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LOS ANGELES – In a celebration of musical excellence, the Recording Academy honored Chaka Khan, Cher, Carlos Santana, Paul Simon, Fela Kuti, and Whitney Houston with the prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award at the Grammys Special Merit Awards held Saturday night.
“Music has been my prayer, my healing, my joy, my truth,” expressed Khan as she graciously accepted the award. “Through it, I saved my life,” she added, highlighting the profound impact music has had on her journey.
Chaka Khan was the sole Lifetime Achievement honoree present at the intimate gathering at Los Angeles’ Wilshire Ebell Theatre, just a day before the main Grammy Awards ceremony.
Before Khan took the stage, attendees were treated to a short documentary showcasing her illustrious career. The film featured her chart-topping hits with the funk band Rufus and as a solo artist, including classics like the Stevie Wonder-penned “Tell Me Something Good” from 1974, the 1983 anthem “Ain’t Nobody,” 1978’s “I’m Every Woman,” and “I Feel For You,” written by Prince in 1984.
Adorned in a sparkling sea green gown, Khan expressed her gratitude to her collaborators, humorously noting that some of them might not have been entirely sane.
“Over 50 years I am blessed to walk alongside extraordinary artists, musicians, writers, producers and creatives,” she said, pausing before adding, “and cuckoos.”
Family accepted the Lifetime Achievement Awards for the Nigerian Afrobeat legend Kuti, who died in 1997, and the singing superstar Houston, who died in 2012.
“Her voice — that voice! — remains eternal,” Pat Houston, Whitney’s sister-in-law, close friend and longtime manager, said. “Her legacy will live forever.”
Three of his children accepted the award for Kuti, introduced as a “producer, arranger, political radical, outlaw and the father of Afrobeat.” He’s the first African musician to get the award.
“Thank you for bringing our father here,” Femi Kuti said. “It’s so important for us, it’s so important for Africa, it’s so important for world peace and the struggle.”
The audience gave a collective moan of disappointment when academy President Harvey Mason Jr. said Cher wasn’t there.
She spoke in a very short video.
“The only thing I ever wanted to be was a singer. When I was 4 years old I used to run around the house naked, singing into a hair brush,” she said. “Things haven’t changed all that much.”
Santana also spoke on video, after his son, Salvador, accepted his trophy.
“The world is so infected with fear that we need the music and message of Santana to bring hope, courage and joy to heal the world,” Carlos Santana said.
Elton John’s longtime lyricist Bernie Taupin paid tribute to Simon, calling him “the greatest American songwriter alive.”
Taupin was there as one of the recipients of the Grammys Trustees Award, which honors career contributions outside of performing.
Despite co-writing the vast majority of John’s hits, Taupin has somehow never won a competitive Grammy, though he’s nominated for one Sunday.
“I’ve been waiting 57 years for one of these,” he said, looking at his honorary trophy.
Taupin read a list of the songwriting principles he’s always followed. They included “avoid cliches,” “never write songs in cubicles” and “don’t say you’re going to die if she leaves you — because you’re not.”
Eddie Palmieri, a pianist, composer and bandleader who was a great innovator in Latin jazz and rumba, also got a Trustees Award.
Palmieri, who died last year at 88, became the first Latino to win a Grammy Award, in 1975.
Another trustees honoree was Sylvia Rhone, the first Black woman to head a major record label.
John Chowning, whose work as a Stanford professor in the 1960s was essential to the synthesizer sounds that dominated the 1980s, won the Technical Grammy Award.
Jennifer Jimenez, a band director from South Miami Senior High School, won the Grammys Music Educator Award, and “Ice Cream Man” by Raye got the Harry Belafonte Song for Social Change Award.
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