Still protesting!

Yesterday evening on BBC Radio Four's arts review programme, Front Row, they were interviewing the wonderful Joan Baez, still singing beautifully at 71. She is doing concerts in London and at various venues around Europe. Not Manchester, unfortunately! She described how had been concerned that she wasn't hitting the high notes as well as she used to and had even considered giving up performing. Fortunately, rather than do that she went to see her doctor to see if there was something physically wrong. Nothing at all. What he reckoned was happening was that she was mentally blocking herself because her voice was no longer as young as it used to be (it happens to us all) and she was subconsciously unhappy about it. So he referred her to a voice therapist. This was America, after all. He sorted it out and she now feels fine. 

A few years ago, more than a few, probably about seven or eight years ago, we saw her perform in Manchester. She may not have hit the highest of high notes (this was pre-voice therapy, after all) but she still sounded good. At the time, she commented on how much she was enjoying performing in contrast to how scared she used to be, the stage fright she used to endure when she needed to stand up and sing in public. And yet, despite the stage fright, she did it. 

She sang to the vast crowds on the day that Martin Luther King made his "I have a dream" speech. So it was, I suppose, inevitable that they asked her in the Radio Four interview about the USA having a black president. Her response was a comment on growing racism in the United States. In her opinion, some of the anger that right wingers felt they could not openly express when equal rights legislation came in is being expressed now against Obama. What is more she feels that racism is more rife than ever in the USA. This fits in with recent news stories of black women out for a night together, simply drinking and chatting in bars being accused of prostitution and even arrested. Then there was the actress who was arrested, again for prostitution, when she kissed her white partner in their car. A passer-by took objection to this and reported them! And along came the police.

Land of the free! I think Joan Baez perhaps needs to continue singing those protest songs.