Month: April 2019

A long-hidden trove of unpublished works by Franz Kafka could soon be revealed following a decade-long battle over his literary estate that has drawn comparisons to some of his surreal tales.

A district court in Zurich upheld Israeli verdicts in the case last week, ruling that several safe deposit boxes in the Swiss city could be opened and their contents shipped to Israel’s National Library.

At stake are untouched papers that could shed new light on one of literature’s darkest figures, a German-speaking Bohemian Jew from Prague whose cultural legacy has been hotly contested between Israel and Germany.

What’s in the vaults?

Though the exact content of the vaults remains unknown, experts have speculated the cache could include endings to some of Kafka’s major works, many of which were unfinished when they were published after his death.

Israel’s Supreme Court has stripped an Israeli family of its collection of Kafka’s manuscripts, which were hidden in Israeli bank vaults and in a squalid, cat-filled Tel Aviv apartment. But the Swiss ruling would complete the acquisition of nearly all his known works, after years of lengthy legal battles over their rightful owners.

Kafkaesque saga

The saga could have been penned by Kafka himself, whose name has become known as an adjective to describe absurd situations involving inscrutable legal processes. Kafka was known for his tales of everyman protagonists crushed by mysterious authorities or twisted by unknown shames. In “The Trial,” for example, a bank clerk is put through excruciating court proceedings without ever being told the charges against him.

“The absurdity of the trials is that it was over an estate that nobody knew what it contained. This will hopefully finally resolve these questions,” said Benjamin Balint, a research fellow at Jerusalem’s Van Leer Institute and the author of “Kafka’s Last Trial,” which chronicles the affair. “The legal process may be ending, but the questions of his cultural belonging and inheritance will remain with us for a very long time.”

Manuscripts not burned

Kafka bequeathed his writings to Max Brod, his longtime friend, editor and publisher, shortly before his death from tuberculosis in 1924 at the age of 40. He instructed his protege to burn it all unread.

Brod ignored his wishes and published most of what was in his possession — including the novels “The Trial,” “The Castle” and “Amerika.” Those works made the previously little-known Kafka posthumously one of the most celebrated and influential writers of the 20th century.

But Brod, who smuggled some of the manuscripts to pre-state Israel when he fled the Nazis in 1938, didn’t publish everything. Upon his death in 1968, Brod left his personal secretary, Esther Hoffe, in charge of his literary estate and instructed her to transfer the Kafka papers to an academic institution.

Instead, for the next four decades, Hoffe kept the papers stashed away and sold some of the items for hefty sums. In 1988, for instance, Hoffe auctioned off the original manuscript of “The Trial” at Sotheby’s in London. It went for $1.8 million to the German Literature Archive in Marbach, north of Stuttgart.

When Hoffe died in 2008 at age 101, she left the collection to her two daughters, Eva Hoffe and Ruth Wiesler, both Holocaust survivors like herself, who considered Brod a father figure and his archive their rightful inheritance. Both have since also passed away, leaving Wiesler’s daughters to continue fighting for the remainder of the collection.

Legitimate inheritance or cultural assets?

Jeshayah Etgar, a lawyer for the daughters, downplayed the significance of the potential findings in Zurich, saying they were likely replicas of manuscripts Hoffe had already sold. Regardless, he said the ruling was the continuation of a process in which “individual property rights were trampled without any legal justification.” He said his clients legitimately inherited the works and called the state seizure of their property “disgraceful” and “first degree robbery.”

Israel’s National Library claims Kafka’s papers as “cultural assets” that belong to the Jewish people. Toward the end of his life, Kafka considered leaving Prague and moving to pre-state Israel. He took Hebrew lessons with a Jerusalem native who eventually donated her pupil’s vocabulary notebook to the library. In recent years, the library also took possession of several other manuscripts the courts had ordered Hoffe’s descendants to turn over.

“We welcome the judgment of the court in Switzerland, which matched all the judgments entered previously by the Israeli courts,” said David Blumberg, chairman of the Israel National Library, a nonprofit and non-governmental body. “The judgment of the Swiss court completes the preparation of the National Library of Israel to accept to entire literary estate of Max Brod, which will be properly handled and will be made available to the wider public in Israel and the world.”

