 |
| Joan Baez apoyada en la pared del histórico bunker del Metropole Hotel en Hanoi, donde se refugió en diciembre de 1972 de los bombardeos americanos B-52. In this March 31, 2013 photo released by Metropole Hanoi, Joan Baez stands with her back to the wall of an historic bomb shelter under the Metropole Hotel in Hanoi, Vietnam. The folk singer and social activist spent a few days recently reliving her past, returning to Hanoi for the first time since December 1972, when American B-52s were raining bombs on it. (AP Photo/Metropole Hanoi) |
Joan Baez, la cantante estadounidense de folk ha vuelto a
Vietnam, a Hanoi. A la ciudad a la que viajó hace 40 años en una misión de paz
y al lugar en el que se resguardó por culpa de la guerra, un búnquer al que ha
dedicado uno de sus lamentos.
“Fue la primera vez en que me enfrentaba a la muerte,
a la mortalidad, fue terrible desde una perspectiva cósmica. Sabes que todo el
mundo acaba muriendo pero siempre piensas que no te va a tocar a ti. El hecho
de que haya estado tan cerca de morir tantas veces me ha cambiado”, decía Baez.
La cantante de 72 años fue, en los finales de los
sesenta, una ferviente activista contra la guerra de Vietnam. Un conflicto que
moldeó su personalidad y que siempre estará en su memoria y en las canciones
que estremecieron a toda una generación.
Fuente:
Euronews
 |
| In this April 6, 2013 photo, Joan Baez laughs while speaking to former staff at the Metropole Hanoi in Hanoi, Vietnam. The folk singer and social activist visited Vietnam recently for the first time since she came to the country in December 1972 as part of an American peace delegation. (AP Photo/Dinh Hau) Joan Baez ríe mientras escucha al personal del Hotel Metropole Hanoi en Hanoi, en su regreso a Vietnamdesde Diciembre de 1972. |
Joan Baez returns to past in Vietnam,
interview by Chris Brummit, Apr. 10, 2013
 |
| In this April 5, 2013 photo, Joan Baez speaks to a
reporter in her hotel room in Hanoi, Vietnam. The folk singer and socialactivist visited Vietnam recently for the first time since she came to the
country in December 1972 as part of an American peace delegation. Baez painted the
picture of the young boy during her recent stay in Hanoi. (AP Photo/Dinh Hau)
Joan Baez en la habitación de su hotel hablando con el periodista. La cantantey pacifista volvió a Vietnam por primera vez desde diciembre de 1972, cuando
viajó como parte de una delegación americana por la paz. |
HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — At 72, Joan Baez is not short of
events to anticipate: She has her mother's 100th birthday party, a tour of
Australia and a new passion — painting — to explore. But the folk singer and
social activist has spent a few days reliving her past, returning to Hanoi for
the first time since December 1972, when American B-52s were raining bombs on
it.
Each night, Baez would scurry to the bunker underneath
her government-run hotel, her peace mission to North Vietnam interrupted by the
reality of war. With the blast waves making her night dress billow, she would
tremble until dawn, sometimes singing, sometimes praying.
"That was my first experience in dealing with my
own mortality, which I thought was a terrible cosmic arrangement," Baez
said last week in an interview in the same hotel in the Vietnamese capital,
taking a break from a painting-in-progress on an easel beside her. "It is
OK for everyone else to die, but surely there was another plan for me?"
she joked.
The U.S. launched its heaviest bombing raids since
World War II against targets in Communist North Vietnam, which was fighting to
overthrow the U.S.-backed government of South Vietnam. The bombardment, which
mostly targeted Hanoi, lasted 11 days over Christmas in 1972.
Baez traveled to Vietnam then with three other
Americans to see firsthand the effects of the war and deliver mail to U.S.
prisoners being held in Hanoi. Many at home were angry at her trip because they
believed it gave support to America's enemy. After the war, Baez spoke outagainst human rights abuses by the victorious Communist government.
Baez stayed this time in the same hotel where she and
the rest of the peace delegation were put up 40 years ago by the North
Vietnamese government, which was happy to welcome those willing to listen to
its side of the story. The building is now more luxurious, and goes under a
different name, The Metropole Hanoi, but much of it remains the same.
She was quick to visit the recently unearthed bunker
that sits just beyond one of the hotel bars. Soon after descending, she put her
hand to the cement wall, closed her eyes and sang out the African-American
spiritual, "Oh Freedom," a song she often sang during civil rights
rallies in the United States in the 1960s.
"I felt this huge warmth," she said of her
feelings. "It was gratitude. I thought I would feel all these wretched
things about a bunker but it was love that it took care of me."
