SunStar January 29, 2021 In September 1979, “No Nukes: The Muse Concerts for a Non-Nuclear Future” was held in Madison Square Garden by the Musicians United for Safe Energy (Muse) collective. The organizers were Jackson Browne, Graham Nash, Bonnie Raitt and John Hall and featured James Taylor, Carly Simon, Crosby Stills & Nash and Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band, among others. It is more than 40 years since that historic event, and all those musicians and many other peacemakers must be rejoicing as the United Nations’ (UN) Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) came into effect on Jan. 29, 2021.
Adopted on July 7, 2017 during the UN conference, 122 states voted in favor of the treaty and 51 have since ratified it. It is therefore now in force. But the problem is that countries that have most of the nuclear warheads, namely the US and Russia, have rejected the treaty. Other non-signatories include China, France, Britain, Pakistan, India, Nor
Raitt grew up in a musical household, but began to take music seriously in college in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her plan when she arrived at school, as an African Studies major, was to travel to Tanzania, where President Julius Nyerere “was creating a government based on democracy and socialism. “I wanted to help undo the damage that Western colonialism had done to native cultures around the world,” she told Oprah.com.
While she was at school, however, she met the legendary blues promoter Dick Waterman. Before long, she took a leave of absence from school to go on tour with
The Rolling Stones at the age of 20 – and the rest was history. A remarkable performer and incredible instrumentalist, it was her never-ending versatility that launched her career in the ’70s and ’80s before she achieved mainstream stardom in the ’90s and, eventually, a place in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.