Other scholars question Israel’s adoption of Kafka, noting that he was conflicted about his own Judaism. The German Literature Archive, for instance, has sided with Hoffe’s heirs and aimed to purchase the collection itself, arguing the German-language writings belong in Germany. Dietmar Jaegle, an archive official, said he would not comment on the Zurich verdict as he had not yet seen it.

Balint cautioned that the contents of the hidden archive may not live up to everyone’s expectations.

“It is very unlikely we are going to discover an unknown Kafka masterpiece in there, but these are things of value,” Balint said, noting the fierce competition over any original Kafka material. “There is something about the uncanny aura of Kafka that is attracted to all this.”
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A Rwandan albino woman has appeared in a music video, attracting widespread attention and helping alleviate the stigma of albinos in Africa. Claudine Mukarusine has described the video as a spark of light in a life filled with discrimination and fear.

Mukarusine is a 28-year-old graduate from the University of Rwanda with Albinism, a genetic condition that makes her hair, skin and eyes pale.

In parts of Africa, Albino body parts are considered to have black magic that brings luck and wealth. Their graves are dug up and bodies stolen, while the living face constant fear of abduction and murder.

But here in Rwanda, Mukarusine has become famous.

She shows a reporter a music video by Rhythm and Blues singer James Ruhumuriza, known as King James, which she acted in. The music video, for the song called “Igitekerezo,” meaning “Ideas,” shows King James serenading Mukarusine in the city and countryside.

In Rwanda it has gone viral.

She says this video played a very big role in her life because many people have come to realize that people with Albinism can do something that is good and appreciated.

Albinos killed

The United Nations says nearly 100 albinos were killed in Tanzania alone in the past two decades, including at least 10 children whose bodies were found in January.

For Mukarusine, the song released in January is a spark of light in her dark days of fear that she too could be killed for being albino.

She says on the first day she heard about this threat, she cried a whole day in class. She used to cry also in her bedroom, it strongly affected her, Mukarusine said. She used to worry so much, wondering if she is going to die. But she couldn’t share her sorrow with anyone, Mukarusine said, and it affected her studies.

A good message

Singer King James says he composed the song after watching accounts of albinos being killed in Rwanda’s neighboring countries.

“That’s when I decided, that I can feature her so that I can give a good message to people that even if they are albinos, they can do anything we can do, anything they want to do,” he said.

Mukarusine works as a mentor at the National Union of Disability Organizations of Rwanda. She helps three groups of 300 people learn about saving money and accessing finance.

She has hope and confidence that her future will be good, and she will have a family, Mukarusine said. She will contribute in developing the lives of people with albinism and other disabilities in general, she says, as well as her family and country.

There are no accurate statistics on the number of albinos in Rwanda. But Mukarusine hopes her music video fame raises attention to their plight and helps remove some of the stigma and fear for other albinos as it did for her.
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A young Rwandan woman, who is an albino, has appeared in a music video that has attracted widespread attention and has helped alleviate the fears and stigma attached to albinos in Africa. Claudine Mukarusine has described the video as a spark of light in a life filled with discrimination and fear. Eugene UWIMANA has more from Kayonza, Eastern Rwanda.
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A blustering bureaucrat fills a form out with your personal details and hands you a badge declaring you an inspector qualified to police Communist-run Cuba’s cultural sector under a controversial new decree.

This interactive performance by Cuban artist Leandro Feal, 33, is one of the politically charged artworks in a parallel exhibit on the sidelines of Havana’s 13th Biennial arts celebration that kicked off this weekend.

The exhibit underscores both simmering tensions in Cuba’s arts scene and artists’ growing independence from the state, which has dominated all aspects of society since the 1959 revolution, including promoting culture.

The official biennial program of more than 300 works by artists from 52 countries is taking over Havana’s museums, galleries and open spaces, including its seafront, until May 12.

