Joan Baez
Joan Baez
Joan Baezis an American folk singer, songwriter, musician, and activist whose contemporary folk music often includes songs of protest or social justice. Baez has performed publicly for over 55 years, releasing over 30 albums. Fluent in Spanish as well as in English, she has also recorded songs in at least six other languages. She is regarded as a folk singer, although her music has diversified since the counterculture days of the 1960s and now encompasses everything from folk rock and...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionMusician
Date of Birth9 January 1941
CountryUnited States of America
Sometimes I think that it is enough to say that if we don't sit down and shut up once in a while we'll lose our minds even earlier than we had expected. Noise is an imposition on sanity, and we live in very noisy times.
Back then I was still listening to rhythm and blues, and my aunt took me to see a Pete Seeger concert. And it gelled. He made all the sense in the world to me. I got addicted to his albums, and then Belafonte and Odetta - they were the people who seemed to fuse things that were important to me into music. I think Pete the most because he did what he did to the point where he took those enormous risks and then paid for them.
I don't think of myself as a symbol of the sixties, but I do think of myself as a symbol of following through on your beliefs.
I think the question that nobody wanted to deal with is the question they're posing: did my kid die in vain? Because the answer is too awful.
I think I would have had an easier time of it if I had had training much earlier. Because when I got to the training, it was in my late 30s and I already probably had every bad habit a singer could have. In fact, it still goes on. It's un-training those habits and retraining new ones - the breathing, the relaxation, the tongue, the lungs, the everything.
When I was 16, the guest speaker was King. And I was completely overwhelmed because I had been studying nonviolence, talking about it, reading about it, but here it was happening, here it was people boycotting the buses and people on the streets and taking risks, which I think was the key.
I was writing "Diamonds and Rust' and it had nothing to do with what it turned out to be. I don't remember what it is, but I think I was writing a song. It was literally interrupted by a phone call, and it just took another curve and it came out to be what it was.
I think music has the power to transform people, and in doing so, it has the power to transform situations - some large and some small.
I spend a lot of time with Buddhists. I'm not a Buddhist, but their relationship with death interests me.
I've never had a humble opinion in my life. If you're going to have one, why bother to be humble about it?
Dylan made it pretty clear he didn't want to do all that other stuff,
I think Cindy and the women have impeccable credentials -- no matter how hard people try to slander and assassinate their personalities, it is impeccable credentials. I think they simply can't be not listened to.
You can even hear me go flat in places, ... It's all over that recording. The audience was in a dark depression. We didn't even include all of their responses, as you might imagine.
I thought it was monumentally well run and I had a marvelous time playing it.