Aretha, Queen of Soul [bio.com]
Long before I owned a phonograph or any music player, I owned an Aretha 45 RPM of Aretha’s You make me feel like a natural woman. How’s that possible? This is not my story but that of one of my greatest music love but what I, like most Nigerian young people back in the 60s, I took my music albums along to parties where they would be played for us!
Aretha, the woman whose singing touched you deep down in your innermost core, was a singer whose music was enjoyable either for simple listening pleasure or if you want to rock soul moves as best done in the late 60s by my generation, you are in luck.
There is not much I can or should write about the Queen of Soul but just my tribute to add to the thousands and more detailed ones online. Like all her fans around the world, I can say with absolute certainty that the world of music has lost an iconic golden voice which, despite the rich harvest of soul music beginning in the 1960s, Aretha’s music AND voice remains primus inter pares. Her silky, soaring voice that will continue to give her fans goose bumps from favorites not only from her soul numbers but gospel which harks to her Church root assure us that Aretha’s wonderful instrument gifted by God and perfected through hard work by her, will never be silent.
She was the greatest of them all. The Angels – and the Greats long gone before her, especially Ottis Reading – a favorite who originally wrote RESPECT as in Aretha’s R-E-S-P-E-C-T – must be joyous to welcome home one of their own.
May she find eternal rest with the Lord.
THURSDAY, AUGUST 16, 2018. 5:59 P.M. [GMT]
emotanafricana.com 
August 16, 2018
Arts & Culture, USA