Meanwhile, the parallel program of exhibits is sprawling — often in private studios and galleries — and reaches into the most remote neighborhoods.

The growth of tourism and the private sector over the past decade, as well as greater freedom to travel and internet access, have enabled artists to work more independently of state institutions.

While most of these exhibits are not explicitly political, artists say the greater independence allows them to address politically sensitive issues more freely.

“The biennial at the end of the day is a kind of mirror of Cuban society where the independent scene is growing,” said Abel Gonzalez Fernandez, 27, curator of the group show that includes Feal’s performance and works by some of Cuba’s top young artists, like Reynier Leyva Novo.

Some say Cuba’s cultural institutions are ideologically outdated and too strapped for cash to promote them sufficiently. The so-called biennial, impressive as it is, was last held four years ago.

The power of Decree 349 

Gonzalez Fernandez and others believe the government last year introduced Decree 349 partly to rein them in. It gives inspectors the right to shut down exhibits and performances deemed to violate Cuba’s revolutionary values.

The government says the legislation targets offensive and mediocre content. But it agreed in December to revise the accompanying regulations after broad outcry, and since then, it has not expressed itself again on the topic.

“They tried to impose a moratorium on the topic, but we have artists who are getting imprisoned,” said Feal.

Self-proclaimed “artivist” Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara, who led a vocal campaign against Decree 349, was arrested Friday after staging a small but politically charged performance in his neighborhood.

In the show, competitors carrying the flag of Cuba’s old-time foe, the United States, ran a race, in homage to the Cuban who interrupted Havana’s mass May Day march in 2017 by running in front of it waving the Stars and Stripes.

Otero Alcantara told Reuters he had been briefly detained a week earlier and warned not to stage his planned performance. He was released Monday.

Rights groups say Cuba often uses short-term detentions to repress public criticism.

Asked by Reuters about the arrest, the head of Cuba’s National Council of Visual Arts, Norma Rodriguez, said at a news conference: “As far as I know he is an activist, not an artist.”

‘Testing the limits of what’s possible’

Cuba considers dissidents to be mercenaries in the pay of the United States trying to subvert the government. A few other artists who have protested Decree 349 say they have also been harassed by authorities.

Some supporters of the Cuban government accuse activist artists of trying to boost their cachet or get offered asylum through altercations with the state.

A top cultural official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Decree 349 had nothing to do with the biennial and described it as an inclusive event showing the work of several artists who had publicly criticized it.

Cuban artists who are critical of the government have often used the biennial — which attracts international collectors, gallery owners and critics — to raise awareness of the restraints on freedom of expression in Cuba.

“We are testing the limits of what’s possible,” said Gonzalez Fernandez.

Tania Bruguera, one of Cuba’s most famous living artists, who has had frequent run-ins with authorities, said she would not participate in this year’s biennial because the government was using it to “clean its international image in the wake of the campaign against Decree 349.”
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The fire that tore through Notre-Dame cathedral was probably caused by accident, French prosecutors said on Tuesday after firefighters doused the last flames in the ruins overnight and the nation grieved for the destruction of one of its symbols.

More than 400 firemen were needed to tame the inferno that consumed the roof and collapsed the spire of the eight-centuries-old cathedral. They worked through the night to extinguish the fire some 14 hours after it began.

Paris public prosecutor Remy Heitz said there was no obvious indication the fire was arson. Fifty people were working on what would be a long and complex investigation. One firefighter was injured but no one else was hurt in the blaze which began after the building was closed to the public for the evening.

From the outside, the imposing bell towers and outer walls, with their vast flying buttresses, still stood firm, but the insides and the upper structure were eviscerated by the blaze.

Firefighters examined the gothic facade and could be seen walking atop the belfries as police kept the area in lockdown.

Investigators will not be able to enter the cathedral’s blackened nave until experts are satisfied its stone walls withstood the heat and the building is structurally sound.

The fire swiftly ripped through the cathedral’s timbered roof supports, where workmen had been carrying out extensive renovations to the spire’s wooden frame.

