RIP Odetta

Miriam Makeba died a few days ago, she was the voice of South Africa through "the struggle", although she was force to live in exile for years.

Now we have the passing of Odetta, the voice of the Civil Rights Movement. She was 77.

With her booming, classically trained voice and spare guitar, Odetta gave life to the songs by workingmen and slaves, farmers and miners, housewives and washerwomen, blacks and whites.

When she sang at the March on Washington in August 1963, “Odetta’s great, full-throated voice carried almost to Capitol Hill,” The New York Times wrote.

She was an inspiration to everyone from Rosa Parks to Bob Dylan and Joan Baez.

It makes me wonder who will be the voice of a movement to describe our current times? Who in 30 years will be the celebrated voice of the "little man" during these hard times. Maybe it's because no one writes the songs, but I think it's because it's hard to get the songs promoted and marketed in this society. From sterilized images of war scrubbed free of coffins and death, to overly medicating the youth and coddling-as-control parenting, to just plain market forces like radio consolidation and record labels' outdated business models, three cords and the truth is getting harder to get out to the masses.

Gone are the days of excess in the music industry, maybe they will get back to their roots where money was not everything. Go back even further, no one talks about how many units Beethoven shifted.

Sadly, she was hoping to sing at Obama's inauguration.

A classic vintage clip with Tennessee Ernie Ford where she sang "What A Friend We Have in Jesus"