By the Editor
Millions of Soul Music fans across the world will be mourning the death this week of Aretha Franklin, the ‘Queen of Soul’, at the age of 76. In her singing career, she sold more than 75m records and won 18 Grammy awards as well as numerous other awards and accolades. She was hugely admired, and it is difficult to exaggerate the influence she had on other singers and performers in the USA and around the world.
But she will be particularly mourned by the American Afro-Caribbean community and the women in particular, for whom she was not only a musical, but also a political legend, a fighter against all forms of prejudice, discrimination and hate. Coming from Memphis Tennessee, she was witness to and participated in the early struggles for the rights of black working class people in the USA. Her father had helped Martin Luther King in organising the Walk to Freedom and she performed at at King’s funeral in April 1968.
Probably her best-known song, Respect, was adopted by both the civil rights and the feminist movements in the United States. In an interview in Vogue magazine in 2015 she explained how important that song was…“Not just me or the civil rights movement or women – it’s important to people…Because people want respect – even small children, even babies. As people, we deserve respect from one another.”
Respect indeed.
We reprint here, another personal view from one of our regular contributors from the American blogsite, ‘Facts for Working People’ (https://weknowwhatsup.blogspot.com/ )
I can’t say much about this day as it comes to all of us. She meant so much to millions upon millions of people. To the black folks and black women, a historic figure and equally for all women. For me personally there’s always that selfish aspect to it, another person whose art played such a prominent role in my life gone for good reminding me of my own mortality. But, as they always say, you can’t destroy a legacy, she also sang opera as well.
Aretha Franklin also offered to pay Angela Davis’ bail on charges related to the shootout at the Marin County Courthouse in 1970: “… not because I believe in Communism but because she is a black woman and she wants freedom for black people.”
We all have our prejudices and I like to think that the era in which I grew up and the music that came out of it for me was the greatest period, I know that each era has it’s great performers and Aretha Franklin is truly a giant of the 20th century, as much so as the classical composers and artistsof an earlier period whose creations are still popular today.
Here she is in her beautiful performance in The Blues Brothers that surely must have captured the hearts of Black American women and women throughout the world. Humanity has just lost a great one.
Aretha Louise Franklin March 25, 1942 – August 16, 2018
August 17, 2018