The Paris prosecutor has opened an investigation into “involuntary destruction by fire.” Police on Tuesday began questioning the workers involved in the restoration, the prosecutor’s office said.

Hundreds of stunned onlookers had lined the banks of the Seine river late into the night as the fire raged, reciting prayers and singing liturgical music in harmony as they stood in vigil.

“Yesterday we thought the whole cathedral would collapse. Yet this morning she is still standing, valiant, despite everything. It is a sign of hope,” said Sister Marie Aimee, a nun who had hurried to a nearby church to pray as the fire spread.

It was at Notre-Dame that Napoleon was made emperor in 1804, Pope Pius X beatified Joan of Arc in 1909 and former presidents Charles de Gaulle and Francois Mitterrand were mourned.

Messages of condolence flooded in from around the world.

Pope Francis, the leader of the Catholic Church, was praying for those affected, the Vatican said, adding: “Notre-Dame will always remain – and we have seen this in these hours — a place where believers and non-believers can come together in the most dramatic moments of French history.”

Britain’s Queen Elizabeth expressed deep sadness while her son and heir Prince Charles said he was “utterly heartbroken.”

Vow to rebuild

President Emmanuel Macron promised to rebuild Notre-Dame, considered among the finest examples of European Gothic architecture, visited by more than 13 million people a year.

Notre-Dame is owned by the state. It has been at the center of a years-long row between the nation and the Paris archdiocese over who should finance badly needed restoration work to collapsed balustrades, crumbling gargoyles and cracked facades.

It was too early to estimate the cost of the damage, said the heritage charity Fondation du Patrimoine, but it is likely to run into the hundreds of millions of dollars.

The rival billionaire owners of France’s two biggest luxury fashion empires, Francois-Henri Pinault of Kering and Bernard Arnault of LVMH, pledged 100 million euros and 200 million euros to the restoration respectively. Oil company Total pledged 100 million. The city of Paris said it would provide 50 million.

Paolo Violini, a restoration specialist for Vatican museums, said the pace at which the fire spread through the cathedral had been stunning.

“We are used to thinking about them as eternal simply because they have been there for centuries, or a thousand years, but the reality is they are very fragile,” Violini said.

Human chain

The company carrying out the renovation works when the blaze broke out said it would cooperate fully with the investigation “All I can tell you is that at the moment the fire began none of my employees were on the site. We respected all procedures,” Julien Le Bras, a representative of family firm Le Bras Freres.

Officials breathed a sigh of relief that many relics and artworks had been saved. At one point, firefighters, policemen and municipal workers formed a human chain to remove the treasures, including a centuries-old crown of thorns made from reeds and gold, and the tunic believed to have been worn by Saint Louis, a 13th century king of France.

“Notre-Dame was our sister, it is so sad, we are all mourning,” said Parisian Olivier Lebib. “I have lived with her for 40 years. Thank God that the stone structure has withstood the fire.”
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The fire that devastated Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris on Monday prompted fund-raising appeals in the United States, as people horrified by the blaze began making commitments to restore a global landmark even before the flames were extinguished.

The New York-based French Heritage Society and the Go Fund Me crowdsourcing platform were among the first to offer help for a cathedral that is a must-see destination for visitors to Paris from all over the world.

French President Emmanuel Macron said an international campaign would be launched to raise funds for the rebuilding of Notre Dame Cathedral.

The French Heritage Society, an American non-profit group dedicated to preserving French architectural and cultural treasures, launched a web page on Monday to raise money for the cathedral’s restoration.

“Notre Dame is obviously an architectural marvel and most certainly a monument that should be restored,” Jennifer Herlein, the executive director of the society, said by phone.

Herlein could not immediately say how much her organization had raised for Notre Dame on Monday. Eventually, the funds raised will go directly to the cathedral, she said.

The organization, which was founded in 1982, gave two grants last year totaling more than $430,000 for restoration projects at France’s national library, she said.

50 campaigns 

At the website GoFundMe, more than 50 campaigns related to the cathedral fire had been launched globally on Monday, John Coventry, a spokesman for Go Fund Me, said by email.

