Joan Baez
Last night PBS aired a wonderful one hour special on Joan Baez in the show American Masters. Joan Baez is best known as being a social activist and a folk singer who has an excellent command of the acoustic guitar. She had tremendous impact on the world, especially in the 1960s and 1970s.
I adore the Beatles, and several times I have gone on the Magical Mystery Tour religious pilgrimage to Liverpool, England. They had a great impact on the whole world and on me personally. I stood less than 20 feet from Paul McCartney and Linda as they played with Wings in a small club near Frankfurt, Germany in the early 1970s, and I own several pieces of original Beatles memorabilia.
But Joan Baez honestly had more of an impact on me than the fab-four. She has published many albums, but the one which had the most impact on me was called Baptism. Especially the songs entitled In Guernica and No Man Is An Island.
Her mother was born in Edinburg, Scotland and her father was born in Puebla, Mexico. Her father embodied the best of the Mexican culture. Like Cesar Milan he gained an excellent command of the English language. It is such a burden that we place on immigrants when we allow them to continue speaking their native language and permit them to refuse to completely integrate. Allowing them to not get highly proficient in the dominant language guarantees that they will permanently remain members of the lowest social class. This is true in America just as much as in Germany or France.
Joan Baez marched and sang with Martin Luther King and she went to jail in opposition to the draft during the Vietnam War. She had a wonderful love affair with Bob Dylan. Now in 2009 she is an old lady, but she is still singing, very active, and still lives by the same pacifist ideology. She is among a very small and elite group of musicians who have continued to perform for 50 years.
LINK: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/episodes/joan-baez/video-outtakes-from-the-film/1198/
I adore the Beatles, and several times I have gone on the Magical Mystery Tour religious pilgrimage to Liverpool, England. They had a great impact on the whole world and on me personally. I stood less than 20 feet from Paul McCartney and Linda as they played with Wings in a small club near Frankfurt, Germany in the early 1970s, and I own several pieces of original Beatles memorabilia.
But Joan Baez honestly had more of an impact on me than the fab-four. She has published many albums, but the one which had the most impact on me was called Baptism. Especially the songs entitled In Guernica and No Man Is An Island.Her mother was born in Edinburg, Scotland and her father was born in Puebla, Mexico. Her father embodied the best of the Mexican culture. Like Cesar Milan he gained an excellent command of the English language. It is such a burden that we place on immigrants when we allow them to continue speaking their native language and permit them to refuse to completely integrate. Allowing them to not get highly proficient in the dominant language guarantees that they will permanently remain members of the lowest social class. This is true in America just as much as in Germany or France.
Joan Baez marched and sang with Martin Luther King and she went to jail in opposition to the draft during the Vietnam War. She had a wonderful love affair with Bob Dylan. Now in 2009 she is an old lady, but she is still singing, very active, and still lives by the same pacifist ideology. She is among a very small and elite group of musicians who have continued to perform for 50 years.
LINK: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/episodes/joan-baez/video-outtakes-from-the-film/1198/
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No Man Is An Island
No man is an island,
No man is an island,
No man stands alone,
Each man's joy is joy to me,
Each man's grief is my own.
We need one another,
So I will defend,
Each man as my brother,
Each man as my friend.
I saw the people gather,
I heard the music start,
The song that they were singing,
Is ringing in my heart.
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No man is an island,
Way out in the blue,
We all look to the one above,
For our strength to renew.
When I help my brother,
Then I know that I plant the seed of friendship,
That will never die.
In Guernica
In Guernica the dead children were laid out in order on the sidewalk
In Guernica
In Guernica the dead children were laid out in order on the sidewalk
In their white starched dresses
In their pitiful white dresses
On their foreheads and breasts the little round holes where death came in as thunder
while they were playing their important summer games
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Do not weep for them, Madre
They are gone forever, the little ones
Straight to heaven to the saints
And God will fill the bullet holes with candy
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