WASHINGTON — An iconoclastic film legend and one of the world’s most enduring music acts headline this year’s Kennedy Center Honors recipients.
Director Francis Ford Coppola and the Grateful Dead will be honored for his lifetime of achievements in the arts, along with jazz trumpeter Arturo Sandoval, blues legend Bonnie Raitt and the legendary Harlem theater The Apollo, which launched generations of Black artists.
This 47th Kennedy Center class will be honored with an evening of tributes, testimonials and performances on December 8 at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington. The ceremony will air on CBS on December 23.
Starting as a folk-infused quintet in 1960s psychedelic-era San Francisco, the Grateful Dead steadily transformed into a cultural phenomenon and one of the most successful touring acts of all time.
Fueled by the carnival atmosphere of the traveling Deadhead fanbase and an ethos that encouraged tape trading and emphasized live performances over studio output, The Dead have spanned multiple generations and remain wildly popular. Lead guitarist and founding member Jerry Garcia died in 1995, but the band continues to tour almost non-stop in multiple incarnations.
“There’s a lot of ingredients to it,” said drummer Mickey Hart, when asked about the music’s longevity. “The fans say the shows feel like home. It gives them that sense of connection and community and joy and love for life and music.”
Currently calling themselves Dead and Company, with guitarist John Mayer taking Garcia’s place, the band is in the middle of a several-month residency at The Sphere in Las Vegas.
Coppola, 85, has established himself as a groundbreaking filmmaker, winning five Academy Awards and building a reputation as a driven artist willing to risk his reputation and finances for his vision. Even after the huge successes of ‘The Godfather’ and a sequel, Coppola nearly drove himself out of business filming ‘Apocalypse Now’, which turned out to be another classic.
Sometimes he wondered if he had ruffled too many powerful feathers along the way to ever receive the Kennedy Center Honors induction.
“I had been eligible for 20 years, so the fact that I never received it made me feel like I might never get it,” said Coppola, who participated in fellow director Martin Scorsese’s induction in 2007. wasn’t going to win, so to hear I was chosen was a surprise and a delight.
Coppola, who has been producing wine from his Northern California vineyard for more than 40 years, also made sure to invite another recipient from Northern California this year.
“And it’s a great treat to be there this year with the Grateful Dead, my colleagues from San Francisco,” he said. “I am very excited and satisfied.”
Sandoval, 74, rose to prominence as a musician in his native Cuba. He played piano and percussion, but specialized in the trumpet. His work brought him into contact with jazz legend Dizzy Gillespie, who championed his music and personally helped him leave Cuba during a tour of Europe in 1990. Shortly after his defection, Sandoval performed at his mentor Gillespie’s Kennedy Center Honors induction .
“Modestly aside, I think I deserve it. I worked so hard for so many years,” Sandoval told The Associated Press. “It’s a huge honor and I feel completely overwhelmed. I have to pinch myself sometimes. I’m just a small farmer from Cuba. God has been so good to me.”
Raitt’s memories of the Kennedy Center Honors date back to the 1970s, when she accompanied her father, Broadway performer John Raitt, as he participated in a tribute to composer Richard Rogers.
“I got to visit the White House and hang out with the Carters,” said Raitt, 74. “I got my first taste of what this weekend really means.”
As an adult performer, Raitt experienced the other side of the Kennedy Center Honors equation: performing as part of tributes to Mavis Staples in 2016 and Buddy Guy in 2012. These performances are often kept secret from the honorees themselves, and Raitt said she is looking ahead. to see who the planners come up with for her tribute.
“I really want to be surprised, and I don’t want to know,” she said.
Over a career spanning 50 years, Raitt has received a plethora of music awards, including 13 Grammys and induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Rolling Stone magazine named her on its list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists and the 100 Greatest Singers of All Time. But Raitt said Kennedy Center Honors status holds a special place because it extends to all aspects of the performing arts, encompassing all forms of music, dance and performance.
“What puts (Kennedy Center Honors) at the top is that it is culture-wide,” she said. “It’s hard for me to even fathom what this means.”
It is extremely rare for the Kennedy Center Honors to select a venue rather than an artist. But the nine decades in which The Apollo served as a breeding ground for generations of black talent has qualified it as an exception.
“It’s certainly not a traditional tribute,” said Michelle Ebanks, president and CEO of the theater, who cited the recent introduction of the show “Sesame Street” as a similar out-of-the-box selection. “We are absolutely thrilled with the honor.”
The Harlem landmark has served as a testing ground for black artists dating back to Billie Holiday, James Brown and Stevie Wonder and extending to modern artists like Lauryn Hill. This year the theater has moved its events to a new venue down the road called The Apollo Stages at the Victoria Theater while the original venue is renovated and expanded.
“It’s more than a theater. It is a cultural touchstone…rooted in the Harlem community,” Ebanks said. “It’s really a recognition of a collective passion. …The Apollo has never stood still in recent decades.”
