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Listening to Aretha "like listening to the embodiment of a divine signal. She received it and she
broadcast it."
Tweeted from the New Yorker's account, minutes ago:
Link to tweet
Listening to Aretha Franklin, who died today, was like listening to the embodiment of a divine signal. She received it and she broadcast it: http://nyer.cm/VHc4Ivg
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/aretha-franklin-is-as-immortal-as-can-be
Aretha Franklin Is As Immortal As Can Be
The eternal challenge is to answer grief with something that resembles love. To choose not to just sit around decrying hardship and injustice but to instead uncurl your fists and approach sorrow with grace, power, and, most incredibly, gratitude—not for the hurt itself but for the whole miraculous mess of being alive, this strange endowment of breath and blood. Most days, I believe that Aretha Franklin did this work better than anyone. And she did it while being tough and self-assured, confident in both her capacity and her worth, thus obliterating the terrible, pervasive presumption that a woman can’t be tender and oh-my-goodness mighty at the same time.
-snip-
But I simply can’t get away from her astonishing performance of “Amazing Grace” from 1972. She recorded it live, for an album of the same name, at the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church, in Los Angeles; the album eventually went on to become the highest selling gospel release of all time. (Sydney Pollack filmed the performance, but, for a variety of complicated reasons, many expounded on in Aaron Cohen’s wonderful book on the album, the documentary was never released.) When Aretha sings “Amazing Grace” in that church, it’s suddenly not a song anymore, or not really—the melody, the lyrics, they’re rendered mostly meaningless. A few bits of organ, some piano. Who cares? Congregants yelling “Sing it!” None of it matters. I’m not being melodramatic—we are listening to the wildest embodiment of a divine signal. She receives it and she broadcasts it. “Singing” can’t possibly be the right word for this sort of channelling.
To listen to Aretha Franklin now is to hear everything—everything that came before her, each strain of American blues and jazz and gospel and soul, all the musical traditions people leaned on to stay alive, and everything that exists now, all the singers she gave license to, everyone she taught. Her death is in all of us, as her songs are in all of us. She is as immortal as can be.
The eternal challenge is to answer grief with something that resembles love. To choose not to just sit around decrying hardship and injustice but to instead uncurl your fists and approach sorrow with grace, power, and, most incredibly, gratitude—not for the hurt itself but for the whole miraculous mess of being alive, this strange endowment of breath and blood. Most days, I believe that Aretha Franklin did this work better than anyone. And she did it while being tough and self-assured, confident in both her capacity and her worth, thus obliterating the terrible, pervasive presumption that a woman can’t be tender and oh-my-goodness mighty at the same time.
-snip-
But I simply can’t get away from her astonishing performance of “Amazing Grace” from 1972. She recorded it live, for an album of the same name, at the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church, in Los Angeles; the album eventually went on to become the highest selling gospel release of all time. (Sydney Pollack filmed the performance, but, for a variety of complicated reasons, many expounded on in Aaron Cohen’s wonderful book on the album, the documentary was never released.) When Aretha sings “Amazing Grace” in that church, it’s suddenly not a song anymore, or not really—the melody, the lyrics, they’re rendered mostly meaningless. A few bits of organ, some piano. Who cares? Congregants yelling “Sing it!” None of it matters. I’m not being melodramatic—we are listening to the wildest embodiment of a divine signal. She receives it and she broadcasts it. “Singing” can’t possibly be the right word for this sort of channelling.
To listen to Aretha Franklin now is to hear everything—everything that came before her, each strain of American blues and jazz and gospel and soul, all the musical traditions people leaned on to stay alive, and everything that exists now, all the singers she gave license to, everyone she taught. Her death is in all of us, as her songs are in all of us. She is as immortal as can be.
