Joan Baez

HH Priya Nathji’s post on Face book on Joan Baez –

MY TRYST WITH JOAN BAEZ

When I was a student at Harvard I knew very little about American folk music. Then one day when I was in my dormitory at Conant Hall, Harvard, I switched on a small transistor radio I had. And there was someone singing. It was a voice that was so

melodious, so emotionally moving and so divine that it touched my heart so that tears began rolling down my cheeks.

I asked my room mate, "Who was that singer?"

And he told me it was Joan Baez, a popular folk song singer in the US. I was so touched by her voice that I purchased her album. Soon Joan Baez was in the news. She was for peace in the world and fought for peace. She opposed America's war on Vietnam and protested. She was so brave that she took on the government and refused to pay Taxes to the Government which she thought was supporting an unjust cause. She underwent sever penalties and arrests but stuck to her resolve.

Came the summer that year and I was teaching Summer School Physics to Freshmen who were on their way to becoming doctors. My senior teacher was Dr. Albert V. Baez.

One day when we were sitting together "over a cup of coffee" I casually asked him whether he knew of the famous singer Joan Baez and whether he was related to her.

To my great astonishment he said: " I am the father of Joan Baez!"

I told him how much I admired her singing, her soulful voice, and golden heart and brave spirit, and how I wished I could meet her one day!

One day I read in the newspapers that Joan Baez was in Boston and Cambridge. She was mobbed by thronging milling crowds of fans in the thousands. It was impossible for anyone to get close to her.

When Dr. Baez and I were at the blackboard in the Physics Lecture Hall, quite suddenly I heard Dr. Baez say to me,

"Priya, meet my daughter, Joan!"

A young girl stood before me, her hair tied in a bun, and dark glasses on her eyes. (so that no one would recognise her as she was a celebrity) It was Joan Baez! I could hardly say anything, except, "It is so nice to meet you, I have always been a great fan of yours!"

She smiled and made a slight polite and humble bow, and within seconds had left the lecture hall. Her father had called her to the class especially to meet me!!

The large gathering of students never knew who had come and left to hall. It was the one and only time I met Joan Baez, and it is a memory that I have carried with me over the years when her voice kept on reverberating deep in the innermost recesses of my heart.

In memory of those days, the past, which is often like a home, I present this song of Joan Baez from You Tube,

"The Green Green Grass of Home." (Please click on the link - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQhKqlOccHE&feature=share)

Years later she still sounds the same. For me she is still the greatest singer . There will never be another Joan Baez again.

{There are two photographs of Joen Baez. One is taken on 1963. About the time when HH Priya Nathji met her and other is her recent photograph taken in a concert two years back.}

About Joan Baez - 

Joan Chandos Baez  was born in Staten Island on January 9, 1941. Because of her father Albert V. Baez  work in health care and with UNESCO, the family moved many times, living in towns across the U.S, as well as in England, France, Switzerland, Spain, Canada, and the Middle East, including Iraq, where they were in 1951. Joan became involved with a variety of social causes early in her career, including civil rights and non-violence. Social justice, she stated in the PBS series American Masters, is the true core of life, looming larger than music.'

In 1958, her father accepted a faculty position at MIT, and moved his family to Massachusetts. At that time, it was within the center of the up-and-coming folk-music scene, and Baez began walking near home in Boston and nearby Cambridge. She also performed in clubs, and attended Boston University for about six weeks.[13] In 1958, at the Club 47 in Cambridge, she gave her first concert. When designing the poster for the performance, Baez considered changing her performing name to either Rachel Sandperl, the surname of her long-time mentor, Ira Sandperl or Maria from the song "They Call the Wind Maria". She later opted against it, fearing that people would accuse her of changing her last name because it was Spanish. The audience consisted of her parents, her sister Mimi, and a small group of friends to a total of eight patrons. She was paid ten dollars. Baez was later asked back and began performing twice a week for $25 per show.

Baez began her career performing in coffeehouses in Boston and Cambridge, and rose to fame as an unbilled performer at the 1959 Newport Folk Festival. She began her recording career in 1960, and achieved immediate success. Her first three albums, Joan Baez, Joan Baez, Vol. 2, and Joan Baez in Concert all achieved gold record status, and stayed on the charts of hit albums for two years.

Her true professional career began at that 1959 Newport Folk Festival; following that appearance, she recorded her first album for Vanguard, Joan Baez (1960), produced by Fred Hellerman of The Weavers, who produced many albums by folk artists.

