Remembering Mimi Fariña and her lasting impact on society's most isolated members
by Julie Engebretson
On any city bus tour carrying Bay Area visitors around San Francisco, attention to architecture generally hovers over the Golden Gate Bridge. Granted, this 4,200-foot-long bridge is no doubt an architectural marvel with the capacity to transport thousands of people everyday. But even greater still are those rare forms of architecture––forgotten on the city bus tour––with the capacity to move people everyday. More than 33 years ago, singer and songwriter Mimi Fariña was able to put a vision and a passion for people and performance to use, establishing Bread & Roses, an organization that would promote social awareness through more than 500 free, live performances every year for children and adults in hospitals, recovery centers, convalescent homes, AIDS treatment facilities, prisons and other institutions throughout the Bay Area and beyond.
Artful beginnings
Born in 1945, art ran through Fariña's veins. From a young age, her mother encouraged Fariña and her older sisters, Pauline Baez and folk legend, Joan Baez, in their artistic endeavors, emphasizing music and dance. Mimi's earliest love was for dancing. Her older sister, Joan, has said of Mimi, “She learned to dance almost before she learned to walk.” In addition to performance, all three Baez sisters were encouraged to learn instruments as children. Joan and Pauline showed promise with the ukelele, while Mimi excelled at the violin. The family moved often and the children's formal education was broken and patchy at best. But creativity was Mimi's saving grace. She was quoted as saying: “I was good at the violin and I was a good dancer and I knew it … which was such a relief from feeling incompetent. When I danced or played music I could be who I really was.”
On Thanksgiving of 1972 Mimi joined Joan and B.B. King in a concert at Sing Sing Prison in New York. She was struck and deeply moved, witnessing the healing exchange that occurs between performer and audience. Not long after, she was allowed to experience this exchange again, when invited to perform at the halfway house that her cousin managed; the experience differed so greatly from performances in bars and clubs before crowds of drunken and distracted strangers. This realization was a seed planted. Mimi began to seriously consider the development of a stage for artists to bring the healing of live entertainment to people isolated from society. In 1972, Bread & Roses was born.
“Action is the antidote to despair” -Joan Baez
The name Bread & Roses was taken from a poem by the same title, written by James Oppenheim. The name emphasizes a recognition that true health and healing goes beyond medicine for the sick or drink for the thirsty. In this name lies some understanding that there are needs that cannot be quantified by square feet of housing or pounds of food. A message from Neil and Pegi Young, benefit performers who have donated their talents in the past to Bread & Roses, elaborates on the meaning behind this Bay Area organization's unique name:
“In most institutions those we love are cared for in conventional ways. They are fed and bathed, kept warm and medicated, and provided the continuum of services that modern society defines as care.
But a medicated child is not necessarily a nurtured child, a steady rhythm on a heart monitor does not measure loneliness, and a subdued teen is not an inspired teen…
Through song, dance, story and more they enhance basic care by generously giving the healing gifts of love, human contact, inspiration and hope.”
Explaining the mission and purpose of her organization, Mimi herself once recalled witnessing “a man who had had a stroke and hadn't spoken for weeks, and when the performer sang a hymn which he must have known, he suddenly began singing along, in key, knowing all the words. He stunned the nurses … These are the very miraculous treatments that are proof to us that the music gets through on a level where the talking and the teaching and the medication may not have the same capability.”
Since its inception, Bread & Roses has produced more than 10,000 free, live performances by amateur and professional artists. On the long list of celebrity performers are: Carlos Santana, Robin Williams, Willie Nelson, Tracy Chapman, Leonard Cohen, Bonnie Raitt and many more.
“You don't get to choose how you're going to die. Or when. You can decide how you're going to live now.”
-Joan Baez
Every now and again, we are allowed a glimpse at what social change could be. Mimi Fariña, through her work with Bread & Roses, has provided just such a glimpse. She devoted herself to the organization through November of 1999, when she was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer affecting the endocrine system. Mimi passed away on July 18, 2001, at her Mt. Tamalpais home in Mill Valley, California.
Joan Baez said of her sister, she “filled empty souls with hope and song. She held the aged and forgotten in her light. She reminded prisoners that they were human beings.” In spite of great sadness at the time of her sister's death, Joan added, “knowing that her life's work will remain with us and flourish helps bring solace.”
Mimi's work has indeed continued to flourish since her passing. Joining Bread & Roses as its executive director in 2000, Cassandra Flipper has served to carry out the organization's original mission, as the list of performers and performance venues continues to lengthen. For more information about Bread & Roses, including donation and audition information, please visit www.breadandroses.com.