Joan Chandos Báez (born January 9, 1941) is an American folk singer and songwriter known for her distinctive vocal style as well as her outspoken activism and political views.
Joan Baez was born in Staten Island, New York, into a Quaker family of Mexican, English and Scottish descent. Her father Albert Baez, a physicist, refused lucrative defense industry jobs, probably influencing Joan's political activism in the American and international civil rights and anti-war movements of the 1960s to the present.