Joan Baez

Born January 9, 1941
Staten Island, New York

American folk singer, songwriter, and activist

Throughout her career Joan Baez has used her talent and fame as a folk singer to bring attention to social causes, including ending world hunger and gaining civil rights for African Americans. During the Vietnam War, she focused her energy on protesting U.S. involvement in the conflict. By the late 1960s Baez was a well-known and highly influential anti-war activist. Her music and her visible presence at demonstrations encouraged many young Americans to speak out against the war. "Her songs . . . helped mobilize young people to take an interest in the world around them for the first time," Jeffrey Heller wrote in Joan Baez: Singer with a Cause.

Develops social conscience as a child

Joan Chandos Baez was born on January 9, 1941, in Staten Island, New York. She was the second of three daughters born to Alberto Vinicio Baez, who had moved to the United States from Mexico as a boy, and Joan Bridge Baez. Throughout her childhood, her family always pronounced their last name "BICE." But years later, as Joan gained attention as a folk singer, the media mispronounced her name as "BY-ezz." She did not bother to correct the error, and that is how she is known today.

Joan's father held a doctoral degree in physics. He could have earned a lot of money designing bombs and other weapons for the U.S. government. But he believed that war was wrong, so he took a lower-paying job as a college professor instead. "We would never have all the fine and useless things little girls want when they are growing up," Baez said of her father's career decision in her memoir A Voice to Sing With. "Instead we would have a father with a clear conscience. Decency would be his legacy to us."

In 1951 Alberto Baez took a job with the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The job involved building a physics lab in Baghdad, Iraq. Joan and her family spent a year in Baghdad, where they saw terrible poverty and hunger for the first time. In her memoir Baez recalled seeing "people rooting for food in our family garbage pails, and legless children dragging themselves along the streets on cardboard . . . begging for money." Her year in Iraq helped her develop great sympathy for poor and hungry people around the world.

When the Baez family returned to the United States, they settled in California. Joan began expressing her social and political views in school, and they did not always make her popular with fellow students. At this time, the United States and the Soviet Union were involved in an intense rivalry known as the Cold War. Both nations competed to increase their military strength and to spread their political influence around the world. Many Americans became caught up in the Cold War and strongly supported the government's efforts to wipe out communism.

But Baez felt that the United States would never achieve world peace by trying to build more destructive weapons than the Soviet Union. In high school she staged a personal protest against the country's military buildup. One day, her teacher informed the class that the school was conducting an air-raid drill. The school would pretend that the United States was coming under attack from Soviet missiles. The students were supposed to leave school calmly and return home. But Baez knew from her father that if a real attack occurred, the students would never have enough time to make it home from school. So in protest she refused to leave the classroom. The next day, she was featured in an article in the local newspaper.

Also during her high school years, Baez attended a student conference sponsored by the Society of Friends religious group. Also known as the Quakers, this group has traditionally opposed war. The featured speaker at the conference was civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. (see entry). Baez strongly agreed with King's ideas about achieving social change through nonviolent protest.

Becomes a well-known folk singer

As a girl, Baez took piano lessons and enjoyed listening to classical music with her family. But it was not until high school that she began concentrating on music. After failing to make her school's glee club, she practiced singing during her spare time. She also learned to play a miniature guitar called a ukelele (pronounced u-ka-LAY-lee). Before long, she was entertaining fellow students in the courtyard at school, doing impressions of popular singers, and appearing in school talent shows.

In 1958 Baez and her family moved back east to Boston, Massachusetts. Baez started college at Boston University, but she dropped out after a year. She found that she would rather spend her time singing and playing the guitar in Boston coffee houses. Baez grew her hair long, wore colorful Mexican blouses, and often appeared barefoot on stage. She sang traditional folk songs of Europe and the United States, as well as original songs about problems in American society. She quickly developed a large following of fans in Boston. In 1959 she was invited to appear at the first annual Newport Folk Festival in Rhode Island. The following year, she recorded her first album, Joan Baez. It soon became the third most popular album in the United States.

As the popularity of folk music spread across the country, Baez became a symbol of the folk movement and the growing hippie culture. She even appeared on the cover of Time magazine. "In the book of my destiny the first page had been turned," she recalled. "This book could no longer be exchanged for any other."

