Joan Baez
Prepare:
Like a great many recording artists, Joan Baez maintains
an official website, one that promotes recent music releases.
Her official website is joanbaez.com, and her "official
bio" can be read at http://www.joanbaez.com/officialbio.html.
Read: The greater part of the Joan Baez message
is found in her music, not in her spoken words. However,
she wrote a short essay for the Architects of Peace project.
Read it at http://scu.edu/ethics/architects-of-peace/Baez/essay.html.
Explore: In the 1960s, Joan Baez started a school
called "The Institute for the Study of Nonviolence."
An offshoot of that institute is the Resource Center for
Nonviolence (RCNV), located in Santa Cruz, California. The
center maintains a website at http://www.rcnv.org/.
Throughout the war in Iraq, the center's homepage has maintained
an up-to-the-second estimate of the economic cost of this
war. Included on the center's website is a set of "nonviolence
guidelines" for RCNV actions.
Write: In her Architects of Peace essay, Joan Baez
writes, "Social change without music would be void
of soul." What, indeed, has been the relationship between
music and movements involved in social change, such as the
civil rights movement or anti-war movements? Has music ever
served to provide direction to these movements, or is it
merely a way to propagate the movement's rhetoric? How important,
ultimately, is music to social change? Write a three-to-five
page critical essay exploring these questions by examining
a specific piece of music in terms of how it might have
contributed to the success of the movement.
Extend: Although Joan Baez often performs music
written by other composers, the lyrics from all the songs
she's written can be found at http://joanbaez.com/lyrics.html.
A great many of her songs, such as "All The Weary Mothers
Of The Earth," deal with themes of peace and non-violence.
Additional Resource: One of the organizations that
Joan Baez has long been associated with is the Central Committee
for Conscientious Objectors, which promotes both individual
and collective resistance to war and to preparations for
war. Their website can be found at http://www.objector.org/.
Biography
Reflections
on Working Towards Peace