Grateful Dead and Bonnie Raitt will be celebrated on Sunday as some of this year’s recipients of the Kennedy Center Honors.
The celebration is happening at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., with highlights from the ceremony to air Dec. 22 on CBS. So far performers set to honor this year’s recipients have not been announced.
In a Washington Post profile released ahead of the ceremony, The Dead’s Mickey Hart discussed the band’s appeal, noting, “You couldn’t pigeonhole the Grateful Dead. You still can’t.”
“The Grateful Dead is a lot of things,” he added. “The Grateful Dead is a record. The Grateful Dead is mythology. The Grateful Dead is us. The Grateful Dead is a force.”
In her own Washington Post profile, Raitt discussed her love of playing live.
“It’s like a magical exhalation that happens, the exchange between the audience and us,” she says. “Playing live is what drives you. That’s what your purpose is. At the end of the night, I feel like I’ve had my blood changed.”
This year’s celebration will be hosted by Queen Latifah, who received a Kennedy Center Honor in 2023. The other honorees this year are director Francis Ford Coppola and jazz musician Arturo Sandoval, as well as the iconic Harlem venue The Apollo, which will receive a special Honors recognition as an American institution.
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