Mimi and Richard Fariña
Mimi Baez Fariña was born 77 years ago today.
Fariña was a singer-songwriter and activist, the youngest of three daughters to a Scottish mother and a Mexican-American physicist, Albert Baez. She was the younger sister of the singer and activist, Joan Baez.
Fariña's father, a physicist affiliated with Stanford University and MIT, moved his family frequently, due to his job assignments, working in places not just in the United States, but internationally. She benefited from dance and music lessons, and took up the guitar, joining the 1960s American folk music revival.
Fariña met novelist, musician and composer Richard Fariña in 1963 when she was 17 years old and married him at 18. The two collaborated on a number of influential folk albums, most notably, Celebrations for a Grey Day (1965) and Reflections in a Crystal Wind (1966), both on Vanguard Records.
After Richard Fariña's 1966 death (on Mimi's 21st birthday) in a motorcycle accident, Mimi married Milan Melvin and continued to perform, sometimes recording and touring with either her sister Joan or the folksinger, Tom Jans, with whom she recorded Take Heart, an album in 1971.
Among the songs she has written is "In the Quiet Morning (For Janis Joplin)," which her sister recorded. The song is included on Joan Baez's Greatest Hits album.
In 1967, Fariña joined a satiric comedy troupe called The Committee. That same year, she and her sister, Joan Baez, were arrested at a peaceful demonstration, where the two were temporarily housed in Santa Rita Jail — personalizing the experience of captivity for her. By 1973, she was asked to accompany her sister, Joan, and B.B. King when they performed for the prisoners in Sing Sing Prison.
Those two experiences led her to a desire to do more for those who are held in institutions. In 1974, Fariña founded Bread and Roses, a nonprofit co-operative organization, designed to bring free music and entertainment to institutions, including jails, hospitals, juvenile facilities and nursing homes. Initially it was active in the San Francisco Bay area, but later, nationally.
It still remains in operation, producing 500 shows each year. The organization's name came from a 1911 poem by James Oppenheim, "Bread and Roses," which is commonly associated with a 1912 garment workers strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts.
Though she continued to sing in her later years, releasing an album in 1985 and performing sporadically, Fariña devoted most of her time to running Bread and Roses.
In the late 1980s, she teamed up with Pete Sears to play a variety of benefit and protest concerts. Many concerts were concerned with human rights issues in Central America, especially the U.S.-backed civil wars in Guatemala and El Salvador. They once set up to play on the abandoned railroad tracks outside Concord Naval Base in California.
Surrounded by military police, Fariña and Sears played a show for people protesting U.S. weapons being shipped to government troops in El Salvador.
In 1986, she took the time to record her own album, Mimi Fariña Solo.
Fariña used her connections with the folksinging community to elicit help in her focus with Bread and Roses, including Pete Seeger, Paul Winter, Odetta, Judy Collins, Taj Mahal, Lily Tomlin, Carlos Santana and Bonnie Raitt.
In 2000 alone, Bread and Roses brought performers to play at more than 500 concerts in 82 institutions.
Fariña died of neuroendocrine cancer, at her home in California, on July 18, 2001, at age 56.
She was also the subject of her sister Joan Baez's 1969 song, "Sweet Sir Galahad."
Here, Fariña joins her sister Joan to perform at Sing Sing Prison in 1973