04/30/2026
Happy birthday to our founder the late Mimi Farina who would have been 81 on April 30. We think about Mimi every day as her great legacy of Bread & Roses lives on. We are now in our 51st year and still bring over 400 concerts every year to isolated Bay Area folks. Mimi is a beacon of bright light whose example continues to inspire so many talented performers to share their best gifts with those who need uplifting most. We will look to the stars in the sky tonight and think of Mimi with love and admiration for the nonprofit she created that continues on today…
1969....Mimi Farina.
Big Sur Folk Festival
Margarita Mimi Baez Fariña (April 30, 1945 – July 18, 2001) was an American singer-songwriter and activist, the youngest of three daughters to a white mother and Mexican-American physicist Albert Baez. She was the younger sister of the singer and activist Joan Baez.
Fariña died of neuroendocrine cancer at her home in Mill Valley, California on July 18, 2001, at age 56. A memorial service was held on August 7, 2001 at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. 1,200 people attended.
The life of Mimi Fariña is partially chronicled in David Hajdu's book Positively 4th Street. She is alluded to in the Armistead Maupin novel Tales of the City, set in San Francisco in the 1970s, and she appeared in a cameo role in the 1993 miniseries based on the novel.
She is referred to by Carol Ward (Catherine O'Hara) in the U.S. television series Six Feet Under, in which it is stated that Fariña had been involved with the production of the (fictitious) Pack Up Your Sorrows: The Mimi Fariña Story. She also was the subject of sister Joan Baez' 1969 song "Sweet Sir Galahad".
She appears in the 2012 documentary Greenwich Village: Music That Defined a Generation and the 2023 documentary Joan Baez: I Am a Noise.
