TRIBUTE
Spreading the word through music
SHELLEY WALIA
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The music of Odetta Holmes, who died recently, was synonymous with the plight of her race.
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Photo: AP
Message of peace: Her blues and ballads will keep her memory alive.
Close to the demise of Mariam Makeba, Odetta Holmes, the Queen of American folk music, died recently of a heart attack. Her music with all its sonic and emotive quality reminded me of Jean Genet who once said, ‘Are you there Africa with the bulging chest and oblong thigh? Sulking Africa, wrought of iron in the fire, Africa of the millions of royal slaves, deported Africa, drifting continent are you there? Slowly you vanish, you withdraw into the past, into the tales of castaways, colonial museums, the works of scholars; but I call you back this evening to attend a secret revel.’
The words draw attention to and reverberate with the passion of resistance to the age-old workings of apartheid across the world. They are the words that resonate with the voice of dissent and the call for justice by singers from Pete Seegar to Bruce Springsteen, from Bob Dylan and Joan Baez to the blues of Bessie Smith, Janis Joplin and Odetta.
Origin of music
Speaking on the origins of music, Odetta explained that music is born out of “fear of God, fear that the sun would not come back, many things. I think it developed as a way of worship or to appease something. . . . The world hasn’t improved, and so there’s always something to sing about.”
“We Shall Overcome” and “Oh! Freedom” are undying songs deeply rooted in the African American struggle for equality and hope for the end of a long and brutal period of slavery. Inspired by the Civil Rights Movement, singers like Odetta walked shoulder to shoulder with Martin Luther King, Jr. to register the defiance of a culture blemished by intolerance and exploitation. Her songs were appropriately complimented by President Clinton for their “power to change the heart and change the world”.
Embracing other genres
Odetta’s folk music, which is integral to her anti-racist struggle for equality under the American law, is replete with Afro-American influence and embraces other genres from jazz to spirituals and from blues to zydeco with the underlying ideology of bestowing an identity and a place of recognition to the underprivileged. She symbolizes American history replete with the great efforts of the blacks and the migrant slaves against bondage. As she remarked in an interview a few years ago: “I’m not a real folksinger. I don’t mind people calling me that, but I’m a musical historian. I’m a city kid who has admired an area and who got into it. I’ve been fortunate. With folk music, I can do my teaching and preaching, my propagandising.”
Odetta, whose incredible music and powerful contralto is synonymous with the plight and perseverance of her race, first hit the American charts in the 1950s and for more than half a century her music has shown no signs of becoming outdated as is obvious from the celebrations and the world-wide following that she still enjoys.
Music, for Odetta, was evocative of the timeless and universal quality of peace and brotherhood, of unity and independence. A visionary and a revolutionary artist, she became the icon of the African Diaspora and a national heritage for Afro-Americans and the Civil Rights Movement. The disturbed rhythms of her songs, which are attributed to the bleak history of her people, point to her defiance at the heart of her music. Her anger and her hope echo in Bob Marley’s song, which brings out the essence of her rebellion and fight for civil rights, as well as her dedication to the songs sung for the marginalised farmers and miners, housewives and washerwomen, blacks and whites: Why can’t we roam this open country/Oh why can’t we be what we want to be/We want to be free.
Odetta’s music draws on the experience of the black people of America and the slave era music of struggle and empowerment. Her first album, “Odetta Sings Ballads and Blues”, announced her coming of age and had a significant impact on Bob Dylan whose interest in folk music and the acoustic guitar was all owing to her music steeped in rhythms both moody and heavy, a tightly constructed rhetoric that fuses the African oral tradition with the Pentecostal, aiming to rouse the black audience with its history of the journey from slavery to freedom. The confidence behind Odetta’s music screams for the fundamental human need for due respect and acknowledgment denied to the oppressed. The poet Maya Angelou rightly emphasised, “If only one could be sure that every 50 years a voice and a soul like Odetta’s would come along, the centuries would pass so quickly and painlessly we would hardly recognise time.”
Ideological underpinnings
The exceptional structure of her music is imbued with this passage from slavery to servitude. And what really kept it afloat and struck a chord of fear in the hearts of the white slave owners was the loud wailing of the blues and the heart-rending notes of her guitar that have always been associated with pagan rites and anti-Christian sentiments in its celebration of black aesthetics. Odetta’s commitment to anti-racism and its ideological underpinnings became the staple of her song-writing that received global appreciation particularly because of its message of peace. Any struggle is meaningful as long as its reason is self-determination and liberty.
Odetta’s blues and ballads live on after her death and her voice, ranging from soprano to baritone, still resounds with her craze to fight racial discrimination. Her soulful voice which formed the backdrop to the years of protest and resistance will haunt lovers of music for years to come. It is difficult to forget her powerful full-throated voice especially during the 1963 March on Washington which reverberated across the nation. Her soul surely is at peace at the thought that a black would soon occupy the White House. Indeed, her contribution to this triumph is substantial and one is happy that she could see her dreams come true before breathing her last.
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