Black Music Sunday: Roberta Flack wrapped us up softly in her songs

Black Music Sunday is a weekly sequence highlighting all issues Black music, with over 250 tales overlaying performers, genres, historical past, and extra, every that includes its personal vibrant soundtrack. I hope you’ll discover some acquainted tunes and maybe an introduction to one thing new.

The world of music and music lovers alike went into mourning when the information broke Monday that Roberta Flack had joined the ancestors at 88. But this week has additionally been a time for celebrating the presents she blessed us with over a number of a long time as a performing artist. Although she retired from singing into 2022 on account of ALS, Flack’s musical legacy is timeless.

Nationwide and worldwide media have reported her passing.

The Guardian posted:

“We are heartbroken that the glorious Roberta Flack passed away this morning, February 24, 2025,” a press release from her spokesperson learn. “She died peacefully surrounded by her family. Roberta broke boundaries and records. She was also a proud educator.”

Along with her sleek presence, genre-crossing versatility and talent to offer voice to the total vary of affection’s highs and lows, Flack is extensively thought of one among soul and R&B’s biggest ever artists.

Giovanni Russonello wrote for The New York Instances:

Roberta Flack, Virtuoso Singer-Pianist Who Dominated the Charts, Dies at 88

With majestic anthems like “Killing Me Softly” and “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face,” Ms. Flack, a former schoolteacher, turned one of the crucial extensively heard artists of the Nineteen Seventies.

Ms. Flack’s regular, highly effective voice may convey tenderness, delight, conviction or longing, however hardly despair. Most of her best-known albums included no less than just a few funk and soul tracks, pushed by a slapping backbeat and wealthy with observational social commentary. However her greatest hits have been all the time one thing else: sluggish people ballads (“The First Time”) or mellifluous anthems (“Killing Me Softly”) or plush love songs (“Feel Like Makin’ Love”).

“Roberta Flack underplays everything with a quietness and gentleness,” the author and folklorist Julius Lester as soon as noticed in a Rolling Stone evaluation. “More than any singer I know, she can take a quiet, slow song (and most of hers are) and infuse it with a brooding intensity that is, at times, almost unbearable.”

Mr. Lester heard in Ms. Flack an “amazing ability to get further inside a song than one thought humanly possible and to bring responses from places inside you that you never knew existed.”

NPR music critic Ann Powers wrote:

Remembering Roberta Flack: The Virtuoso

Roberta Flack’s profession calls for a brand new mind-set in regards to the phrase ‘genius’

Roberta Flack has all the time held two souls inside her physique. From her childhood days onward, she was herself, the daughter of a draftsman and a church choir organist who realized to play music at her mom’s knee. This Roberta strove to know each Chopin and Methodist hymnody and was precocious sufficient to realize admission to Howard College at 15. She was a shy, awkward, diligent lady together with her nostril all the time in a ebook and fingers drained from training piano scales.

Even then, in her deepest being, she was additionally Rubina Flake, famend live performance artiste, effortlessly dazzling Carnegie Corridor crowds together with her performances. Rubina helped Roberta endure the indignities confronted by gifted black kids within the South, as when she’d sing “Carry Me Back To Old Virginny” for contest judges in motels the place she wasn’t allowed to remain the night time. Her alter ego helped her really feel glamorous and succesful when others informed her she was imperfect. Rubina had no must respect others’ restrictions. She was a diva, surrounded by bouquets of backstage flowers and the approval of an elite who did not describe her as having “a chipmunk smile and a nut-brown face.”

Then there’s the tribute from her beloved alma mater, Howard College—the place these of us within the Wonderful Arts Division, like Donny Hathaway and Debbie Allen, used to go to listen to Flack sing at Mr. Henry’s membership. (And Donny even ended up recording together with her!)

From The Dig:

Howard College Celebrates the Extraordinary Lifetime of Roberta Flack (B.M.E. ’58, D.Mus. ’75)

Howard College is celebrating the lifetime of one among its most profoundly impactful alumna, the legendary songstress, composer, performer, and creative icon Roberta Flack (B.M.E. ’58, D.Mus. ’75). Over the course of an unimaginable profession, she impressed numerous performers by means of her expertise, showmanship, professionalism, and sheer charisma. She additionally based the Roberta Flack Basis in 2010 to advertise animal welfare and music schooling.

