Leonard Cohen's music and poetry celebrated by older and younger generations at festival

Transcript

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Geoff Bennett: In death, Leonard Cohen is having a rebirth. The legendary singer is being remembered by older and younger generations alike for his timeless music.

Special correspondent Mike Cerre went to the annual Leonard Cohen Festival recently to hear why.

It’s part of our arts and culture series, Canvas.

(Music)

Mike Cerre: Singer, poet, lover, monk, Leonard Cohen still very much an enigma for his longtime faithful following and a new generation of converts, just now discovering him.

Man: Hey. Welcome to the San Francisco Leonard Cohen Festival.

Man: How are you? Glad to be here.

Man: Would you like a program?

Mike Cerre: Since Leonard Cohen’s death in 2016, there has been no shortage of tribute shows, music compilations, and interpretations of his work. This annual three-day San Francisco Leonard Cohen Festival features his music and his poetry performed by local musicians and poets, many of whom never got to experience him in life.

Clay Eugene Smith, Director, San Francisco Leonard Cohen Festival: After Leonard passed, I think people are eager to keep his memory alive and the passion that he brought to his words and poetry and music. And it’s a little cathartic to revisit it annually.

There’s so much comedy and humor in what he says.

Mike Cerre: Clay Eugene Smith started the festival in 2018, soon after Leonard Cohen’s death at age 80. He also performs in it, with an a cappella men’s choir, sporting Cohen’s signature fedoras and suits, whose repertoire is exclusively Leonard Cohen music.

Calling themselves the Conspiracy of Beards, they have been performing at clubs around the San Francisco Bay Area for more than two decades.

(Music)

Mike Cerre: They held impromptu memorial concerts at local transit stations the night Cohen died.

Clay Eugene Smith: His passion for poetry, his words, asking questions, a little bit of religion, a little bit of politics, diving deep into those things and not having all the answers.

Mike Cerre: Their sister a cappella chorus, a Conspiracy of Venus, highlighted Cohen’s collection of love songs, originating from his poetry, like most of his music did.

Leonard Cohen, Musician: If I knew where the good songs came from, I’d go there more often.

(Music)

Genny Lim, Poet: I see him mainly as a poet of lovers, a troubadour of broken hearts.

Mike Cerre: Genny Lim came of age in the ’60s and ’70s listening and performing Leonard Cohen’s music as an aspiring folk singer herself.

Equally inspired by Cohen’s poetry, she became a poet instead and is currently San Francisco’s official poet laureate.

(Singing)

(Cheering)

Genny Lim: What makes him so special, his songs are like journals of his life. And because they’re so deeply personal and intimate, they become universal, because everyone can identify with his struggles, his conflicts, his love affairs, his heartbreaks, his grappling with his spirituality, and his self-criticism as a human being.

Sharon Robinson, Musician: Writing songs with someone is an intimate process. You have to shed the ego, take risks. Having been invited into Leonard’s tower of song, I got to know him well.

Mike Cerre: Sharon Robinson was a co-songwriter on Leonard Cohen’s albums. She traveled with him on his first international tour, starting as a backup singer with his band and played with him on his last.

Since his death, she has created her one-woman show of Leonard Cohen’s music, writings, and friendship.

Sharon Robinson: Well, he was mysterious and enigmatic, but I never let him know that. I always just treated him as a regular guy. Somehow, from the beginning, we had a rapport that was kind of just an automatic thing.

He’s said many times that he can spend years on a song. I feel very privileged to have been given these words to write music, these words that Leonard had worked on for years.

Mike Cerre: Filmmakers Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine documented the making of “Hallelujah,” Cohen’s most popular song, with the recent film “Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, A Journey, A Song.”

Dan Geller, Filmmaker: I think there is something about that song in particular that spans so many different considerations in Leonard’s life, his philosophical, religious, and sexual complications that are evoked in the song and using it as a way into his mind.

Woman: That record album never came out in the States, did it?

Leonard Cohen: No. Columbia Records refused to put it out.

Mike Cerre: Rejected by his record company, Cohen eventually self-published “Hallelujah.” The film also covers Cohen’s three-year sabbatical from his music career to study as a Buddhist monk, while other artists’ versions of “Hallelujah” made it a hit and one of pop music’s most copied songs.

Dayna Goldfine, Filmmaker: So many different artists were covering it, that — and it was showing up in generation after generations animated film, whether it was “Shrek” in 2000.

Brian Mistler, Festival Supporter: I think if you’re a 20-year-old who has not found love or a 30-year-old who has found love and challenges in relationships, or you’re a 50-year-old who’s dealing with loss of a parent, or you’re dealing with your own mortality, Leonard can be with you through your whole lifetime.

Mike Cerre: For the “PBS News Hour,” I’m Mike Cerre in San Francisco.