There are very few musicians Boston City Councilor Lydia Edwards and her mother can agree on, but the legendary Aretha Franklin is the exception. The duo can listen to the Queen of Soul, Lydia told me, “all the time.”
When Aretha performed at the Wang Theatre in 2009, Lydia had just landed her first law firm job and bought a couple tickets to the show. She took her mother. They loved it.
“It was beautiful. The audience was incredibly diverse, all ages. You feel more American when you hear her sing,” Lydia said yesterday. “It’s because of her ability to connect across the generations, to sing and touch souls, that her legacy is going to endure forever.”
Prayers and well wishes for Aretha, 76, were pouring in yesterday from around the world after relatives of the music icon revealed that she was “gravely ill” at a Detroit hospital.
“She is an American performer at its very best,” Lydia said yesterday. “She brought soul music to life. She brought a lot of the church music from the African-American experience to life. I can’t think of a more American singer than Aretha Franklin.”
Aretha was raised in Detroit and her father, C.L. Franklin, was a church pastor and civil rights activist. Aretha sang in church. She sang at Martin Luther King Jr.’s funeral. She sang at the inaugurations of Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. She was the first woman inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987. She won 18 Grammy Awards.
Aretha’s songs spanned decades. Try and find a woman who hasn’t belted out “Respect” and “Natural Woman.”
“I didn’t think my songs would become anthems for women,” she told Time Magazine last year. “But I’m delighted.”
Aretha was a bridge between religion, pop culture and civil rights, said C. Shawn McGuffey, associate professor of sociology and director of the African and African Diaspora studies at Boston College.
“She was perfect symbolically for that moment in time where she could speak to so many parts of America because she was that critical bridge between civil rights, religion and pop culture,” McGuffey said.
“She means different things to different generations,” McGuffey added. “Since she’s still making music now, she can be another bridge between young people and older people.”
“Her ability to touch and speak to the experience of being a woman in the ’50s, ’60s, ’70s, ’80s and ’90s speaks to her lasting and forever enduring voice,” Lydia said. “She always had the pulse of what women were dealing with. That’s incredible powerful. A lot of people can’t adjust like she did over the decades.
“She sang goodbye to Martin Luther King,” Lydia said, “but she also said hello to Barack Obama. Those are momentous moments beyond the black community. Those are American moments.”