Born in Black Mountain, North Carolina, she was raised in Richmond and later Arlington, Va. A classically skilled pianist, Flack earned a music scholarship at age 15 to attend Howard College on a full music scholarship, finding out voice and piano. Whereas at Howard, she was a member of the College of Music’s Scholar Council and have become a member of Alpha Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta, Sorority, Inc. At the same time as a pupil, she was already garnering acclaim by acting on campus, singing in pupil expertise reveals, and directing opera. In 1954, The Hilltop wrote about her “easy flowing vocals” as she sang songs like, “Polka Dots and Moonbeams.” She graduated with a bachelor’s diploma in music schooling in 1958. Amongst many return journeys, she got here again to carry out in Homecoming live shows, and in 1975, she would return to campus to obtain an honorary doctorate alongside Dorothy Top.

Tributes have additionally poured in on social media—far too many to put up all of them right here/

I’m grateful we have been in a position to give her her flowers right here on Black Music Sunday earlier than she handed, in “Roberta Flack’s musical gift to us has spanned more than 5 decades.”

Music reviewer Nancy Pear wrote the Musician Information biography for Flack, who was born Feb. 10, 1940, in Black Mountain, North Carolina.

Musically gifted as a baby, Flack started taking piano classes on the age of 9, and by 13 had received second place in a state-wide piano contest for black college students. Academically gifted as nicely, she skipped a number of grades at school, graduating on the age of fifteen. Coming into Howard College on a piano scholarship, Flack finally switched to music schooling, which required each vocal and instrumental coaching. It was then that her stunning voice was acknowledged as first-rate classical materials, but–self-conscious about her obese, and desirous to arouse in others the pleasure and pleasure music stirred in her–Flack continued to pursue a profession in schooling.

Eighteen years previous and diploma in hand, she took her first educating put up at a segregated college in Farmville, North Carolina, the place most of the college students have been poor and usually missed college to work within the fields; a few of Flack’s college students have been older than she was. Nonetheless, they have been anxious to study all their instructor put earlier than them, and Flack turned completely immersed of their lives: directing the varsity choir, supervising the cheerleaders, creating particular lessons for the mentally and bodily impaired.

For the subsequent six years Flack taught music at three totally different junior excessive colleges in Washington, D.C. In her spare time she directed church choirs, instructed voice college students, and offered piano accompaniment for singers at native golf equipment; finally it was she who was doing the singing. Earlier than lengthy she was a favourite pop vocalist on the trendy golf equipment within the capital…

In 2023 PBS’ “American Masters” sequence aired a Flack biopic (click on the hyperlink to observe); and their web site additionally has an in depth timeline of her beginnings and profession.

“Roberta Flack was a child piano prodigy”

“How Roberta Flack created soul music”

“The origin of Flack’s hit ’Killing Me Softly With His Music’”

The PBS program shouldn’t be the one documentary about Flack. The BBC produced one however after I tried to view it, it was restricted in america. Nonetheless, I discovered a model on the BBC Information YouTube channel—with Spanish subtitles.

Right here’s an English translation of the headline and video be aware:

Roberta Flack: the legendary singer who modified the historical past of soul in america

This BBC documentary explores the story of singer Roberta Flack and the way a mode of soul emerged within the context of the combat for civil rights in america.

One of many legendary figures of gospel and soul, Roberta Flack, marked an period with notable recordings similar to “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face,” “Killing Me Softly” and “Feel Like Makin’ Love.”

The singer revealed the album “Killing Me Softly” in 1973. This album consists of the best-known track of her musical profession: “Killing me softly with his song” which gave her a Grammy for finest feminine vocal efficiency.

Give it a watch.

One factor is bound. we will belief that Flack’s musical legacy can be carried on far into the longer term. It is a cowl of a canopy of “Killing Me Softly.”

From the PBS video be aware

“The Color Purple” co-stars Cynthia Erivo and Joaquina Kalukango carry out the Hip Hop Trio Fugees’ funky rendition of “Killing Me Softly.” The worldwide hit steeped in unrequited love is informed by two pals, whose friendship could be felt by means of the display screen

Given the present state of affairs, I doubt we’ll be seeing performances like this on the Kennedy Middle within the close to future.

I might be remiss if I didn’t point out that in current day, we misplaced not solely Roberta Flack, but in addition Jerry Butler, on Feb. 20 at 85, Chris Jasper of the Isley Brothers on Feb. 23 at 75, and Gwen McCrae on Feb. 21 at 81.

There’s some unimaginable music being performed behind these pearly gates!

Please be part of me within the feedback for extra nice music, and make sure to put up your favorites from the beloved artists we misplaced this week. 

Marketing campaign Motion