Joan Baez to receive free speech award
http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474977399649
by Kerry Dexter
July 16, 2008
JOAN BAEZ TO RECEIVE 'SPIRIT OF AMERICANA' FREE SPEECH AWARD AT
AMERICANA HONORS & AWARDS CEREMONY
NASHVILLE, July 16, 2008 - The Americana Music Association is
thrilled to announce that cultural icon and seminal American
recording artist Joan Baez will receive the Spirit of Americana Free
Speech Award at the organization's 7th Annual Honors and Awards
ceremony, slated for September 18 at the historic Ryman Auditorium in
Nashville. Artist of the Year nominee and previous "Spirit of
Americana" recipient Steve Earle will present the award. The honor
recognizes and celebrates artists who have ignited discussion and
challenged the status quo through their music and their actions. In
addition to Earle, past recipients include Johnny Cash, Kris
Kristofferson, Mavis Staples, Judy Collins and Charlie Daniels.
Fifty years since she began her legendary residency at Boston's famed
Club 47, Baez remains a musical force of nature whose influence is
incalculable - marching on the front line of the civil rights
movement with Martin Luther King, inspiring Vaclav Havel in his fight
for a Czech Republic, singing on the first Amnesty International
tour and just this year, standing alongside Nelson Mandela when the
world celebrated his 90th birthday in London's Hyde Park. She brought
the Free Speech Movement into the spotlight, took to the fields with
Cesar Chavez, organized resistance to the war in Southeast Asia, then
forty years later saluted the Dixie Chicks for their courage to
protest war. Her earliest recordings fed a host of traditional
ballads into the rock vernacular, before she unselfconsciously
introduced Bob Dylan to the world in 1963 and focused awareness on
songwriters ranging from Woody Guthrie, Dylan, Phil Ochs, Richard
Fariña, and Tim Hardin, to Kris Kristofferson and Mickey Newbury, to
Dar Williams, Richard Shindell, Steve Earle and many more.
In 2007, Baez received the Grammy's prestigious Lifetime Achievement
Award. Her first studio album in five years, Day After Tomorrow,
produced by Earle, is slated for release September 9.
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Joan Baez to receive Spirit of Americana award
http://www.countrystandardtime.com/news/newsitem.asp?xid=1925
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Joan Baez will receive the Spirit of Americana Free Speech Award at
the Americana Music Association's seventh annual awards show on Sept.
18 in Nashville. The honor recognizes and celebrates artists who have
ignited discussion and challenged the status quo through their music
and their actions. Past recipients include Johnny Cash, Steve Earle,
Kris Kristofferson, Mavis Staples, Judy Collins and Charlie Daniels.
Baez has long been an activist. She marched for the civil rights
movement with Martin Luther King, inspired Vaclav Havel in his fight
for a Czech Republic, sang on the first Amnesty International tour
and earlier this year stood alongside Nelson Mandela when the world
celebrated his 90th birthday in London's Hyde Park. She brought the
Free Speech Movement into the spotlight, took to the fields with
Cesar Chavez and organized resistance to the war in Southeast Asia.
Her earliest recordings fed a host of traditional ballads into the
rock vernacular, before she unselfconsciously introduced Bob Dylan to
the world in 1963 and focused awareness on songwriters ranging from
Woody Guthrie, Dylan, Phil Ochs, Richard Farina, Tim Hardin, Kris
Kristofferson, Mickey Newbury, Dar Williams, Richard Shindell and Steve Earle.
In 2007, Baez received the Grammy's prestigious Lifetime Achievement
Award. Her first studio album in five years, "Day After Tomorrow,"
produced by Earle, is slated for release Sept. 9. Earle, Artist of
the Year nominee and previous "Spirit of Americana" recipient, will
present the award.
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Baez calls Havel, Mandela pillars of 20th century
http://www.praguemonitor.com/en/382/czech_national_news/25745/
By TK / Published 21 July 2008
Trencin , West Slovakia, July 19 (CTK) - U.S. folk singer Joan Baez
said on Saturday she considers former Czechoslovak and Czech
president Vaclav Havel and former South African president Nelson
Mandela the moral pillars of the past century.
Baez, 67, a human rights activist, returned after two decades to
Slovakia and she is one of the major stars of the Pohoda music
festival in Trencin, which Havel attends.
She remembered her Slovak concert in 1989 still before the communist
regime fell at the end of the year, at which she pronounced her
disagreement with the regime.
Baez also remembered that Havel then carried her guitar at the
concert in Bratislava.
He said today he did not want to be detained before the concert,
supervised by the state police, and so he acted as Baez's guitar carrier.
"It did save me because it seemed to them stupid to detain me on her
eyes and to arrest her servant," Havel said smiling.
Havel has met several times since Baez's Bratislava concert. She even
once played when he was making a speech in the United States.
"I was then carrying here guitar from the stage just as a joke," he
recalled today.
Havel said he esteems Baez not only because he likes her songs. "But
also for her unpretentious courage and lifelong will to commit
herself for what is correct," Havel said.
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Vaclav Havel to Enjoy "The Plastics" at Pohoda Festival
http://www.tasr.sk/30.axd?k=20080719TBB00227
Trencin, July 19 (TASR-SLOVAKIA) - Former Czech President Vaclav
Havel is enjoying his second day at the Slovak Music Festival Pohoda,
taking place July 18-19 in Trencin, he told SLOVAKIA on Saturday.
Havel is to sign his new book 'Kdo rekl A, musi rict i B' (Who said A
has to say B, too) Saturday afternoon, and later on to enjoy the
performance of Joan Baez, as well as the concert of the underground
psychedelic rock legend from Prague - 'The Plastic People of the Universe'.
The former Czech president is considered a non-playing member of this
band, well known from the 60's Czechoslovakia.
Havel cast his mind back on the formation of the group in the times
of the so called 'normalisation', also commenting on the band's
members being arrested by the police. Back then, the band did not
have any political ambitions or motifs. They just wanted to play and
sing freely, declare their feelings and sorrows, without being bugged
by the bureaucrats, said Havel.
According to him the former political regime wanted to demonstrate
its power by arresting couple of "long-haired lads", making a
precedent to intimidate everybody who wanted to act freely. Havel
added that the regime's incentive went adrift, allowing something -
which was no longer about a band, but about everybody's freedom - to
happen, meaning the birth of the Charter 77.
[Charter 77 was an informal civic initiative against the
normalisation policy of the Communist Government in Czechoslovakia.
Many of its founding members played important roles in Czech and
Slovak politics after the Velvet Revolution in 1989. - ed. note]
The legendary "Plastics" - as they're familiarly called - are to
perform at the Pohoda festival in Trencin on Saturday evening,
leaving Vaclav Havel to hope they will also feature his favourite song.
.
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