Kennedy Center will honor Baez
Bay Area resident Joan Baez will be among the honorees of the 43rd annual Kennedy Center Honors, joining Garth Brooks, Dick Van Dyke, Debbie Allen and violinist Midori, organizers announced.
The awards, presented by the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., recognize lifetime artistic achievements across a range of performance genres. The starstudded ceremony that takes place inside the center’s main auditorium usually happens in December each year but has been postponed to May due to the COVID19 pandemic.
“The Kennedy Center Honors serves as a moment to celebrate the remarkable artists who have spent their lives elevating the cultural history of our nation and world,” Kennedy Center Chairperson David M. Rubenstein said in a statement. “Folk icon Joan Baez breathed new life into the genre and powered rock music’s turn toward social and political consciousness.”
Baez, who lives in Woodside and
turned 80 on Saturday, Jan. 9, is already a member of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and winner of a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. She appeared on the cover of Time magazine in 1962, only four years into her career.
Baez was not only instrumental in introducing the world to Bob Dylan but also served as a leading voice in the civil rights movement, marching in Washington alongside the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and appearing at countless rallies as part of the antiVietnam War movement.
Born of Scottish and Mexican descent into a Quaker household in Staten Island, N.Y., she has used her music as a platform for the activism that was instilled in her at a young age. Her family moved to California, and Baez graduated from Palo Alto High School in 1958 — a year before she made her debut at the Newport Folk Festival at age 19.
Through the years, she has spent as much time advocating for justice, human rights and peace as she has scoring hits with her sublime renditions of the Band’s “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” Dylan’s “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” and her own “Diamonds and Rust.”
“Well, I never set out to do anything,” Baez said in an interview with The Chronicle in 2017, announcing her retirement from performing. “When I was starting out, my idea of the future was the following Wednesday. I never planned any of it. I just played guitar and sang. For years, I insisted, ‘I’m not famous, I’m just wellknown.’ Who was I kidding? I was on the cover of Time. I didn’t want to deal with fame. I didn’t want the responsibility. I just stuck with what it is I do.”
For this year’s Kennedy Center ceremony, planners foresee “multiple events for physically distant audiences” across the center’s campus, including “small, inperson events and reenvisioned virtual tributes” taking place during the week of May 1722. Baez said she hopes circumstances allow for “a gathering of actual people” and looks forward to seeing Presidentelect Joe Biden’s participation, which would be the first presidential involvement in four years. She added that this year’s event could represent the closing of two dark historical chapters.
“Not just the virus, we’ll be coming out of the political dark ages,” Baez said. The Kennedy Center Honors will be televised on CBS on June 6.