Joan Baez

Perhaps the greatest honor one can accord Joan Baez is to observe how fully her art and her life have been inseparable from the public events that have shaped our era. Her work over the course of more than three decades has been a tribute to the ability of the human voice to rise out of the confusion of day-to-day struggles and define ideals of beauty and moral courage. But her individual voice, her singing voice – always so rich in both passion and compassion – instills those ideals with flesh and blood. Her songs are nothing less than invitations to a life of social meaning, to view ourselves as part of a larger community whose fate is inextricable from our own, to make that fate better for all.