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No protests as Joan Baez heads for The Sage Gateshead
Joan Baez takes to the stage at the Sage Gateshead on Saturday night celebrating 50 years in the music business.
An Evening With Joan Baez will no doubt relight the passions in those for whom the Summer of Love was a pro-peace love-in that defined their lives. For Ms Baez the passion for her music and her desire to do the right thing has never diminished.
Once jailed for blocking an Armed Forces Induction Center in California in protest against the Vietnam War, the folk singer has continued to fight for causes she believes.
And it was her public crusading that set her apart from her Sixties touring partner and lover Bob Dylan. While Dylan let his music do the talking, Baez backed her music with action.
When they split in 1966, Dylan had abandoned protest: Baez embraced it.
Throughout the Sixties and Seventies she was the voice of protest, fighting for humanitarian and civil rights and continuing her opposition to the Vietnam war.
Beyond that she supported the mothers of "disappeared" in Chile and Argentina; performed for Lech Walesa in support of Solidarity; sang in war-torn Bosnia to aid refugees and, in the UK marched in Northern Ireland calling for an end to violence. Oh, and she even found time to sing a song or two or, well, make that more ... she has something like 50 albums to her name.
The most accomplished interpretive folksinger of the 1960s, Joan Baez has influenced nearly every aspect of popular music in a career still going strong.
Baez has what has been described as a once-in-a-lifetime soprano voice, which, since the late Fifties, she has put in the service of folk, pop and even Gospel music as well, of course, as her various political and humanitarian causes.
The 68-year-old bounced back into the public's musical conscience when she was awarded a Lifetime Achievement award at the Grammies in 2007.
Her latest tour is on the back of her first studio album for five years, Day After Tomorrow.
There was little protest but much rejoicing when the legendary folk troubadour agreed to a return visit to the North East. It promises to a fantastic night.
* An Evening With Joan Baez, Saturday (October 10), The Sage Gateshead, Gateshead Quays.
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Friday 10 February 2012
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