Our Tribute to the Heroes of our Heritage continues with

An Evening with Joan Baez

Joan Baez has always been known not just as a spectacular vocalist and prolific recording artist but as an inspirational activist, using the power of her music as a force for social good. Forty years ago, she stood in the fields alongside Cesar Chavez, and we’re honored to present her live, in concert, here at the San José Mariachi and Mexican Heritage Festival.

2008 is a landmark year for Joan Baez, marking 50 years since she began her legendary residency at Boston's famed Club 47. She remains a musical force of nature whose influence is incalculable - marching on the front line of the civil rights movement with Martin Luther King Jr., 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 Farina, and Tim Hardin, to Kris Kristofferson and Mickey Newbury, to Dar Williams, Richard Shindell, Steve Earle and many more.