Folk artist Richie Havens will perform on August 14 his legendary 1969 performance of "Freedom" at the original Woodstock Music & Art Fair to commemorate the 40-year anniversary of the original Woodstock festival.
The veteran singer-songwriter will perform "Freedom" live at noon on August 14. The event will be held at the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts on the original festival site in Bethel, N.Y.
Havens frequently has appeared at Woodstock anniversary celebrations on the former Yasgur farm -- including 1999's A Day in the Garden festival -- and he tells Billboard.com he still cherishes the memory of his Woodstock experience.
"I got up there and felt the whole place rise to the accounting and visibility of ourselves," recalls Havens, who's currently touring to promote his latest album, 2008's "Nobody Left to Crown." "All types of music went on that stage those three days, and all of them had the sense of what was needed -- and what's still needed in terms of the information we'd like to latch onto and keep going."
At roughly 5 p.m. Aug. 15, 1969, Havens opened the festival, despite initially being scheduled to go on fifth. He performed for nearly three hours after being called back for encore after encore. After running out of material, Havens improvised a song based on the old spiritual "Motherless Child" that became "Freedom," a song now considered to be the anthem of a generation.
(Xinhua/Agencies April 23, 2009)
