Joan Baez: A Pause to Refresh

Joan Baez at a recent performance

Joan Baez is the reason why my commentary has so far been non-existent on the televised Madrid-Wilson debate last night. I didn't like missing the live debate, but I had bought my Baez tickets months ago and I wasn't about to skip out on a chance to hear Joan up close and personal at the KiMo in Albuquerque. I made the right decision. It was a magical night.

Her voice still soars and bobs and weaves. Her song choice was pointedly topical and right on time. She even did a brief imitation of Dylan's nasal twanging, bringing chuckles. She looks like a seasoned, elegant, silver-haired siren. She comes across as wryly wise, seriously witty, with just the right mix of cynicism and silly humor amidst the hope and the world weariness. She's the genuine article, with a studied brand of politics honed by her long years on the justice trail. And she and her two-piece band knocked the socks off the audience musically.

Could there be a better time than two weeks before a pivotal election to hear songs like the organizing classic, "Joe Hill," or Dylan's "A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall" and "With God on Our Side," or Steve Earle's "Jerusalem" and "Christmas in Washington," or Leonard Cohen's "Suzanne," or Joan's own "Diamonds and Rust"? Or to revel in "Gracias A La Vida," urging a celebration of life despite the turmoil and quagmires? It came to me that we can never be finished fighting the good fight against purposeful injustice, ruinous war, selfish greed, crushing poverty and those whose goals are to subjugate, steal and run roughshod over those less fortunate. The battle is eternal, the victories sometimes small and often fleeting. The work goes on, always, as it must.

Baez has been there at the musical and political barricades of truth and peace and justice for almost 50 years, through times of triumph over our darker sides and times when all seems lost. She keeps on, she stays rooted in compassion, in love, in humor, in hope. She inspires many (including me) to keep at it, to continue the tedious work of change, while remembering to savor the pleasures of life and love, of adventure and human kindness, of music and creation, of community. I know it probably sounds corny, but it felt like a roomful of community last night at the KiMo, full of shared experience, shared hopes, shared dreams and, most of all, a shared appreciation of Joan's exquisite music of the heart and mind and spirit.

Here's the sober and serious Baez doing "With God On Our Side" in 1966:

And here she is last year, singing "A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall" at the Operation Ceasefire Concert in Washington DC:

Finally, go listen to her sing with Jackson Browne on his song, "Before the Deluge," which includes the timely line, "let the music keep our spirits high." Onward.