A Concert Celebrates Jimmy Carter’s 100th Birthday, With Music and Thanks

The night included gospel hymns and “America the Beautiful” and the B-52s lighting up the Fox Theater, one of the oldest auditoriums in Atlanta, with a performance of “Love Shack.” In one moment, the crowd was on its feet as Angélique Kidjo, the acclaimed Beninese musician, sang and danced. In another, they shimmied and sang along to a cover of “Ramblin’ Man.”

The collection of artists and performances transcended generations, genres and geography. But one thread bound them together on Tuesday night: affection for former President Jimmy Carter, which they were eager to express in celebration of his coming 100th birthday.

“You can see he had a relationship to music — look at how we gathered here together tonight,” said the country singer Carlene Carter, who is not related to the former president but said he still feels like kin. “He used it as a powerful tool to bring people together.”

Carter’s actual birthday was still almost a couple of weeks away, and Carter himself was 160 miles away, at home in Plains, Ga., where he has been in hospice care for the past 19 months. But the concert was intended as a gift, one that will be broadcast as a special on Georgia Public Television on Oct. 1. The family said he plans to watch as part of his birthday festivities.

The concert in many ways mirrored the scope and ambitions of the man it was celebrating: Global and idealistic in its reach, but firmly planted in Georgia, molded by religious and cultural traditions as well as the rich but complicated history of the rural South.