The Kennedy Center has announced its inductees for 2024, and they are going very much in the direction of the Grammy Awards.
The only non musical honoree is “The Godfather” director Francis Ford Coppola, whose new movie, “Megalopolis” comes out this fall.
Otherwise, it’s all music, music, music: Bonnie Raitt, the Grateful Dead, Arturo Sandoval, and a tribute to the Apollo Theater in Harlem.
The Kennedy Center is snubbing Broadway yet again, and theater generally. Also, there are no actors from anywhere, not even Holllywood, when so many have been on the waiting list.
Do these musicians deserve the honor? Sure, but this isn’t the Grammy Awards.
Still, with the Dead they’ll get John Mayer and maybe Bob Dylan to perform. But Jerry Garcia has been dead for years, and the Kennedy Center Honors is not about posthumous nods. If it were, think of all the people who’d be eligible.
For The Apollo, this will guarantee Gladys Knight, a lot of classic R&B stars, and they’ll throw in a non sequitur current artist as well. The Apollo is getting ready for a major fundraising campaign to renovate the beloved building, so this will help. This will also bring diversity, so it checks off a KC box.
As for Raitt and Sandoval, they are each truly deserving, although you could see it in separate years.
Coppola is certainly deserving also, for “The Godfather” movies alone. Directors are rarely honored, but I’m sure there’s been a lot of politicking given that “Megalopolis” will be in some kind of Oscar race in December. But it may also have already been a box office flop given its reviews.
Still, the Coppola segment will drag out all the remaining “Godfather” cast, no doubt, and Adam Driver, who’s the star of “Megalopolis.” There will be some nod to Coppola’s winery, which he’s borrowed against heavily for the new film.
But these choices ace out Liza Minnelli, Denzel Washington, Broadway’s Tommy Tune, and dozens more from diverse genres including elder statesmen like Bob Newhart and Alan Alda
You’re really inducting the Grateful Dead over those people? Come on.
What horses were traded, promises made, donations offered? If only the Kennedy Center could speak. It would howl.
