On March 30, Linda testified on Capitol Hill for the need for increased funding for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). She gave an eloquent speech about how the experiences she had as a child out in the Arizona desert, including an older sister who sparked Linda's love for country music via Hank Williams, helped form a musical career that, as we know, dates all the way back to 1967. She lamented about the fact that most children growing up in America today have only a passive experience in music: "Increasingly, people's experience with music is passive. We delegate our musical expression to professionals. Music cannot be learned without both listening and playing. We need to teach our children to sing their own songs and play their own instruments, not just listen to their iPods. Do we really want our children's musical experience to be limited to the mainstream commercial music that is blared at them continually?"
On April 26, Linda took a very huge risk for herself by performing at the premiere Americana music festival MerleFest in Wilkesboro, N.C with the Mariachi Los Camperos de Nati Cano, and went down far better than anticipated. She didn't necessarily get a standing ovation (after all, the idea of Mexican mariachi music at an Americana festival was far more incongruent than Dylan "going electric" at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965), but she wasn't booed either by the largely non-Latino crowd; and there were more than a few applauding Linda.
And just two weeks ago, on May 9, Linda, along with her longtime co-producer George Massenburg and Motown R&B legend Smokey Robinson, received an honorary degree from the Berklee School of Music in Boston. Among the school's past alumni is lead Dixie Chick Natalie Maines.
In the meantime, here is Linda during her testiomony on Arts Advocacy Day (March 31, 2009):
