Joan Baez Recalls Performances at Black Colleges

Posted on Oct 19th 2009 2:30PM by Mike Ayers
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As a pioneer in the civil rights movement, Joan Baez was called upon to make appearances and give performances at African-American universities in the south -- even if they didn't necessarily know who she was. As depicted in the new PBS documentary 'How Sweet the Sound,' Baez performed with a gospel choir at Tuscaloosa, Ala.'s Stillman College. The film shows a quick conversation Baez haves with a Bishop, who she says was the director of the choir.

"He didn't know who the hell I was and they didn't know who the hell I was," Baez tells Spinner. "Just the dynamics of that evening -- the white people buying tickets and coming on campus, the black people scared of it and how finally everything merged. It was amazing and white people sat with black people. We ended up all singing 'We Shall Overcome.' And the choir, in an effort to try to figure out what to sing together, we ended up doing 'Stop in the Name of Love' -- it was just a party."

Indeed, while that experience was a positive one, Baez recalls one evening where she was performing at Atlanta's Miles College and demonstrations outside were making for a rather uneasy climate. "I knew people were being arrested, and I knew it was very dangerous," she says. "At one point, up in the balcony a chair fell and made a loud bang. Everybody jumped and I jumped. I remember my heart just stopped."

What's worth noting about this incident is that Baez had a horrible case of stage fright early in her career, even without incidents such as this one. "I was a typically neurotic teenager, maybe more than some, and it manifested itself in a variety of ways," she says. "Most people have a degree of stage fright and mine was just severe. It was part of whatever my artistry was that it never showed."

'How Sweet the Sound' is currently airing on PBS stations and the DVD is available with extended scenes and interviews via Razor & Tie.