I think Cintia is right to speak of her work connecting with the´feeling of our people:¨ I would go further, though, and suggest that her works offer any tourist who can find the ´time to stand and stare´ might come to understand a little more of Lanzarote and Canary Island tradition and what life was like for previous gnerations here, before the planes brought the visitors here. Cintia´s installations speak of the dignity of the men who caught food out on an often volatile ocean, and she captures the quietude of the working men who wrote poetry too. and the competetiveness of the children who had to make their own sport and games on Lanzarote.

With sometimes as many as four great instrumentaliss on the stage the music delivered tonight was brilliantly but tenderly played. No showmanship, no one-upmanship. Duende, like Jools Holland, conducted all this almost invisibly. He seemed to be a character comfortable working amongst this musical excellence, sure in the knowledge that his writing and performing fit in perfectly.

The Woody Guthrie prize has been awarded over the past few years to luminaries like Springsteen, Joan Baez, (left) . John Mellencamp, Kris Kristofferson, Mavis Staples and Pete Seeger. “We hope that the Woody Guthrie Prize will shed an inspirational light on those who have decided to use their talents for the common good rather than for personal gain,” says Woody Guthrie’s daughter Nora. “With his dry wit, Woody always preferred to call himself a ‘commonist.’ His quote from John Steinbeck’s character, Tom Joad, says it pretty simply: ‘Wherever children are hungry and cry, wherever people ain’t free, wherever men are fightin’ for their rights, that’s where I’m gonna be.’