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Joan Baez, one of the most prominent female folk singers since the 1960s, will perform at Royce Hall tonight, treating students to a voice that has brought sweet chills to listeners for over forty years.

Baez, who has collaborated with folk heroes like Bob Dylan, toured with The Beatles, and performed at the original Woodstock, continues to strive for freshness in her art and to keep from fading into merely an icon of the past.

“Being fresh combats being a legend of the ’60s – which isn’t a bad thing, but it’s dull unless you’ve updated yourself,” Baez said.

At the age of only 18, Baez was jump-started into a singing career by her unscheduled appearance at the Newport Folk Festival in 1959. A crowd of over 13,000 people ecstatically received her performance and within one year, she released her first album for Vanguard Recording Society and returned to the festival as a headlining performer. However, despite her immediate success, Baez had never imagined the extent to which her fame would grow.

“Back then there wasn’t the kind of (singing) career talk that there is now,” Baez said. “My idea of the future was the following Wednesday. I remember when I was 15 someone asked me, ‘Do you think you’re going to be famous?’ and I just looked at them. I didn’t know what they were talking about, I had never thought about it.”

In fact, it was Baez’s love of music that paved the way to her successful career and not the allure of stardom that drives so many pop stars today. At a young age, Baez started playing ukulele in order to ease frustration and boredom with school.

“Music became bigger and bigger in my life as school became more and more impossible. I was a terrible student. I wasn’t made for it, and it wasn’t made for me. And luckily, I had a talent,” Baez said.

Baez’s parents were both Quakers, and she grew up listening to philosophical discussions on nonviolence that sparked her intense interest in human behavior. This, along with the emotional turbulence that love and adolescence often lends to the human spirit, inspired Baez’s early songwriting.

“My songs reflected where my head was,” Baez said. “I was a kid, kind of neurotic. I wouldn’t have known a happy love song if I had seen one. A happy love song might be an oxymoron. I was full of angst and those were the songs I related to and delivered fairly well.”

However, singing songs is only one side of the coin when it comes to Baez’s two great loves. Like the steady guitar backing up her lyrics, political activism has consistently played a part right alongside her singing career. Her songs are often littered with socially conscious themes, and in return, she aided her protest efforts with music.

“The situation in the world back then, starting with civil rights and then the Vietnam War, took me so easily into my two greatest loves, music and politics, and they fit like gloves. I think that in whatever we do we reflect the world around us or our denial of it,” she said.

Since her first breakthrough performance at the Newport Folk Festival, Baez has taken great strides in promoting both folk music and social change. Her upcoming album and public appearance in the San Francisco’s anti-war protest in January goes to show time has not dampened her spirit. Her life’s work so far has shown the importance of music and social awareness and the way they can combine to further both causes.

“Personally speaking, I would say that I would not want to be involved in social change if there was not music in it,” Baez said. “It helps solidify a movement by bringing its heart, soul and emotion to the cause. You can go to a rally where there are twenty speeches in a row, but nothing will effect the people the way a song will.”

Joan Baez performs at Royce Hall tonight. For tickets, call the Central Ticket Office at

(310) 825-2101.