“In the coming hours we’ll be working with the authorities to find the best way of making sure funds get to the place where they will do the most good,” Coventry said.

Some of the Go Fund Me campaigns had not listed any money raised by late Monday, and several joke campaigns were created through Go Fund Me to help Quasimodo, the fictional character in Victor Hugo’s 19th century novel “The Hunchback of Notre Dame.”

“I think the challenge will be whether or not people who give the money agree with those who are doing the rebuilding about how the cathedral should be rebuilt,” said Lisa Bitel, a professor of religion and history at the University of Southern California.

“This is a national monument in France and they will not spare money to rebuild,” Bitel said. “I don’t think the Americans will get much of a say in how to do it.”

Notre Dame Cathedral has looked to international donors for past renovation efforts.

In 2017, Michel Picaud, president of Friends of Notre Dame De Paris, told the New York Times his group planned to organize gala dinners, concerts and other events to raise funds in France and the United States for restoration work at the cathedral.

 
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Notre Dame, a survivor of wars and revolutions, has stood for centuries as not merely the greatest of the Gothic cathedrals and a towering jewel of Western architecture.

 

It has stood, in the words of one shell-shocked art expert, as “one of the great monuments to the best of civilization.”

 

And so it was that across the globe Monday, a stunned and helpless art world wept alongside the people of France as a massive fire ravaged the beloved cathedral.

 

“Civilization is just so fragile,” said Barbara Drake Boehm, senior curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s medieval Cloisters branch in New York, her voice shaking as she tried to put into words what the cathedral meant. “This great hulking monument of stone has been there since 1163. It’s come through so many trials.”

 

“It’s not one relic, not one piece of glass — it’s the totality,” she said, struggling to find words expansive enough to describe the cathedral’s significance. “It’s the very soul of Paris, but it’s not just for French people. For all humanity, it’s one of the great monuments to the best of civilization.”

 

Boehm spoke shortly before the Paris fire chief announced that firefighters had been able to finally save the structure, including its two main towers. Much of the roof was destroyed.

 

The exact cause of the blaze wasn’t known, but French media quoted the fire brigade as saying it was “potentially linked” to a 6 million-euro ($6.8 million) renovation project on the church’s spire and its 250 tons of lead. The Paris Prosecutor’s office, which was investigating, said it was treating it as an accident.

 

Construction on Notre Dame — French for “Our Lady” — began in the 12th century and continued for nearly 200 years. It sustained damage and fell into neglect during the French Revolution, but received renewed attention following the 1831 publication of Victor Hugo’s novel “The Hunchback of Notre-Dame.” This led to two decades of restorations, including the cathedral’s famous flying buttresses and a reconstructed spire.

 

While most kings were crowned elsewhere, Napoleon Bonaparte made sure he was crowned there in 1804, and married there in 1810.

 

Experts note that Notre Dame is an aesthetically smooth synthesis of different centuries. “It all blends together so harmoniously,” said Nancy Wu, a medieval architecture expert and educator at the Met Cloisters. She said she was struck by delicacy of the structure, as well as that in the three stunning stained-glass rose windows, and the elegant exterior carvings.

 

“There are a lot of details that remind one of intricate lace,” she said, “even though it’s a building of cold hard stone.”

 

Aside from the structure, art experts were concerned about the fate of countless priceless artworks and artifacts inside, including relics like the crown of thorns, which is only occasionally displayed.

 

“This cathedral has a number of elements that are not just famous but religiously significant,” said Julio Bermudez, professor at the school of architecture and planning at Catholic University in Washington, D.C. “One of course is the crown of thorns … the faithful believe this is the crown that the Savior put on his head. It’s kept in a very safe place. But you know the fire is tremendously damaging.” He also expressed concern about the beautiful stained-glass windows, which he called “really irreplaceable.”

