about her disagreement with the U.S. war in Vietnam, publicly disclosing that she was withholding sixty percent of her income taxes (as that was the figure commonly determined to fund the military), and encouraging draft resistance at her concerts. In 1965 she founded the Institute for the Study of Nonviolence.



MORE HERE:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_Baez