#Jessicachortkoff angelenowithacamera odetta folkmusic history highschool 1940s 1950s 1960s belmonthighschool alumnus Harryjlandon california

[jessicachortkoff]

Going to Belmont High with Odetta

Odetta: the History Singer By Jessica Chortkoff Rosa Parks, the hero of the civil rights movement who bravely refused to give up her seat to a white person and move to the back of the bus in an act that sparked countrywide change, was once asked what songs were most important to the peaceful but powerful movement. “All of the songs Odetta sings,” she said. Odetta had moved to Los Angeles with her mother and sister when she was six years old. "We were on the train when, at one point, a conductor came back and said that all the colored people had to move out of this car and into another one," Odetta said in a 2008 interview, “That was my first big wound," Odetta said of her trip as a child from Alabama to Los Angeles. By the 1960s Odetta was a black, overweight, young woman, and she was competing and winning in a field dominated by men. She was garnering the same amount of respect. Less than a decade before, this had not been the case. In the late 1940’s Odetta found herself working as a housekeeper by day to pay for her education, while going to LACC and studying voice, by night. She, like students today, was self-conscious of her looks, her hair, and her weight. “When I cut my hair, it was called an Odetta. Until then, I had swallowed lock, stock and barrel the uptightness of this society -- feeling ashamed of 'Black,' 'fat,' 'ugly.' Looking back, the path to self was paying attention to my intuition, feelings and thoughts. I now include my needs along with what others need or want from me.” She managed to earn an Associate’s degree in Classical Music and Musical Comedy. “There was a time,” she later said, “when if it wasn’t classical, I wasn’t interested. I was interested in oratorios and art songs and lieder.” After leaving City College, Odetta took a trip to San Francisco to perform in the musical Finian’s Rainbow, and fell in love with folk music. “I didn’t want to be anybody,” said Odetta, “When I was growing up; there was no way that a black person was going to be in the opera. I knew that my hero, Marian Anderson, well, not until she was retired did they even invite her to participate in the Metropolitan Opera.” Odetta once said, “School taught me how to count and taught me how to put a sentence together. But as far as the human spirit goes, I learned through folk music.” “I learned things about the history of black people in this country that the historians in school had not been willing to teach, said Odetta in a 2008 interview, “In the classical music I was singing things like "oh, swallow, swallow, flying, flying south"....it was a nice exercise but it had nothing to do with my life. The folk songs were the anger, the venom and the hatred of myself and everybody else and everything else...They were liberation songs! You're walking down life's road, society's foot is on your throat, every which way you turn you can't get from under that foot. And you reach a fork in the road and you can either lie down and die, or insist upon your life.” The 1960s was when Odetta's career really took off. She had made her powerful voice into a sharp weapon for black equality, and her music has been called the "soundtrack of the protest movement”. In 1963, during the March on Washington, Odetta, like Marian Anderson before her, sang from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, and it was Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. that introduced her, as “the Queen of American Folk music.” “As I did those songs, I could work on my hate and fury without being antisocial,” said Odetta. “Some of the songs served me by taking care of the frustration that I felt, the hate I felt for myself and everybody else, just being unhappy and unsatisfied. As I sang the prison work songs, I got the anger and the fury attended to in me.” Odetta had the National Medal of Arts presented to her in 1990. She is a Kennedy Center Honoree; and held the Library of Congress’s Living Legend Award. Her final album, a live recording performed when she was 74 years old, is called Gonna Let It Shine (2005). “It's from their forebears, and it's an alternative to what they hear on the radio,” said Odetta of protest music. “As long as I am performing, I will be pointing out that heritage that is ours. These songs come out of difficult times, and since the difficult times haven't been fixed, the songs are still here for us." And she did just that, right up until the very end of her life. In fact, Odetta performed at least 60 shows the last two years of her life, touring in a wheelchair. “If only one could be sure that every fifty years a voice and a soul like Odetta's would come along, the centuries would pass so quickly and painlessly we would hardly recognize time,” Maya Angelou said of her friend, Odetta. #Jessicachortkoff #angelenowithacamera #odetta #folkmusic #history #highschool #1940s #1950s #1960s #belmonthighschool #alumnus #Harryjlandon #california #photography #architecture #losangeles #music #art #blues #civilrights #integration