 

Those worried about the cathedral’s durability could, perhaps, take solace in one of Notre Dame’s more fascinating survival stories. In 1977, workers demolishing a wall in another part of Paris discovered 21 heads belonging to 13th-century statues from the cathedral. The kings of Judea, which were a prime example of Gothic art, had been taken from Notre Dame during the French Revolution and guillotined by antiroyalists who mistakenly thought they represented French kings.

 

The heads, which were thought to be lost, are now displayed in the capital’s Cluny Museum.

 

The mourning was not limited to the art world. Religious leaders, too, expressed deep sorrow over the devastation.

 

Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the archbishop of New York, said he was praying for Notre Dame, which he called “second maybe to St. Peter’s Basilica, (in) … the ability of a church to lift our minds and hearts back to the Lord.”

 

“For the French, my God, for the world, Notre Dame Cathedral represents what’s most notable, what’s most uplifting, what’s most inspirational about the human project,” he said.

 

Boehm, at the Cloisters, found herself thinking about how the cathedral is at once of the past, and of the present — a living, vibrant building, despite its age.

 

“When you step inside it, you have at once the sense of everything that came before, and everything that’s still current,” she said.
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Tiger Woods’ victory at the Masters golf tournament on Sunday, his first major victory since 2008, is expected to lift sales for sponsors, broadcasters and golf courses lucky enough to host a tournament with Woods playing.

The competition put the 43-year-old back on top of a sport he helped transform 25 years ago.

“Tiger sells golf,” says Eric Smallwood, president of Apex Marketing Group, a Michigan analytics firm. Apex found that Nike earned $22.5 million worth of brand exposure just from Woods’ final round, with Nike’s “Swoosh” logo splashed on his hat, shirt, pants and shoes. Nike stock was up about one percent on Monday.

Tournament broadcaster CBS Corp saw a ratings bump.

Based on preliminary data, the final round of Sunday’s tournament was the highest-rated morning golf broadcast since 1986, when CBS started collecting that data. The tournament, which is usually broadcast in the afternoon, was rescheduled to the morning because of weather.

CBS has the rights to the PGA Championship in May and expects prices for advertising time that is still available to rise as a result of Woods’ Masters victory, according to a source familiar with the matter.

The golf demographic is wealthier and better-educated than other sports fans, so TV ratings are valued more highly because  hey’re more apt to turn into sales, even of big-ticket items, said Neal Pilson, president of Pilson Communications and former president of CBS Sports.

“Historically, events where Tiger Woods is on leaderboards on Sunday generated 30 to 40 percent higher ratings in the United States for those tournaments,” Pilson said.

Makings of a comeback

Woods was a 20-year-old prodigy when he turned pro in 1996.

Less than a year later he was ranked No. 1 in the world. He struck lucrative endorsement deals — including a five-year, $40 million deal with Nike — and golf experienced a surge in popularity.

Then Woods’ personal life collapsed and with it, his brand.

In 2009, after the news of multiple infidelities, he lost endorsement deals with companies like AT&T and Accenture. Other sponsors, such as Procter & Gamble’s Gillette and Berkshire Hathaway’s NetJets, kept their contracts with Woods but stopped using him in marketing.

Four back surgeries later, Woods continued to suffer professionally and in the public eye. In 2017 police arrested him for driving under the influence; he pleaded guilty to reckless driving and entered a program for first-time offenders.

In 2018, Woods began a professional comeback that culminated at Sunday’s Masters. After his victory, Nike, which stood behind Woods throughout his darker years, posted an ad on its website titled “Tiger Woods: Same Dream.”

“In sports you have heroes, villains and underdogs,” said Benjamin Hordell, founder of digital marketing and advertising firm DXagency. “Tiger has lived all of it. That’s amazing from a storytelling perspective. People will root against him, but they’re watching.”

On Monday, U.S. President Donald Trump said he would award Woods the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
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Aretha Franklin is still getting R-E-S-P-E-C-T after death: The Queen of Soul received the Pulitzer Prize Special Citation honor Monday, becoming the first individual woman to earn a special citation prize since the honor was first awarded in 1930.

The Pulitzer board said the award was given to Franklin for “her indelible contribution to American music and culture for more than five decades.”

