|
|
- Permanent Link:
- http://dpanther.fiu.edu/dpService/dpPurlService/purl/FI17062600/00001
Notes
- Scope and Content:
- Artist, Amnesty International, Celebrity, Charter 77, Dissent, Facebook, Funeral (Havel), Human Rights, Leaving, Legacy (Havel), Letters to Olga, Morality, Obama, Philosophy, Power of the Powerless, Prague, To the Castle and Back, Trump.
- Biographical:
- Suzanne Vega was born in 1959 and raised in New York City. She is a singer and songwriter, who reached international audiences with her 1987 album Solitude Standing. In 2006, while on tour in the Czech Republic, she was contacted by then-president Václav Havel, who asked her to perform for his birthday. The pair struck up a friendship thereafter, which spanned the last five years of Havel’s life. Havel attended concerts Vega played in both the Czech Republic and New York City, while Vega recalls attending Havel’s last play, Leaving.
Vega describes Havel as having had a “mystique” for her and her peers in New York City around the time of the Velvet Revolution in 1989. She suggests that her conversations with Havel deepened her understanding of human rights, a cause for which Vega has long been an advocate. Vega reflects that the playwright’s life was so inspirational that Havel “could himself be a character in a play.” She commends Havel’s “joyfulness” and counts herself fortunate to have been “part of that great group of musicians and people that were around” the late Czech president.
|
|
