She sang for Martin Luther King, now she is singing at Obama's inauguration. Aretha Franklin on the new president and her hopes for America
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“I was just talking to my conductor,” Franklin says in her grand, measured voice when she returns to the phone. “I was telling him to send the track to Washington.” Is she talking about the song she is planning to sing at Barack Obama's inauguration on the steps of the US Capitol building tomorrow? “Uh huh,” the widely hailed “Queen of Soul” says. What will she be singing? “I can't tell you.” Will it be a song we associate with her? “Oh yeah, sure, certainly.”
How about R-E-S-P-E-C-T? “You could certainly say he
was getting a whole lot of that,” she says. “He's a very bright and cerebral young man.” When she thinks of Obama, she thinks of “jubilation all over the world - dancing in Africa, dancing in London, dancing in Japan... people are so happy about this inauguration”. Franklin is a rousing, apposite choice for this grand gig. One of the most accomplished singers of her generation, her career has run parallel to the black civil rights movement. She was named by Rolling Stone last year as the No 1 all-time best singer of the rock era. She has 21 Grammy awards, in 1987 she was the first woman to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Respect is the ultimate, insistent anthem of equality.
While she eats lunch (club sandwich, spaghetti, iced tea), Franklin relates how she met Obama at the funeral in 2005 of Rosa Parks, who in 1955 famously refused to give up her bus seat for a white passenger in Montgomery, Alabama. Franklin met him again at a Democratic convention where he was the keynote speaker. “I was so impressed I asked him to be a guest at a soirée I was having. Unfortunately his schedule wouldn't allow it.” What so impressed her? “I think he's very good and seriously concerned about people. He has his own vision and I think he knows where he wants to go with it and he wants us, the people, to help him, to play our roles in support of it; like what JFK said: ‘Ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country'. In small ways people can contribute, like cleaning up your community.”
Times Archive, 1963: Let freedom ring
All this will end one day. We will hew hope out of the mountain of despair
She refuses to speculate to what extent Obama's election has quelled, or neutralised, America's racial demons, but vigorously agrees that his election is a profound moment. “Oh definitely. I do believe change is going to be major. People understand that it isn't going to happen overnight. Rome was not built in a day. But I do believe in time, with hard work - and he realises how much hard work it's going to be - they will give it their best. He has a great, capable, intelligent staff. They'll make any corrections that need to be corrected and resolve some of those issues and problems that are facing the country. I think we all have high hopes for him. People are poised for change and hoping for the best.” She is very excited about singing. “I'm just trying to hold myself down. I think they expect between three and five million people at the swearing -in. Although I have sung for many, many people - hundreds of thousands - I have never sung for that kind of number, but I am absolutely looking forward to it.”
read more: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article5542119.ece
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