Yahoo! Music, Jul 19, 2001 7:00 pm PDT
(7/19/01, 7 p.m. ET) -- Folk singer and social activist Mimi Farina died at her home in Marin County, California, on Wednesday (July 18) at the age of 56, following a two-year battle with neuroendocrine cancer. Farina and her sister singer Joan Baez were considered folk-music royalty in the '60s. Farina recorded several hits as a solo artist and with husband, singer-songwriter and novelist Richard Farina, whom she married in 1963. Richard Farina was killed in a motorcycle accident in 1966.
Mimi Farina devoted most of her time to charitable work. In 1974, she founded the San Francisco-based Bread & Roses, a charity organization devoted to putting on musical concerts in hospitals, mental institutions, and prisons. Several of the benefit concerts, featuring some of the biggest names in folk and pop music, were recorded and later released.
At the time of her passing, Farina was surrounded by friends and family, including Baez, who said of her younger sister, "Mimi filled empty souls with hope and song. She reminded prisoners that they were human beings with names and not just numbers. The devastation I feel at losing her is unbearable."
Singer-songwriter Pete Seeger recalled a highlight of Mimi Farina's career as a performer: "[It was] an extraordinary summer day in 1965 at Newport, when she and Richard had the audience of 6,000 on their feet in the midst of a downpour. I was backstage. Mimi and Richard and their guitar and dulcimer were protected, but the people were drenched, tearing off their shirts and dancing, totally enthralled by the music." A public ceremony honoring Farina is scheduled for August 7 at San Francisco's Grace Cathedral.
-- Sue Falco, New York
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