Dear Joan Baez,
For me ex-sixties fan, it’s because you never
confined to the role of baby doll, as Serge’s song says so well
Gainsbourg, that you have remained an idol in the heart of all. That
have become all your idols?” asks Jane Birkin:
missing, not descended from sound stages, not refined, not mute,
Joan Baez remains undeniable. The queen of folk, protest song, that
the Virgin Mary of the poor, the "Joan of Arc",
has brushed his dry guitar, his crystal clear and fierce voice, his ebony eyes
and a whole section of the counter-culture of a generation of terrible children
she is a veteran, from Rhode Island where she was revealed to the public at the festival
from Newport in 1959 to this beautiful Grand Rex room tonight – with
meanwhile many stopovers around the world, where the pleasure of
Singing never gave up the fire of commitment.
The icon you have become poses its very first chords on the
four strings of a ukulele. A concert by Pete Seeger gives you the taste
folk music under the banner of which you go, a few years
later, carry a poetic and partisan song across borders. It is
an unknown that currently only occurs in coffee rooms
houses that the singer Bob Gibson invites on the stage of the
Newport. As a citizen of the world with a powerful and clear voice, you
In your early days, you projected an image of innocence and purity that
not just your way of giving back to Anglo-Irish songs
a new brilliance that entire generations have loved. Everything
strong and delicate ensemble, puritan and sensual, frugal and luxuriant,
committed singer and capricious diva, you have trembled, stage fright or
anger, but always with courage, like the man who awakened in
you a social conscience with its magnificent «I have a dream»
of August 1963.
Symbol of the free and militant woman, you belong to this plethora
great creative protesters and inspired, like Bob Dylan with
who you form an idyllic couple a few years, Phil Ochs, Paul
Simon, Woodie Guthrie, Leonard Cohen, and many others. We can say that
you in all respects as the French lyricist Béranger, in
Refusal», a song that looks like you, «[His] heart is a lute
suspended, as soon as you touch it it resonates».
To your taste of freedom you find echoes in singers and
French poets. You introduce into your repertoire Boris Vian, Jacques
Prévert, the other Jacques (Brel), Léo Ferré, Maxime Le Forestier or
Yves Duteil, without ever losing the backbone of their texts.
On the road to Jericho, the Samaritan woman you represented in time
of youth walked step by step in the furrows of non-violence and
You have used your reputation and your talent to illustrate
Leonard Cohen writes in a poem about the beloved woman:
that it is the expression of the maturity of men. And you have incarnated it
for a part of humanity.
From you, we don’t just remember the planetary tube Here’s to you, fired
Ennio Morricone’s soundtrack for the film Sacco & Vanzetti, or
Blowing in the wind, or the album Diamonds & Rust, to name but a few
some of the great successes of your musical career. We
remembers also the musical tours for Amnesty International
of Peter Gabriel and Sting, your fight against segregation in
Alabama, of your presence in Hanoi bombed in 1972, of the No nos
moveran sung in Spanish towards the oppressed Pinochet, but
also of your action in the pacifist revolution of the Republic
and your support for Vaclav Havel, or your Amazing
Grace sung under the machine guns of Sarajevo, until you support the
President Barack Obama. Of your critical demand also, you who
declare today that “we are drowning in diversity, without
that cement exists”.
Tireless activist, exemplary pacifist, giving priority to justice and
progress, the fight against all discrimination, for emancipation
of women: beyond the icon, you are also an inimitable artist - the
Parvis de Notre-Dame de Paris still resonates with your visit in 1980,
Place de la Concorde, the Grand Rex tonight – through the songs of the
wind and earth, from your retreats in California, sometimes in the
Cotentin, where you recharge your energies to sing all the
mobilizations, those of the 1960s, those of the Arab peoples
today.
Dear Joan Baez, we bestow upon you the insignia of Knight of the
Legion of Honour.