Baez, Joan

US folk singer and pacifist activist. Her pure soprano in the early 1960s made popular traditional English and US folk songs such as ‘Silver Dagger’ and ‘We Shall Overcome’ (an anthem of the civil-rights movement). She helped Bob Dylan at the start of his career and has recorded many of his songs. She founded the Institute for the Study of Non-Violence in Carmel, California, in 1965.

One of the most popular folk artists of the 1960s, Baez also sold well in the early 1970s when she shifted toward pop music, culminating in the hit album Diamonds and Rust (1975). She released Speaking of Dreams, which included duets with US singers Paul Simon and Jackson Browne, in 1989, and recorded another collaborative album, Ring Them Bells, in 1995.