Joan Baez

Songwriter, activist, an artist of international stature, Joan Chandos Baez (New York, 1941) boasts a career spanning over half a century and remains one of the cornerstones of the global music scene.

Her artistic career began in 1959 when, following her appearance at the Newport Folk Festival, she signed a contract with Vanguard Records and released her self-titled debut album "Joan Baez", which immediately showcased her extraordinary vocal talent in service of ballads straddling folk and blues.

Joan Baez's subsequent albums, the gold-certified "Joan Baez Vol.2" (1961) and "Joan Baez In Concert Part 1" (1962) and "Part 2" (1963) — on which the songwriter covers a track by the then still little-known Bob Dylan — came before the American artist's breakthrough on the international charts. In 1965, indeed, the song "There But for Fortune" cracked the UK Top Ten, drawing Joan Baez closer to a more acoustic sound and the archetype of the "folksinger with guitar".

Joan Baez's years of success coincided with the protests against the Vietnam War and the fight for civil rights, themes that became essential to the songwriter and that she began weaving into her music, making it inseparable from her political activism. This led her to take part in the March on Washington with Martin Luther King in 1963, during which she performed "We Shall Overcome".

In 1969 she took part in the Woodstock Festival, a major showcase for the music scene of the era and an experience that would earn her the nickname "the nightingale of Woodstock".

Her poignant song "Here's To You" (music by Ennio Morricone, lyrics by Baez herself), part of the soundtrack to the 1971 film "Sacco e Vanzetti", became an anthem of the civil rights movement.

1975, meanwhile, was the year of "Diamonds & Rust", her best-selling album, which stands as a careful and remarkable exploration of harmonies and chord progressions quite different from her more familiar folk sound.

The Seventies were the decade in which Joan Baez's activism reached its peak: the American songwriter helped found the US branch of Amnesty International, spoke out against human rights violations in Vietnam, and traveled to Chile, Brazil and Argentina to shine a light on the torture and disappearances whose evidence was being covered up by local governments.

In 1983 she appeared at the Grammy Awards for the first time, performing "Blowin' in The Wind", Bob Dylan's pacifist classic, and two years later she opened the "Live Aid" concert in Philadelphia (1985).

The following years saw a steady stream of performances and collaborations in support of political and pacifist causes. Her commitment also brought her to Italy: in 1989 she performed alongside Francesco De Gregori and Tracy Chapman to raise funds for the construction of a hospital in Armenia, and in 2008 with Vinicio Capossela as part of the Live for Emergency event in Piazza San Marco in Venice.

In 2007 Joan Baez received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and took part in the ceremony by introducing a performance by the Dixie Chicks, whose campaign against the Iraq War she supported. A year later, she released the new album "Day After Tomorrow", produced by Steve Earle.

In 2017, shortly after her induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Joan Baez announced her final year of official touring, as the crowning moment of her career, timed with the release of her last album: "Whistle Down The Wind" (2018). Baez had this to say about the record, recorded in just ten days in Los Angeles with Joe Henry: "It was something we both wanted, to be able to make an album together. I'm at my best with musicians who are as willing as I am to take risks, and he put together a group that did exactly that, building every song from scratch".

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