21st July, 2022
The John F. Kennedy Centre for the Performing Arts announced Thursday that the Irish rock band U2, along with actor George Clooney, singers Gladys Knight and Amy Grant and composer Tania León are being honoured this year.
The centre generally honours five people annually for influencing American culture through the arts. But bands and other groups sometimes get honours, too.
Disco-funk band Earth, Wind & Fire was the most recent, in 2019, the year the long-running children’s TV show “Sesame Street” was honoured. The Eagles were honoured in 2016 and Led Zeppelin in 2012.
Kennedy Center President Deborah F. Rutter said in an interview that her group has “worked really hard to think about ‘Are we including all of the performing arts?’” as it hands out its awards.
She singled out Grant’s music in particular as a different genre being represented in the honours this year.
“We’ve had gospel before. We’ve had plenty of R&B and soul. … We’ve had country music, but we haven’t necessarily had Amy Grant and Christian pop in the same way,” she said, comparing Grant’s inclusion to the center’s honoring of LL Cool J in 2017, the first time the honorees included a hip-hop artist.
This is the 45th year of the honours, which will include a gala performance Dec. 4 in Washington featuring top entertainers.
The show will be broadcast on CBS at a later date.
Rutter said the honour is “not about one work that happens to be popular this year. Or one movie. Or one piece of choreography.
“It’s “about lifetime achievement.”