On her return from Vietnam in 1973, she released an
experimental album, "Where Are You Now, My Son?" The record features
taped, spoken-word recordings taken from the bunker and the hotel and the
sounds of Hanoi, including air-raid sirens and dropping bombs. Over a piano
accompaniment, Baez sings of her time in Hanoi, including the Christmas
celebrations in the hotel lobby and morning trips to see the devastation left
by the American bombs.
Baez's time trip to Vietnam is just one part of a life
that blazes through the cultural and political history of the United States.
She began her musical career in the folk clubs of
Cambridge, where in 1961 she met Bob Dylan, who at that time was little known
while she was a rising folk star. They had a high-profile romantic and musical
relationship for a few years. Known mostly for singing other people's songs,
she has recorded more than 50 albums, mostly recently a 2008 record that was
produced by Steve Earle.
Baez has always placed her social activism ahead of
her musical career, a commitment in part fostered by parents' conversion to
Quakerism when she was a child. A pacifist, she was a leading voice in the
civil rights movement and the anti-Vietnam War protest. She has supported
scores of campaigns across the United States dealing with poverty, racism,
environmental degradation and the wars in Iraq, as well as oversea causes.
She was on a private trip to Vietnam this time but
visited a local international school where she sang and spoke to the children.
She reminded them of her first act of civil disobedience as a 16-year-old when
she refused to go home during an air-raid drill from her school in California.
Asked how she keeps going as an activist, she spoke of the importance of
personal "little victories" to set against the inevitable "big
defeats" such as climate change and the unchecked pace of arms sales
around the world, but also spoke of her need now to stay at home with her
mother.
Baez had always shunned party politics, but in 2008
made an exception for Barack Obama. One year into his second term as U.S.
president, she now says she is unlikely to do so again. "In some ways I'm
disappointed, but in some ways it was silly to expect more," she said.
"If he had taken his brilliance, his eloquence, his toughness and not run
for office he could have led a movement. Once he got in the Oval Office he
couldn't do anything."
To a question on the limits of her pacifism — or as
she says "the what-if-someone-is-going-to-shoot-your-grandma"
scenario — she replies:
"Anybody who says they would never do this in any situation would probably have to check themselves, but for the way I lived my life and the way I plan to live my life does not include violence," she said. "The longer you practice nonviolence and the meditative qualities of it that you will need, the more likely you are to do something intelligent in any situation."
"Anybody who says they would never do this in any situation would probably have to check themselves, but for the way I lived my life and the way I plan to live my life does not include violence," she said. "The longer you practice nonviolence and the meditative qualities of it that you will need, the more likely you are to do something intelligent in any situation."
She said America should have not responded with
violence after the 9/11 attacks.
"People say if 'we have tried everything' but
they haven't really tried anything, because they really want to clobber
(something)," she said. "It is what we know, it is what is familiar —
revenge and that stuff."
Baez still tours the globe, but is now slowing down —
just two monthlong tours this year compared to her previous three.
But it's painting now that really fires her. She has
been at it for just eight months. The acrylic in the hotel in Hanoi of a young
Vietnamese boy against an orange background is her first work that has ever
been framed.
"I have literally switched my interest in music
to painting, which is convenient because it's been 53 years and it's not that
easy to sing now," she said. "People wouldn't know it, but the voice
goes down and there is huge pressure to keep it up and it means a lot more
vocalizing and a lot more concentration. I'm really ready to move on."
Baez got in contact with the hotel after seeing media
reports of the bunker being unearthed. She gave friends of hers visiting Hanoi
in December a signed copy of "Where Are You Now, My Son?" with the
instructions they should give it to the hotel management if "they are the
right people" and, if they weren't, to bring it home again.
They handed it over to Metropole general manger Kai
Speth, who led the hunt for the shelter and is proud of the hotel's history. He
gave Baez's friends a book about the hotel with a note to Baez saying he would
love to welcome her back. In February, she emailed saying she would like to
come. Less than two months later she was walking through the door.
"I don't believe in coincidences," said
Baez. "Something in me was ready to come back and apparently hadn't been
up until now."
On the Saturday before her flight left, Baez shared
tales of life of Hanoi under American attack and the hotel's history with
former staff, including its hairdresser and general manager. Many of them were
on double duty: digging graves for the victims of the bombing as well as
serving the hotel guests.
The ex-general manager gave her an embroidered bag,
which she said she would use to carry the soaps she planned to steal from the
hotel. Housekeeper Tieu Phuong said she remembered Baez staying at the hotel.
She also remembered seeing some American pilots, who were released from Hanoi
jail at the end of the war, staying at the hotel before flying home and
thinking "they looked so nice, how could they bomb our country?"
Under the hazy spring sun, Baez took her hand and
tried to explain: "It's so true; they were just kids, they were just
following orders."
Fuente: AP
Abril 2013
Follow Chris Brummitt on Twitter at
twitter.com/cjbrummitt
