Aretha Louise Franklin: For your radical spirit, for the heart, whole and broken, in your voice.

Aretha Louise Frankln is at the Kennedy Center to honor Carol King who with her husband Gerry Goffin, wrote you make me feel like a natural woman. We know Aretha is going to sing this as she walks on stage wearing a a full length fur coat that sweeps the floor and her dress is sequinned and she carries a silver purse. She waives to the audience and heads straight to the piano, puts the purse on the piano, adjusts her coat, sits down and the moment she starts to play, we are in church.

Her voice is powerful and mellow, with the strength of overcoming, she is now the maestro of your soul. You hold your breath because you know she is going to get up, ...then .. she takes the micro phone at the word woman in the chorus as she gets up she adjusts seamlessly the tug of her coat. She is in front of the audience who are now in the palm of her hands we know she is taking us on an adventure of her genius and as we wait she decides to riff on the word inside.the word changes and it is the i in inside that takes over. it is the black church, it is jazz, it is the history of black music in this country. She changes "you", to - "he" makes me feel and then goes to I feel like a, I feel like a, and then drops the fur coat on the floor and the audience rises as her voice supersedes the lyrics converting the audience, president Barack Obama and Michelle Obama into her congregation, standing, testifying, clapping and singing.

President Obama in his comments on this performance said:

"American history wells up when Aretha sings"

This performance should be taught in classes in every category of music and performance . It was organic and an example of what greatness means. And that lesson should not ignore gender, how she construed herself as a black woman. I heard Jessie Jackson say the other day that her music was neither gender degrading nor race degrading a comment that deserves serious analysis when examining her legacy. Indeed her support of Angela Davis in 1970, offering to pay her bail when she was in jail was deeply radical as Angela Davis was identified as a communist at the time;

"She explained that her support for Davis had nothing to do with Communism, “but because she’s a black woman and she wants freedom for black people.” Franklin noted that she had the money to post bond because she’d earned it from black people. She therefore wanted to use it “in ways that will help our people.” Ultimately, she was unable to post the bond because she was out of the country at the time." (https://www.thenation.com/article/aretha-franklin-musical-genius-truth-teller-freedom-fighter/)

Her voice lifted my spirit when all else had failed me.

There was a tremor in Detroit this morning that rocked the nation, the world, the universe.

Uhuru, Aretha. (Elizabeth James)

Aretha Franklin.

So grateful for all of the brilliance and god that poured through your body your whole life.

For your radical spirit, for the heart, whole and broken, in your voice.

May you feel only relief and celebration in this transition.

May we grieve without clinging, with gratitude worthy of your scale.

Thank you, a million times thank you.(Adrienne Marie Brown)*

Nesha Z. Haniff,

Kingston, Jamaica