SINCE the late 1950s Joan Baez has used her unique soprano to enchant audiences, bring tears to their eyes and whip up enough emotion to inspire social and political change.

Six decades later, the world around this interpretive folk singer has changed, but she hasn’t.

The musician-cum-activist paid a visit to the North-East where she played to a captivated crowd at The Sage Gateshead on Saturday, May 26.

Owing to her age of 77 and long-established career – her first, self-titled album was released in 1960 – it was no surprise the audience was predominantly made up of her contemporaries.

Nevertheless, her messages were as relevant as ever.

Accompanied at times by her two-man band, including son Gabe Harris, plus a young and extraordinary backing singer, she performed hits old and new which spoke of social injustice and called for change.

From her latest album, Whistle Down the Wind, she sang The President Sang Amazing Grace, a piece written by Zoe Mulford about Barack Obama’s visit to a Charleston church following a mass shooting which saw a white supremacist claim the lives of nine African Americans.

She dedicated old flame Bob Dylan’s The Times They Are a-Changin’ to the anti-gun movement borne out of one of the many school massacres in the United States this year.

And she finished with a rendition of John Lennon’s Imagine.

The audience, which included Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, was transported back to the days of Woodstock as she revisited her setlist with Earl Robinson’s Joe Hill, we bristled with northern pride as she sang The Animals’ House of the Rising Sun, and emotions stirred with her very own masterpiece, Diamonds and Rust.

She may be nearing the end of her last extensive, world-wide Fare Thee Well Tour, but it is clear Baez still has a lot to say – and we are all still here to listen.