Hozier performs at Mavis Staples' 85th birthday celebration

Mavis Staples gathered a crowd of musical greats at the YouTube Theater in L.A. on Thursday night for her Mavis Staples 85th: All-Star Birthday concert. The show lasted three hours and half according to Variety, celebrating one of music’s most beloved figures.

Performing on their own and with Staples were Hozier, Chris Stapleton, Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne and Black Pumas. Other artists fronting the band included Jeff Tweedy, Nathaniel Rateliff, Norah Jones, Grace Potter, the War and Treaty, Taj Mahal, Robert Randolph, Keb’ Mo, Trombone Shorty and Michael McDonald.

Hozier collaborated with Staples back in 2018 on the single ‘Nina Cried Power’, which he performed during the show. The song is a tribute to rhythm and blues artists, including Nina Simone and Staples, to which he offered a heartfelt speech about her historical impact:

“Artists like Mavis, in the words of W.B Yeates, can hold in their work, in the same thought, reality and justice,” he said. “And these two very often opposing things can show us a picture of our world, but also show us our love and the small things — it could be love between people, our neighbours — the small solidarities that hold our world together. One such example of that, a critical mass, obviously, was the civil rights movement.

“I say this every show when we play this song: The civil rights movement here in America that Mavis was in the centre of directly inspired the civil rights movement in Northern Ireland… And there’s an Irish revolutionary by the name of James Connolly who once wrote that ‘no revolution is ever complete without its poetical expression.’ I just want to say, Mavis has always represented to me the poetical expression of the ongoing revolution of love and kindness.”