In 1961, Martin Luther King, Jr. anointed her The Queen of American folk music and poet Maya Angelou once said, If only one could be sure that every 50 years a voice and a soul like Odetta’s would come along, the centuries would pass so quickly and painlessly we would hardly recognize time.
Odetta had hoped to perform again in Washington next month when Barack Obama is inaugurated as the nation’s first black president. But the acclaimed folk singer, who influenced generations of musicians and was an icon in the civil rights struggle, died last Tuesday after battling heart disease. She was 77.
In The Washington Post interview, Odetta theorized that humans developed music and dance because of fear, “fear of God, fear that the sun would not come back, many things. I think it developed as a way of worship or to appease something. … The world hasn’t improved, and so there’s always something to sing about.”
There are a lot of Odetta clips on You Tube, but this is one of my favorite – You Don’t Know My Mind
Here is another from the same radio broadcast. Careless Love
Here is a short clip from The Thresholds Art Festival in Des Moines this last February. Keep On Keeping On!
Odetta Holmes Felious Gordon has shaped American folk music for over 50 years. Born in Birmingham, Ala., in 1930. She later moved to California and studied classical music. With a trained voice, Odetta’s goal as a teenager was to sing oratorio because, back in the bad old days, she felt a black woman couldn’t become an opera singer. But a chance exposure to folk changed her mind about music and the gift of an old guitar changed her life. A folk music legend, Odetta is imposing. She caresses her audience with a message of hope, love and social change. She has collaborated with other major folk stars — Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, Buffy St. Marie, the late Elizabeth Cotton, to name a few. Her accomplishments are stunning: she has performed all over the world in concert halls, clubs, and universities; accompanied ballet companies and symphony orchestras; acted in “The Crucible” and “The Effects of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon-Marigolds;” and received the Duke Ellington Fellowship Award at Yale University. Singer, songwriter, actress, activist, Odetta has been honored by the Federation of Protestant Charities and The World Folk Music Association, with their Lifetime Achievement Awards for her contributions to numerous humanitarian organizations and causes. Odetta’s purpose is to be useful, she says, performing “wherever and whenever I’m needed.”
First accompanying herself on a wood-bodied guitar she nicknamed “Baby,” Odetta made her solo debut in San Francisco in 1949. When she moved to New York in 1953, Harry Belafonte was one of the first to discover and promote her. He included her in a major TV special that boosted her career.
Odetta says that her favorite audiences are college students (“TV babies and rock concert devotees,” she calls them) because she feels that their “listening muscle” needs development. “If they are not responsive, I tease them and ask if they have ever been with a nonresponsive lover. I’m up here making love to you and it’s no fun if you don’t respond.”
One final clip in celebration of a life lived fully and well. Rest in Peace, Odetta – When I Lay My Burdens Down
The National Visionary Leadership Project offers a host of interview clips on visionary leaders. To see several oral history interview clips with Odetta, visit: their site. http://www.visionaryproject.org/gordo…
I also was not familiar with her, although the name sounded vaguely familiar. She certainly was an expressive singer.
Thanks! I had not heard of her until this past week when I read of her passing in the paper. Beautiful, especially the first video you selected. Such expression and phrasing.