Post by the Scribe on Jan 9, 2022 19:57:40 GMT
"Finally, I send love and unending admiration to Linda Ronstadt, the ruling spirit of Nashville, and arguably of much popular music, in 2019—alongside Dolly Parton, anyway. Though she is a woman of the American West through and through, Ronstadt is, I think, the most influential artist among young singer-songwriters I meet here in Music City. Not only do they treasure her monumental vocal talent and the body of work that she created: 20-plus albums that showed how a curator and interpreter can be as creative as any songwriter. They look to her as a pioneer in defining “post-genre” as early as the 1970s, when she blended soul with country and rock to shape a new approach and then leapt beyond it into jazz standards, operetta, and mariachi. The Ronstadt documentary The Sound of My Voice cemented the legend status her younger emulators have been working to establish for her for years now, and her Kennedy Center celebration was pure love (with a little classic Boomer-style political protest thrown in). Ronstadt doesn’t sing now, her goddess-level pipes diminished by Parkinson’s disease. But her career and life—her independence, resilience, and down-to-earth devotion to the work of art, the attention that generates delight—serve as a model for us all.
Listen to my heart beating on the line,
Ann
slate.com/culture/2019/12/linda-ronstadt-wayne-shorter-greatest-living-musicians.html
Listen to my heart beating on the line,
Ann
slate.com/culture/2019/12/linda-ronstadt-wayne-shorter-greatest-living-musicians.html