Joan Baez to receive Spirit of Americana award

Wednesday, July 16, 2008 – Joan Baez will receive the Spirit of Americana Free Speech Award at the Americana Music Association's seventh annual awards show on Sept. 18 in Nashville. The honor recognizes and celebrates artists who have ignited discussion and challenged the status quo through their music and their actions. Past recipients include Johnny Cash, Steve Earle, Kris Kristofferson, Mavis Staples, Judy Collins and Charlie Daniels.

Baez has long been an activist. She marched for the civil rights movement with Martin Luther King, inspired Vaclav Havel in his fight for a Czech Republic, sang on the first Amnesty International tour and earlier this year stood alongside Nelson Mandela when the world celebrated his 90th birthday in London's Hyde Park. She brought the Free Speech Movement into the spotlight, took to the fields with Cesar Chavez and organized resistance to the war in Southeast Asia. Her earliest recordings fed a host of traditional ballads into the rock vernacular, before she unselfconsciously introduced Bob Dylan to the world in 1963 and focused awareness on songwriters ranging from Woody Guthrie, Dylan, Phil Ochs, Richard Farina, Tim Hardin, Kris Kristofferson, Mickey Newbury, Dar Williams, Richard Shindell and Steve Earle.

In 2007, Baez received the Grammy's prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award. Her first studio album in five years, "Day After Tomorrow," produced by Earle, is slated for release Sept. 9. Earle, Artist of the Year nominee and previous "Spirit of Americana" recipient, will present the award.