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Home , David Harris (protester), Joan Baez, Ring Them Bells

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Joan Baez (1941- ) Folksinger, Political Activist, and Woodstock Performer oan Chandos Baez was born on , 1941, in , . She was Jthe middle daughter of Albert Vinicio Baez, a prominent Mexican-American physicist who focused his talents on the worlds of edu- cation and medicine, and Joan Bridge Baez. In 1951 the Baez family moved to Baghdad, , where Albert spent a year establishing a new physics department at Baghdad University. In 1952 the family returned to California, settling in Palo Alto. Raised by her parents in the paci- fist Quaker faith, Joan became politically aware at an early age. By the time Joan graduated from in 1958, she had already established herself as a young woman who was unafraid to speak out on perceived injustices and problems in American society.

A New Folk Sensation Baez also enjoyed music, and by her late teens she could often be found strumming a guitar and singing folk songs. In 1958 her father took a teaching post at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Baez sud- denly found herself living in Cambridge, Massachusetts, one of America’s hottest incubators of . She quickly became a fixture on stage at cof- feehouses and folk clubs around Cambridge and . Baez also enrolled at , but she dropped out after several weeks to focus on her musi- cal dreams. Baez’s beautiful voice and charismatic stage presence impressed folk fans and musicians alike. Nationally known folk artist Bob was so impressed with Baez that he invited her to perform with him at a folk festival that was being held in Newport, Rhode Island, in July 1959. The inaugural —which quickly became the leading concert event in the folk music world—introduced Baez to a much larger audience. Baez’s unbilled performance at Newport established her as a new star; when she appeared at Newport again one year later, she was one of the event’s headliners.

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Defining Moments: Woodstock

Baez’s star continued to rise throughout the early . In 1960 she released the first of fourteen records on the Vanguard label, where she stayed until 1971. These early recordings further burnished her reputation as a talented and sensitive interpreter of traditional folk ballads and songs written by other up-and-coming artists. The most prominent of these new folksingers was —or “Bobby,” as Baez affectionately called him. Baez and Dylan became romantically involved in late 1962, around the same time that Dylan’s own career began to take off. They performed together on several occasions, and their songs and statements in support of the made them the unofficial “first couple” of early 1960s protest music. Baez sang “We Shall Over- come” at the famous 1963 March on Washington led by Martin Luther King Jr., with whom the singer established a friendship. Baez’s romantic relationship with Dylan continued on and off until 1965, by which time Dylan had become one of the biggest stars in the rock-and-roll universe. Around this same time, Baez became increasingly involved in protest actions against the . Her passion for civil rights remained strong as well, and in March 1965 she participated in the famous Selma-to-Montgomery voting rights march. Over the next several years Baez also performed benefit con- certs to raise money for causes ranging from migrant farmworker rights to cam- paigns to outlaw the death penalty. On a few occasions, Baez’s political activism landed her in legal trouble. In she and more than 100 other demonstrators were arrested for unlawfully blocking a military induction center in Oakland, California. She served ten days in jail for that offense. After her release, she went right back to the same induction facility for another demonstration. This time her arrest resulted in a month-long jail stay.

Baez at Woodstock On March 26, 1968, Baez married , a prominent antiwar activist and military draft resister. In July 1969 Harris was sent to prison after being convicted of , a felony offense. He served twenty months before authorities released him. During Harris’s incarceration, Baez agreed to perform at the famous Woodstock Music and Art Fair, which was held August 15-17, 1969, in Bethel, a small farming community in upstate New York. Baez was the headliner on the first night of the festival. When she strode on stage with guitar in hand at one o’clock in the morning, she received a warm

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Biographies:

welcome from the huge throng of concertgoers. Baez opened by briefly telling the story of her husband’s recent legal troubles. The six-months-pregnant singer then launched into a set of well-known folk and gospel standards, including “” and “Swing Low Sweet Chariot,” as well as a cover of Dylan’s “.” Baez closed the first night’s music with a beauti- ful version of “,” which had become the anthem of the civil rights movement. “She was the queen,” said festival coordinator John Morris. “Everybody loved her. I mean, I was totally in love with her.… She was the per- fect person to end it on because everybody was wearing down that first night.… She was the lullaby so that they could make it through that night.”1 Like many other people who performed at Woodstock, Baez was stunned by the size of the crowd and how concertgoers persevered through a weekend of storms, heat, bad drugs, and overwhelmed toilet facilities. “It was three extra- ordinary days of rain and music,” she wrote in a 1987 memoir. “I sang in the middle of the night. I just stood up there in front of the residents of the gold- en city who were sleeping in the mud and each other’s arms, and I gave them what I could at the time. And they accepted my songs. It was a humbling moment, in spite of everything. I’d never sung to a city before.”2

A Lifetime of Music and Advocacy Baez gave birth to Gabriel Earl Harris in December 1969. Gabriel would grow up to become a musician himself. He has even been the drummer in his mother’s touring band. David Harris was released from prison in March 1971. He and Baez were reunited, but the marriage lasted for only two more years before ending in divorce. Baez’s stature as a folk music icon gradually faded after Woodstock, although she continued to release highly acclaimed albums such as Diamonds and Rust (1975) and (1995). Over the course of her career, in fact, Baez has released over thirty albums containing her interpretations of songs by such diverse artists as , , , , , , and . Baez also continues to perform in concert—often in support of efforts to raise funds for social and political causes that are close to her heart. In 2007 she received a Grammy Life- time Achievement Award for her rich body of musical work. Since the 1960s, though, Baez has arguably become best known for her political activism. Over the years she has lent her voice to a wide range of caus-

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es around the world, including women’s rights, civil rights, antipoverty, gay rights, and antinuclear campaigns. In 2011 the human rights organization paid tribute to her decades of activism by establishing the Amnesty International Joan Baez Award for Outstanding Inspirational Ser- vice in the Global Fight for Human Rights. The award is intended to recognize musicians, filmmakers, painters, and other artists who devote their talents to the cause of human rights. Sources: Baez, Joan. And a Voice to Sing With: A Memoir. New York: Summit Books, 1987. Baez, Joan. Daybreak—An Intimate Journal. New York: Dial Press, 1968. “Biography,” JoanBaez.com, n.d. Retrieved from http://www.joanbaez.com/officialbio08.html. http:// www.joanbaez.com/officialbio08.html. Hajdu, David. : The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Fariña, and Richard Fariña. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001.

Notes 1 Quoted in Fornatale, Pete. Back to the Garden: The Story of Woodstock. New York: Touchstone, 2009, pp. 91-92, 98. 2 Baez, Joan. And a Voice to Sing With: A Memoir. New York: Summit Books, 1987, p. 165.

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