While her popularity as a musician grew, Baez remained committed to the cause of social change. For example, she continued to support Martin Luther King, Jr., in his fight to gain equal rights and opportunities for African Americans. At this time, parts of the United States had laws that segregated (separated) people by race. White people and "colored" people were required to use separate restrooms, drinking fountains, schools, theaters, and restaurants. These laws, called Jim Crow laws, discriminated against blacks and placed them in an inferior position in society.

During a concert tour of southern states in 1962, Baez refused to perform anywhere that did not allow black people. She also appeared at several African American churches and sang "We Shall Overcome," which became a theme song of the civil rights movement. In 1963 Baez sang at the rally in Washington, D.C., where King gave his famous "I Have a Dream" speech.

Joins the antiwar movement

Throughout the early 1960s, the United States became more and more involved in the conflict in Vietnam. The Vietnam War pitted the Communist nation of North Vietnam and its secret allies, the South Vietnamese Communists known as the Viet Cong, against the U.S.-supported nation of South Vietnam. North Vietnam wanted to overthrow the South Vietnamese government and reunite the two countries under one Communist government. But U.S. government officials felt that a Communist government in Vietnam would increase the power of the Soviet Union and threaten the security of the United States. In the late 1950s and early 1960s the U.S. government sent money, weapons, and military advisors to help South Vietnam defend itself. In 1965 President Lyndon Johnson (see entry) sent American combat troops to join the fight on the side of South Vietnam.

But deepening U.S. involvement in the war failed to defeat the Communists. Instead, the war turned into a bloody stalemate. The American public became bitterly divided about how to proceed in Vietnam, and antiwar demonstrations took place across the country. Like many other Americans, Baez felt that the U.S. government's actions were wrong. She did not think that the United States should interfere with the reunification of Vietnam. Instead, she believed that the Vietnamese people should be allowed to decide their own future. As U.S. involvement increased to all-out war against North Vietnam, Baez joined the antiwar movement.

As one form of protest, Baez refused to pay 60 percent of her federal taxes. She chose this number because she estimated that 60 percent of the money the government received in taxes was used for military purposes. Baez knew that failing to pay taxes could result in severe financial penalties and even time in prison, but she wanted to make a statement. She did not want the U.S. government to use her money to pay for what she believed was an immoral war in Vietnam. The Internal Revenue Service (the government agency that collects taxes) eventually claimed her house, car, and concert earnings as a penalty for her unpaid taxes. Still, Baez continued her protest for ten years.

Baez also appeared on many television talk shows to share her views on U.S. involvement in Vietnam. She believed that she had a responsibility to use her celebrity to make a difference. "I must be ready not to die for something, but to live for it, which is really much harder," she explained in a letter to her parents in 1965. "I have a choice of things to do with my life. I think it is time to charge in head first. I want to start a peace movement." Toward that end, she founded the Institute for the Study of Nonviolence in California.

In 1967 Baez released one of her best-known albums,Joan. It included a mixture of traditional folk songs, antiwar songs, and versions of modern pop songs by artists like Paul Simon and the Beatles. Later that year, she was arrested at an antiwar demonstration that encouraged young men to refuse to be drafted into the U.S. military. While she was in jail, Baez met fellow antiwar activist David Harris. The two were married in March 1968. Just over a year later, Harris was sentenced to a term in prison for draft evasion.

In the summer of 1969 Baez performed at Woodstock—a weekend-long concert and party in upstate New York that attracted 250,000 fans. Her son, Gabriel, was born shortly afterwards. But her marriage broke up when her husband got out of prison. "We split up, when we did, because I couldn't breathe," she recalled, "and because I belonged alone, which is how I have been since then, with occasional interruptions."

Travels to Southeast Asia to witness the effects of the war

In 1972 Baez and several other American antiwar activists were invited to visit Hanoi, the capital of Communist North Vietnam. She agreed to go to Hanoi because she wanted to see how the North Vietnamese people were coping during the war. She made the trip even though some people criticized her decision and called her a traitor or a Communist. During her time in Hanoi, Baez was caught in a series of American bombing raids. She recorded many sounds of her experience, including planes flying overhead, air-raid sirens, bombs exploding, Vietnamese voices, songs, and even a church service. When she returned to the United States, she incorporated these sounds into an album of poetry and songs called Where Are You Now, My Son.