 Her second release, Joan Baez, Vol. 2 (1961) went "gold", as did Joan Baez in Concert, Part 1 (1962) and Joan Baez in Concert, Part 2 (1963). Like its immediate predecessor, Joan Baez, Vol. 2 contained strictly traditional material.

Baez's distinctive vocal style and political activism had a significant impact on popular music. She was one of the first musicians to use her popularity as a vehicle for social protest, singing and marching for human rights and peace. Baez came to be considered the "most accomplished interpretive folksinger/songwriter of the 1960s." Her appeal extended far beyond the folk-music audience. Baez has a distinctive vocal style, with a strong vibrato. Her recordings include many topical songs and material dealing with social issues.

Baez has had a popular hit song with "Diamonds & Rust" and hit covers of Phil Ochs's "There but for Fortune" and The Band's "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down". Other songs associated with Baez include "Farewell, Angelina", "Love Is Just a Four-Letter Word", "Joe Hill", "Sweet Sir Galahad" and "We Shall Overcome". She performed three of the songs at the 1969 Woodstock Festival, helped to bring the songs of Bob Dylan to national prominence, and has displayed a lifelong commitment to political and social activism in the fields of nonviolence, civil rights, human rights and the environment. Baez has performed publicly for over 53 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 1960s, encompassing everything from folk rock and pop to country and gospel music. Although a songwriter herself, Baez is generally regarded as an interpreter of other people's work, having recorded songs by The Allman Brothers Band, The Beatles, Jackson Browne, Bob Dylan, Violeta Parra, Woody Guthrie, The Rolling Stones, Pete Seeger, Paul Simon, Stevie Wonder, Leonard Cohen, and many others. In recent years, she has found success interpreting songs of modern songwriters such as Ryan Adams, Josh Ritter, Steve Earle and Natalie Merchant.

Joan Baez wrote and performed "The Story of Bangladesh" at the Concert for Bangladesh, Madison Square Garden in 1971. This song was based on the Pakistan Army crackdown on unarmed sleeping Bengali students at Dhaka University on March 25, 1971, which ignited the prolonged nine-month Bangladesh Liberation War. The song was later entitled "The Song of Bangladesh" and released in a 1972 album from Chandos Music.

In 1980, Baez was given honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degrees by Antioch University and Rutgers University for her political activism and the "universality of her music". In 1983, she appeared on the Grammy Awards, performing Dylan's anthemic "Blowin' in the Wind", a song she first performed twenty years earlier. Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Carlos Santana, performing in May 1984, Hamburg.

Baez also played a significant role in the 1985 Live Aid concert for African famine relief, opening the U.S. segment of the show in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She has toured on behalf of many other causes, including Amnesty International's 1986 A Conspiracy of Hope tour and a guest spot on their subsequent Human Rights Now! tour.

On August 2, 2009, Baez played at the 50th Newport Folk Festival, which also marked the 50th anniversary of her breakthrough performance at the first festival. On October 14, 2009, PBS aired an episode of its documentary series, American Masters, entitled, Joan Baez: How Sweet the Sound. It was produced and directed by Mary Wharton.

Baez became more vocal about her disagreement with the Vietnam War. In 1964, she publicly endorsed resisting taxes by withholding sixty percent of her 1963 income taxes. In 1964, she founded the Institute for the Study of Nonviolence (along with her mentor Sandperl) and encouraged draft resistance at her concerts.

Baez was arrested twice in 1967 for blocking the entrance of the Armed Forces Induction Center in Oakland, California and spent over a month in jail. In October 1967, Baez, her mother, and nearly 70 other women were arrested at the Oakland, California, Armed Forces Induction Center for blocking the doorways of the building to prevent entrance by young inductees, and in support of young men who refused military induction. They were incarcerated in the Santa Rita Jail, and it was here that Baez met David Harris, who was kept on the men's side but who still managed to visit with Baez regularly.  The two formed a close bond upon their release and Baez moved into his draft-resistance commune in the hills above Stanford, California. The pair had known each other for three months when they decided to wed. Baez and Harris married each other in New York City on March 26, 1968. Their son, Gabriel, was born in December 1969. But the relationship began to dissolve and the couple divorced amicably in 1973. They shared custody of Gabriel, who primarily lived with Baez. Explaining the split, Baez wrote in her autobiography, "I am made to live alone." Baez and Harris remained on friendly terms throughout the years; they reunited on-camera for the 2009 American Masters documentary for PBS. As of 2012, she has not remarried. Their son Gabriel is a drummer and occasionally tours with his mother.

Now Baez is a resident of Woodside, California, and lives with her mother in a house that has a backyard tree house in which she spends a good deal of time meditating, writing, and "being close to nature."