https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/aug/17/drenched-in-glory-how-aretha-gave-voice-to-embattled-black-women-and-transformed-a-nation
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Extract from the article:
…the reason we mourn her death so deeply, is that she taught us so much about the preciousness of our emotions, our inner worlds and desires. She dared to voice and make public the nuanced, emotionally heterogeneous interiority of black womanhood, becoming a conduit for articulating the beauty and sensuousness, the rage and the despair, the sadness as well as the joy of black life transduced through African American female musicianship. She turned the “vocal run” itself into a thousand miles of freedom. The intelligence of her melisma, a kind of singing in which notes upon notes are strung together into one syllable, lifted that musical gesture out of the black church and planted it firmly in the mainstream, transforming the style of popular singing. When it is used most effectively, the melisma exudes sheer visceral power and can ignite existential catharsis. It suggests limitless emotional revelation and spiritual reckoning. Franklin took it to new heights.