The U.S. government withdrew the last American troops from Vietnam in 1973. Two years later, North Vietnam captured the South Vietnamese capital of Saigon to win the war. After the war ended, many American musicians turned their focus away from songs of social protest and began focusing on their inner thoughts and feelings. As a result, Baez's folk songs seemed to fall behind the times. In 1975 she recorded a more upbeat album on the advice of her record company. This album, Diamonds and Rust, included covers of songs by Jackson Browne, Stevie Wonder, and the Allman Brothers.

Through the late 1970s Baez continued performing in concerts around the world to spread her message of peace and human rights. She also became active in the humanitarian organization Amnesty International and helped organize chapters in California. In 1979 Baez grew concerned about conditions in Vietnam and Southeast Asia. Vietnam's Communist government had put many of its political opponents in prison or sent them away to "reeducation" camps. In fact, conditions in Vietnam had become so bad that thousands of Vietnamese people fled the country as refugees. Baez wrote an open letter to the Vietnamese government, asking for an end to the repression (the denial of basic rights).

Later that year, Baez organized a trip to Southeast Asia. With a group of American reporters and photographers, she visited refugee camps in northern Thailand. She met with many refugees from Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos and heard stories about how they had been imprisoned and tortured by their countries' new Communist governments. Upon returning home, Baez formed a group called Humanitas to raise money for food and medical supplies for the refugees.

In the 1980s folk music came back into style, and Baez regained some of her popularity as a singer and performer. In 1985 she was selected to open Live Aid, a huge benefit concert event that attracted 90,000 spectators and a worldwide television audience. Live Aid eventually raised $70 million to fight world hunger. Baez continued to perform in the 1990s. Many people still consider her a symbol of how an individual can create social change. "I do think of myself as a symbol," she noted in her memoir, "of following through on your beliefs, using your talents to do so."

Sources

Baez, Joan. And a Voice to Sing With. New York: Summit Books, 1978.

Baez, Joan. Daybreak. New York: Dial Press, 1968.

Heller, Jeffrey. Joan Baez: Singer with a Cause. Chicago: Children's Press, 1991.

Loder, Kurt. "Joan Baez: The Rolling Stone Interview." Rolling Stone, April 14, 1983.

Robbins, Mary Susannah, ed. Against the Vietnam War: Writings by Activists. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1999.

Sager, Mike. "Joan Baez." Rolling Stone, November 15, 1987.

Phil Ochs (1940–1976)

One of the best-known singers and writers of antiwar protest songs during the Vietnam War was Phil Ochs. Ochs was born on December 19, 1940, in El Paso, Texas. Growing up in New York and Ohio, he learned to play the clarinet and showed a great deal of musical talent. He first began writing songs as a student at Ohio State University. He also became interested in journalism during his college days and published a radical student newspaper. He left the university a few credits short of graduation when his political views prevented him from becoming editor of the official school newspaper.

In the early 1960s Ochs decided to focus on music rather than journalism. He based his decision on the advice of union organizer and songwriter Joe Hill, who said that "a pamphlet, no matter how good, is never read more than once, but a song is learned by heart and repeated over and over." Ochs took up the guitar and began playing at folk clubs in New York City, alongside such rising stars as Joan Baez and Bob Dylan. In 1963 he appeared at the prestigious Newport Folk Festival in Rhode Island.

Ochs released his first album, All the News That's Fit to Sing, in 1964. A review in Rolling Stone magazine called it "a manifesto of social urgency." But it was his second album, I Ain't Marchin' Anymore, that brought him to national attention. The title track became a theme song of the antiwar movement. For the next few years, Ochs was a fixture at antiwar rallies, folk festivals, and benefit concerts around the United States. Each time he performed, he encouraged his audience to protest against the Vietnam War and support the civil rights movement.

Not everyone appreciated the messages of protest contained in Ochs' songs. Some people felt that his views were radical and un-American. The U.S. government watched him closely and even banned him from appearing on television for several years. He also received several death threats. But Ochs viewed himself as a patriotic person. He claimed that his songs were intended to pressure America to live up to the principles on which it was founded.

During the late 1960s Ochs grew increasingly disillusioned with American society. As he became less hopeful about the possibility of seeing positive changes, he also lost confidence in his singing and song writing abilities. He began drinking heavily and slipped into depression. Ochs released his last studio album, Greatest Hits, in 1970. He committed suicide on April 9, 1976, in Far Rockaway, New York. A number of well-known musicians organized a tribute concert three months after his death at Madison Square Garden in New York City.