Last night music legend Joan Baez took to the TIFF stage at Yonge-Dundas Square to perform a free concert in honour of the release of a documentary film, Joan Baez: How Sweet the Sound, about her career, which has spanned over five decades.

 

I'm going to be perfectly honest here, and perhaps open myself up to (well-deserved) ridicule. When Baez's publicist approached me and asked me if I wanted to cover the screening of How Sweet and Baez's concert immediately afterward, I nodded my head emphatically, taking the cue from her excitement that this was a big deal, but inwardly asked myself, "who?"

 

Thank God for Google. I went home and Wikipedia-ed (clearly the journalist's most credible source) Baez straight away. Well, if you are only just entering your second decade, like me, and if you don't know who Joan Baez is, like I didn't, you ought to do the same. The woman is incredible.

 

Apart from an illustrious career as a folk singer, singing in her youth with a crystalline soprano that earned her the nickname "The Virgin Mary" and later-on with a powerful, soulful vibrato, Baez has been at the forefront of every major political cause since the Civil Rights Movement. From singing at the March on Washington, where activist Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his "I Have a Dream Speech," to camping out at recruitment stations to try to convince young Americans that the Vietnam War was not for them, to high-profile visits to war-torn countries, Baez's compassion and courage seem incredible to me. You'd be hard-pressed to find someone who's lived half as many lives as she has.

 

Of course, this research did me no good. All that it meant was that I shook in my black ballet shoes when I was given the opportunity to sit down with Baez before How Sweet screened.

 

The documentary has been quite the journey, Baez said. She and the film's director, Mary Wharton, were able to unearth incredible personal and commercial footage: from Quaker family road trips across America, to performances in coffee houses at the age of 18, to candid interviews with the likes of Bob Dylan, who Baez collaborated and toured with in England in 1965.

 

"It's unusual to have laid myself bare, in a way, because it's pretty honest, pretty forthright," Baez said of the film.

 

"I learned a lot from it. I learned a lot from what other people said. The songs at Club 47... I was so young and they're so beautifully documented. They're just a pleasure to watch. That wasn't even me. That voice was just...archaic. A little soprano! And I really appreciate [that footage]; I love watching it."

 

It's hard not to get swept up in Baez's legend while watching the documentary; just try not to be impressed with all that she's achieved, witnessed, done. But the film also hints at the issues that plagued Baez's early career; she was convinced that she would amount to nothing and suffered from a stage fright so strong it often made her physically ill.

 

"I had terrible stage fright," she said.

 

"I thought I was a dumb Mexican. Just...huge stuff. Kid stuff, neurotic stuff. I mean, I went from being a 17 year old neurotic kid who thought she was fairly ugly and not very bright to being the Virgin Mary. I had this voice and I went out into the big world and that was pretty rattling. I spent a lot of time dealing with trying to stay sane. Would've been a whole lot weirder if I haven't had that insight to keep reigned in. It's not easy."

As far as the career-long tie between Baez's music and political activism goes, Baez said that it made sense to link one to the other.

"The way I see it is that they're both gifts," she explained.

 

"The voice is the obvious one and the other just linked up with it. I would consider the activism a gift because it's what I wanted to do, and if I hadn't wanted to do it, I guess I wouldn't have done it. If I'd wanted to but hadn't been able to...that would have been the sacrifice."

 

While Baez said that her main political focus these days is being with her family - she has one son with ex-husband David Harris - she did end our interview by saying:

 

"All of this can go by the wayside if we don't do anything about global warming! That's my little p.s. I'd just like to say that because if it doesn't get said, it won't get started."

 

Baez's concert filled Yonge-Dundas Square to bursting. She performed songs sung at Woodstock, songs featured in the documentary, songs that everyone was surprised to know they knew the words to.

 

Fifty years of performing...and still able to bring a crowd to its feet.

 

"For the most part I'm happy with it and I'm pretty proud of the life that I've led," Baez said of her career.

 

"It's a full one, and it 'aint over yet. It's been fruitful and it's been honest.