#classicrockforpoc

Joan Chandos Baez is a Mexican singer/songwriter born on January 9, 1941. She was born on Staten Island, New York to a Scottish mother and a Mexican father and was unfortunately subject to racial slurs by her peers because of her Mexican heritage. Her passion for music began when she was given a ukulele as a teen and after seeing Pete Seeger live, she found herself invested in folk music. In college, she began to play at clubs in Massachusetts where she met folk enthusiasts Bob Gibson and Odetta (Odetta being one of her primary influences). She was then invited to play at the Newport Folk Festival in 1959 and declined a deal with Columbia Records to pursue a career with Vanguard Records. Both her self-titled debut album and follow-up album went gold in the early 1960′s as well as her succeeding live albums. Baez is also credited in helping Bob Dylan gain popularity during this time. During the 60′s and 70′s, Joan began to produce activist music as well. Her songs would touch on the Bangledesh Liberation War, the Vietnam War, and the Civil Rights Movement. Baez continues being an activist to this day as she has spoken out against the Iraq War, and is a supporter of LGBT rights. Joan Baez currently resides in California. There she spends much of her time in her own treehouse, meditating, writing, and being close to nature.

Joan Armatrading (b. December 9th, 1950) is a singer, songwriter, and guitarist. She was born on the Caribbean island of St. Kitts in Basseterre and moved to Birmingham, England at 7 years old. When she was 14, she first began to write songs and taught herself guitar. Through performing her songs, Armatrading met songwriter Pam Nestor and the two would go on to work on Armatrading’s debut album Whatever’s For Us. After appearing on TV and Radio shows, her  jazz infused album entitled Joan Armatrading shot into the Top 20 with the help of the hit “Love and Affection.” Armastading would then continue with her jazz styling with the follow up albums Show Some Emotion and To the Limit. Other major hits of Armatrading’s career include, “Willow”, “Down to Zero”, and “Kissin’ and a Hugging.” During the 70′s she enjoyed international success and began the 80′s with a boom by releasing Me Myself I as well as Walk Under Ladders and The Key. Me Myself I would become her most popular album while all three albums charted on the Top Ten in the UK. Currently, Joan Armatrading continues to make music with her latest album Starlight been released in 2012. She embarked on her last major tour in October of 2013.

Marianne Joan Elliot-Said (b. July 3, 1957) or better known as Poly Styrene was the leader of the British punk rock band, X-Ray Spex. Poly Styrene was born in Bromley, England to a Scottish-Irish mother, who raised her alone, and a Somali father. After running away from home and gaining inspiration from seeing a Sex Pistols concert, Styrene decided to form her own punk band and so was the creation of X-Ray Spex in 1976. She soon became the public face of the band and with her braces, fashion, and heritage, she refused to be boxed into the conventional image of a punk rock front person. Poly Styrene was firmly against the 70′s archetype of female rock artists as sex symbols and stated that “If anybody tried to make me one (a sex symbol) I’d shave my head tomorrow”. Her punk feminist attitude led to songs such as “Oh Bondage, Up Yours!”, a song that became an anthem for the riot-grrl movement that spoke out on consumerism and materialists. X-Ray Spex debut album “Germfree Adolescents” follows this attitude as well. Poly Styrene left X-Ray Spex in 1979 and released her album “Translucence” in 1980. Sadly, she died on April 25, 2011 from breast cancer and is survived by her daughter Celeste Bell-Dos Santos.

Ritchie Valens, born Richard Steven Valenzuela on May 13, 1941, was a 50′s rock and roll superstar. Born in Pacoima, California to Mexican parents, Valens was raised listening to Mexican mariachi music and flamenco. Soon, he learned how to play the trumpet, drums, and guitar, even teaching himself how to play a right-handed guitar despite being left-handed. Ritchie Valens was then signed to Del-Fi Records and dropped out of high school at 16 to focus on his career. After releasing singles such as “Come On, Let’s Go”, “Donna”, and of course, “La Bamba”, Valens went on to perform at venues with other rock and roll pioneers like Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, and Jackie Wilson. Ritchie Valens was traveling with Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper, and other musicians on the “Winter Dance Party” tour when all three were killed in a plane crash on February 3, 1959. At 17, Valens was the youngest to die in the tragedy. 

Bianca Jagger (b. May 2nd 1945) is a Human Rights Activist, model, and 70′s It-Girl. Born in Managua, Nicaragua to an import-export merchant, Bianca lived a relatively privileged life until the age of ten, when her parents divorced and Bianca and her two siblings lived under the wing of her mother’s low income as a restaurant owner. Despite her family’s lack of money, Bianca always excelled as a student and notably became fluent in five languages including her native tongue of Spanish- “I promised myself I was never going to suffer that [my mother’s] fate”, she later said of her achievements as a teenager. Bianca’s mother, Dora, strongly opposed the Nicaraguan Somoza regime that dominated the country for 43 years. At eighteen, Jagger, while demonstrating against the student massacres organized by the national guard during the Nicaraguan civil war, was tear gassed and arrested violently by the regime. Following this incident, she chose to take a scholarship to study political science at the Paris Institute of Political Science. Eventually, Bianca wound up in the UK, where she worked as a model for several years before meeting Mick Jagger of The Rolling Stones, whom she married in 1971. The couple have one child (Bianca’s only), Jade, and a severely rocky marriage. They would divorce in 1978. Bianca was heavily influential in the world of 70′s fashion and glamour, and would become one of Andy Warhol’s muses of the seventies. In 1972, following the Nicaraguan earthquake which shook her home city of Managua, she founded the Bianca Jagger Human Rights Foundation, which she continues to run. Jagger is heavily active in international natural disaster relief and women’s rights, most notably.