And a Voice to Sing With by Joan Baez
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"Ten years ago I bought you some cufflinks
You brought me something
We both know what memories can bring
They bring Diamonds and Rust."

This fragment of lyrics comes from Diamonds and Rust, the most beautiful song ever written - I am old enough to be certain. A unique combination of heart-rending poetry that conveys deepest truths about love past, spine-tingling melody, and absolutely flawless singing. Joan Baez has written the music, the lyrics, and performed the song. Thirty-three years later, Ms. Baez, now almost eighty, is still making music.

And a Voice To Sing With. A Memoir (1987) is Ms. Baez' autobiography. Its structure follows the standard rules: the artist's life, performances, loves, and social and political activism are described chronologically. During her school years, she avoids ostracism for being "brown" (her father, a physicist, was of Mexican origin) yet not speaking Spanish only thanks to her musical talent and phenomenal voice. She studies at Boston University and performs in coffee shops; in 1960 her first album comes out to become a huge success. Her popularity continues through all decades from 1960s all the way until now. Of all popular artists she has probably been the most involved in social and political activism.

One of the most amazing facts about Ms. Baez' life is that she has been friends with three Nobel Prize winners. First and foremost, Ms Baez recounts her romantic affair with the future Nobel Prize Winner in Literature. Yes, Joan Baez and Bob Dylan were together for quite some time in the 1960s. She beautifully writes about him:

"[...] his eyes were as old as God, and he was fragile as a winter leaf. He was a Sunday child, fidgeting there on the couch in an oversized jacket and new cufflinks and I was Mom. But I was also sister mystic and fellow outlaw, queen to his jack, and a twin underground star. We were living out a myth, slumming it together in the Village."

There is also a beautiful passage about Bob Dylan, written in a second-person narrative - this is first-rate literature. I admire Ms. Baez' talent to write about him with such passion and love and then write about her rather sharp disillusionment with him several years later.

I very much like the chapter The Black Angel of Memphis dedicated to her numerous conversations with another Nobel Prize winner, this time the Peace laureate. She writes:

"You, more than anyone else who has been a part of my life, are my hope and inspiration. [...] Every time I hear your voice, it brings me back to the foot of the mountain. I don't lack the courage, Martin. It's just that in the eighties I can't seem to find where the path begins.

The chapter about Ms. Baez' meeting with yet another Nobel Peace Prize winner, Poland's Lech Wałęsa, resonates with me so much for personal reasons - I lived in Poland when Wałęsa's Solidarity was crushed by the Soviet-influenced government, and when he became a worldwide symbol of push for freedom. The passage about her singing Gracias a la Vida for Mr. Wałęsa is deeply moving.

The reader will also find a dramatic and very well-written account of Ms. Baez' visit to Hanoi, Vietnam, in 1972, during intense bombing. Whatever political "side" the reader is on, this is a deep, thought-provoking chapter. Speaking about "sides," I love Ms. Baez not only for Diamonds and Rust and few other songs but also for rejecting the political orthodoxy. In her activism she has been hated by both right-wingers and left-wingers. She has never subscribed to any particular set of political beliefs, and has always been for freedom, civil and human rights, and non-violence. I have found one chapter absolutely depressing. Ms. Baez was one of the organizers of the Ring Around Congress, where the "women and children of America would go to Washington and join hands around Congress." The tensions and intrigues between activists of different races almost prevented the project from completion. One of the most repugnant facets of politics: left-wingers of one kind hate left-wingers of another kind more than they hate the right-wingers.

I believe Ms. Baez wrote the memoir herself, without ghost-helpers. While the prose is accomplished, with some passages outright beautiful, the text feels too long. There are too many details, and it stretches belief that the author precisely remembers her thoughts from 25 years earlier (she does not mention keeping any diaries). Some of the almost 400 pages are hard to keep one's attention focused on. Still, I recommend the book very, very highly!

By the way, it would be very hard to find a more inspiring person than Joan Baez. If there were a Nobel Prize for the Most Extraordinary Person Overall, she'd been the obviously deserving winner. And the lyrics of Diamonds and Rust are an example of what Nobel-Prize-class poetry is about.

Four-and-a-quarter stars

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