 

Franklin died on Aug. 16 at her home in Detroit from pancreatic cancer at age 76.

 

The superstar musician was the first woman inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame when she entered the prestigious organization in 1987.

 

The Pulitzer board most recently awarded a special citation prize in 2010 to Hank Williams, the country music legend who died in 1953. From the arts world, other recipients include Duke Ellington, Bob Dylan, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, George Gershwin, Ray Bradbury, William Schuman, Milton Babbitt, Scott Joplin, Roger Sessions, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II.

 

Before Monday, only 41 special citation prizes had been awarded since 1930, and winners have ranged from individual people to organizations and groups, including the New York Times, writers E.B. White, Alex Haley and Kenneth Roberts, and Columbia University and its Graduate School of Journalism. Franklin and the Capital Gazette newspaper received special citation honors this year.

 

“Aretha is blessed and highly favored even in death. She’s continued to receive multiple awards — she’s received almost every award imaginable and now to get the Pulitzer Prize, it’s just amazing,” Sabrina Owens, Franklin’s niece and the executor of her estate, said in an interview with The Associated Press on Monday. “Aretha continues to bless us with her music and just paving the way for women going forward. It’s thrilling. She would be so happy right now.”

 

When Owens heard the news that Franklin won a Pulitzer, she and the family were “surprised but in another way we were not because that’s just the kind of person Aretha was.”

 

“She was just very gifted and talented, and the world is still recognizing that,” she said.

 

Franklin’s inclusion into the exclusive club re-confirms the impact her music — and voice — had and continues to have on the world. She became a cultural icon and genius of American song, considered by many to be the greatest popular vocalist of her time. Her voice transcended age, category and her own life.

 

Franklin was professional singer and accomplished pianist by her late teens and a superstar by her mid-20s. Raised in Detroit, she recorded hundreds of tracks and had dozens of hits over the span of a half century, including 20 that reached No. 1 on the R&B charts.

 

But her reputation was defined by an extraordinary run of Top 10 smashes in the late 1960s, from the morning-after bliss of “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman,” to the wised-up “Chain of Fools” to her unstoppable call for “Respect,” transforming Otis Redding’s song into a classic worldwide anthem — especially for the feminist and civil rights movements — making it one of the most recognizable and heard songs of all-time.

 

She sold millions of albums and won countless awards, including 18 Grammys, the National Medal of Arts and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.

 

She performed at the inaugurations of Presidents Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, and even sang at the funeral for civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks and at the dedication of Martin Luther King Jr’s memorial.

 

Rolling Stone ranked Franklin No.1 on its list of the Top 100 singers and she was also named one of the 20 most important entertainers of the 20th century by Time magazine, which celebrated her “mezzo-soprano, the gospel growls, the throaty howls, the girlish vocal tickles, the swoops, the dives, the blue-sky high notes, the blue-sea low notes. Female vocalists don’t get the credit as innovators that male instrumentalists do. They should. Franklin has mastered her instrument as surely as John Coltrane mastered his sax.”

 

Franklin was born in Memphis, Tennessee, though her family moved to Buffalo, New York, and then settled in Detroit. She grew up singing in the church alongside her father Rev. C.L. Franklin, a prominent Baptist minister who recorded dozens of albums of sermons and music. She joined him on tour and she released a gospel album in 1956. Four years later, she signed with Columbia Records and when her contract ran out in 1966, she joined Atlantic Records.

 

That’s when she blazed the pop and R&B charts with a string of hits, including “Respect,” “I Say a Little Prayer,” “Think,” “Chain of Fools,” “Day Dreaming,” “(Sweet Sweet Baby) Since You’ve Been Gone,” “Rock Steady” and “Until You Come Back to Me (That’s What I’m Gonna Do).”

 

Her Grammy-winning album, “Amazing Grace,” is one of the seminal albums in not only Franklin’s discography, but the canon of American pop music. It is the basis for the recently released concert film “Amazing Grace,” filmed over two sessions in January 1972 at the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in the Watts section of Los Angeles.
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