Baez's last songs

At 77, Joan Baez is the elder stateswoman of protest music. She became a counterculture icon of the 1960s, singing Bob Dylan songs and marching with Martin Luther King Jr. She has continued championing causes through the years, including women's rights, gay rights and gun control.

Her new album Whistle Down The Wind is her first in 10 years. But there are songs here that suggest an awareness of an encroaching end. Just as David Bowie and Leonard Cohen dropped hints of mortality in their last albums, Baez sings in Last Leaf, written by Tom Waits: "I'm the last leaf on the tree/They say I got staying power/Here on the tree/But I've been here since Eisenhower/And I've outlived even he."

In other songs, she reflects on gun violence, wars and political disenchantment, her still lustrous voice a salve in these uncertain times.