Word: odetta
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Rosa Parks was her No. 1 fan, and Martin Luther King Jr. called her the queen of American folk music. Odetta's stage presence was regal enough: planted onstage like an oak tree no one would dare cut down, wearing a guitar high on her chest, she could envelop Carnegie Hall with her powerful contralto as other vocalists might fill a phone booth. This was not some pruny European monarch but a stout, imperious queen of African-American music. She used that amazing instrument to bear witness to the pain and perseverance of her ancestors. Some folks sing songs. Odetta...
...aural history, centuries deep, of abduction, enslavement, social and sexual abuse by the whites in power - and of the determination first to outlive the ignominy branded on the race, then to overcome it. In her commanding presence, charismatic delivery and determination to sing black truth to white power, Odetta was the female Paul Robeson. (See the 100 best albums of all time...
...Born in Birmingham, Ala., on New Year's Eve, 1930, and raised in Los Angeles, Odetta Holmes had a big voice early on; she was schooled in opera from the age of 13. Appearing in a tour of the musical Finian's Rainbow in her late teens, she started to lend her classical and musical-stage training to the folk repertoire around 1950. Like Harry Belafonte, Leon Bibb and Makeba, Odetta played the swanker nightclubs before the big (mostly white) folk-music surge kicked in later in the decade. Odetta Sings Ballads and Blues, the 1956 Tradition LP with definitively...
CLUB PASSIM BENEFIT CONCERT. 2003 Club Passim Benefit Concert featuring Odetta, Greg Brown and Garnet Rogers. Friday, March 14, 7:30 p.m. Tickets $45, $35, $25 and $15 for obstructed view; $100 VIP seats (includes post-concert reception with the artists) available only through Club Passim at 617-492-5300. Sanders Theater, Memorial Hall...
...mediagenic notion of some sort of "female sound" could turn into a kind of velvet prison. Women, of course, have been major players in music throughout the rock era, so the idea that gals with guitars is something new is an insult to such folk-pop pioneers as Odetta and Joan Baez. The number of women at the top of the charts of late, however, and the impressive number of those who are playing Lilith is indeed something fresh and invigorating. "Of all the tours that you do during the summer," says Fiona Apple, "this is pretty much the coolest...