Odetta, the singer whose deep voice wove together the strongest songs of American folk music and the civil rights movement, died on Tuesday at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan. She was 77.
Category Archives: Media
South African Musical Legend Miriam Makeba, “Mama Africa” Passes
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (AP) — Miriam Makeba, the South African singer who wooed the world with her sultry voice but was banned from her own country for 30 years under apartheid, died after a concert in Italy. She was 76. In her dazzling career, Makeba performed with musical legends from around the world: Nina Simone and Dizzy Gillespie, Harry Belafonte, Paul Simon and for JFK.
I saw her perform back in the early 90s with Hugh Masekela and
during her performance she called out American woman for not having a
Women’s Day celebration that year even though women all over the world had
organized one in their countries, even in countries where women were
persecuted much more harshly than here. She showed why they called her
Mama Africa!
106-year-old Atlanta woman basks in Obama tribute (AP)
Obama introduced the world to a woman who “was born just a generation past slavery; a time when there were no cars on the road or planes in the sky; when someone like her couldn’t vote for two reasons — because she was a woman and because of the color of her skin.”
“Tonight, I think about all that she’s seen throughout her century in America — the heartache and the hope; the struggle and the progress; the times we were told that we can’t, and the people who pressed on with that American creed: Yes we can,” he said.
Cooper first registered to vote on Sept. 1, 1941. Though she was friends with elite black Atlantans like W.E.B. Du Bois, John Hope Franklin and Benjamin E. Mays, because of her status as a black woman in a segregated and sexist society, she didn’t exercise her right to vote for years.