Joan Baez (1941-present) is regarded as the Queen of Folk Music, captivating audiences for 60 years with her warbling soprano voice. She used her music as a tool to advocate for social justice and nonviolence.
Joan Baez (1941-present) is regarded as the Queen of Folk Music, captivating audiences for 60 years with her warbling soprano voice. She used her music as a tool to advocate for social justice and nonviolence.
History classes can get a bad rap, and sometimes for good reason. When we were students, we couldn’t help wondering... where were all the ladies at? Why were so many incredible stories missing from the typical curriculum? Enter, Womanica. On this Wonder Media Network podcast we explore the lives of inspiring women in history you may not know about, but definitely should.
Every weekday, listeners explore the trials, tragedies, and triumphs of groundbreaking women throughout history who have dramatically shaped the world around us. In each 5 minute episode, we’ll dive into the story behind one woman listeners may or may not know–but definitely should. These diverse women from across space and time are grouped into easily accessible and engaging monthly themes like Educators, Villains, Indigenous Storytellers, Activists, and many more. Womanica is hosted by WMN co-founder and award-winning journalist Jenny Kaplan. The bite-sized episodes pack painstakingly researched content into fun, entertaining, and addictive daily adventures.
Womanica was created by Liz Kaplan and Jenny Kaplan, executive produced by Jenny Kaplan, and produced by Liz Smith, Grace Lynch, Maddy Foley, Brittany Martinez, Edie Allard, Lindsey Kratochwill, Adesuwa Agbonile, Carmen Borca-Carrillo, Taylor Williamson, and Ale Tejeda. Special thanks to Shira Atkins.
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Hello! From Wonder Media Network, I’m Luvvie Ajayi Jones. I’m a NYT Best Selling author and host of the podcast Professional Troublemaker. I’m so excited to be your guest host for this month of Womanica!
This month we’re highlighting Prodigies: women who achieved greatness at a young age.
Today we’re talking about the Queen of Folk music. She captivated audiences for 60 years with her warbling soprano and used her music as a tool to advocate for social justice and nonviolence.
Please welcome Joan Baez.
Joan was born on January 9, 1941 in Staten Island, New York to pacifist Quaker parents. Her mother was born in Scotland, while her father was born in Mexico and raised in Brooklyn. He worked as a physicist, and his job with UNESCO kept their family moving around throughout Joan’s childhood.
Joan likes to say her voice is a gift — something she is lucky to have but cannot take credit for. She started sharing her gift from a young age. As a child, her father’s friend gave her a ukulele, and she learned how to play rhythm and blues songs. When Joan was 13, her aunt took her to see folk singer Pete Seeger in concert. Joan went home and taught herself how to play his songs.
In 1958, Joan’s family moved to Massachusetts, where she started getting involved in the folk music scene. She gave her first concert that year at Club 47 in Cambridge. There were only eight people in the audience, and she was paid 10 dollars.
In 1959, Joan performed at the Newport Folk Festival. Nicknamed “the barefoot madonna,” she gained attention for her captivating voice and earned a record deal with Vanguard Records. In 1960, she released her first album, featuring interpretations of traditional folk ballads like “Wildwood Flower” and “House of the Rising Sun.” She was only 19.
In 1961, she gave a sold out performance in New York City, and her career continued to build momentum from there. Her next three albums went gold. Joan introduced her audience to other folk artists, like the then-unknown Bob Dylan, whom she also dated. Over the years, she wrote original tracks, recorded protest songs and folk classics, and interpreted tunes by other artists she admired.
More than just a musician, Joan was at the center of the social justice movements of the 1960s. In 1963, she performed the song “We Shall Overcome” at the March on Washington. The following year, she refused to pay federal taxes to protest U.S. involvement in Vietnam. And In 1965, she founded the Institute for the Study of Nonviolence in Carmel, California.
Joan went to jail for 10 days in 1967 for participating in a sit-in at a military induction center. During this time, Joan met anti-war organizer David Harris. The two were married the following year in 1968. The marriage was short lived. David spent much of the marriage imprisoned for resisting the draft - which caused him to miss the birth of their son, Gabe, in 1969.
Joan entered the Billboard’s Top 10 for the first time in 1971 with the song “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.”
In 1975, she released what would come to be her most famous song, “Diamonds and Rust,” about her relationship with Bob Dylan. The pair reunited on Bob’s Rolling Thunder Revue tour that same year.
In the 1980s, folk music waned in popularity. Joan was caricatured on Saturday Night Live and in the comic strip, “Joanie Phoanie,” for her bleeding-heart, hippie persona. But she still continued to release records and perform around the globe.
In 2007, she received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award — usually the sign of a career coming to a close. But the following year, Joan released the album, “Day After Tomorrow,” and earned a Grammy nomination for Best Contemporary Folk Album.
She also continued to take part in protests. In 2011, Joan played at a concert for the protesters at Occupy Wall Street. In 2016, Joan performed in Standing Rock to protest the Dakota Access Pipeline. She wrote a new song for the first time in over 25 years following the election of President Donald Trump. She posted the tune, called “Nasty Man,” on her Facebook page, and it went viral.
Joan was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2017. She stopped performing in 2019, and on New Year’s Eve in 2020, she decided to stop singing.
Joan lives in California, where she paints portraits of her loved ones and artists she admires.
All month, we’re highlighting prodigies. For more information find us on Facebook and Instagram @womanicapodcast.
Special thanks to creators Jenny and Liz Kaplan, for inviting me to guest host..
Talk to you tomorrow!