Fariña, Richard George

Brooklyn, 1937 – Carmel, California, 1966. Folk singer songwriter, novelist and poet.

Born in New York, of Galician origins. According to some sources, his father Liborio Ricardo Fariñas was a Galician migrant to Cuba or Cuban-born of Galician origins. His mother was Irish.

Although unknown to the general public, Fariña was part of Greenwich Village’s countercultural movement in the 1960s. As an American folk singer, he frequented the company of Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. He was married to Mimi Baez (Joan’s sister), with whom he published three records: Celebrations for a Gray Day, Reflections in a Crystal Wind (both of 1965) and Memories (posthumous in 1968). His song “Pack Up Your Sorrows” was recorded by the likes of Joan Baez and Johnny Cash. As a writer, he published two novels that can be associated with the “Beat Generation”: Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me (1966) and Long Time Coming and a Long Time Gone (posthumous, 1969).

He passed away prematurely in a motorcycle accident in California (Sources: David Barnett, “Richard Fariña: lost genius who bridged the gap between beats and hippies”; Encyclopaedia Britannica; Ed, Whitelock, “Plainsong. Reinventing Richard: the Songs of Richard Farina”; Santiago Romero, “El padrino gallego de Dylan”).