The 50 States of Rock: Sufjan Stevens

THERE HAVE BEEN MANY extra-curricular activities traditionally associated with the life of the travelling rock'n'roller. Teaching knitting to the blind is not one of them. Yet it takes less than a minute in the company of the gifted American singer-songwriter Sufjan (pronounced Soof-ian) Stevens to work out that this unlikely sounding leisure-pursuit is no euphemism for deviant sexual practices or obscure methods of drug-ingestion, but a sincere philanthropic endeavour.