Greeting from Leonard Cohen to Polar Music Prize Laureate Emmylou Harris

„Dear Emmylou Harris,

Thank you for singing that song of mine.

You brought it to a place I could never get to.

And thank you for putting into the crowded air,

and establishing it there for all to feel,

the beauty, the dignity

and the loneliness of America itself.

In the midst of all the bewildering directions

your voice takes us home.

With deep gratitude,

Leonard Cohen“

Emmylou Harris thank you speech at the Polar Music Prize ceremony

The Polar Music Prize 2015 is awarded to the artist Emmylou Harris from Birmingham, Alabama. No one in the history of popular music has harmonised like Emmylou Harris. For five decades she has embellished other artists‘ recordings by adding vocal parts that did not exist in the melodies. But it is as an artist in her own right that she has made the greatest contribution. The music of Emmylou Harris contains the history and topography of the entire American continent. Her voice follows the contours of the American landscape, from the highest peaks to the endless prairie. Weather, soil and colour, it can all be perceived in her music. As she sings in one of the best of her own compositions, she is a red dirt girl from a red dirt town. Emmylou Harris has also used her position as a musician to work for feminism, animal rights and the care of people affected by war. Emmylou Harris makes the world bigger and smaller, more valuable and more beautiful.