JOAN BAEZ ~ Donna Donna ~

Joan Baez ~ DONNA DONNA ~ Joan says: One of the most recent stories about this song is from May, 1989, when I was still in Czechoslovakia, while the Communist government was still well-entrenched. Humanitas International and I had invited some of the leading dissidents to my concert, incuding Vaclav Havel ( who later became the President of Czechlslovkia). Ot was a government-televised concert and police were all over the place. We had people sit with out dissident friends to keep them from being arrested. “I sang and then invited a banned Slovakian musician to the stage where we got the microphones turned off for the first time. When I introduced Havel, the audience went wild. To close the concert I asked the “legitimate singers who performed before me to sing the encore with me. They were very hesitant, but I was able to persuade them. I hit about two notes of “Donna Donna“ when the sound was cut again. But without a microphone in a hall of about 4,000 people we sang &