🖤🎹✍🏿🎤🎶 #ArtIsAWeapon #BlackHistoryMonth Happy 83rd b'earthday to musical genius, "mother" @officialrobertaflack! Thank you @annkpowers for this @nprmusic #TurningtheTables piece examining Ms. Flack's music, immense impact and how she should be considered one of our greatest musical artists. It is beyond time for her to be inducted into the @rockhall. https://www.npr.org/2020/02/10/804370981/roberta-flack-the-virtuoso ___________________ Excerpt: As the only solo artist to win the Grammy for Record of the Year two years in a row — in 1973 for "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face," and in 1974 for "Killing Me Softly With His Song" — she should have been granted, at the very least, a spotlight tribute during this year's televised ceremony, especially since host Alicia Keys owes Flack a considerable (and, by her, acknowledged) artistic debt. Instead, there was merely one quick shot of Flack smiling beatifically in the audience. Perhaps that cutaway did capture something: the failure of popular music's official institutions to fully track Flack's importance. She is beloved, yet underestimated, a treasure too rarely held up to the light. One reason for this, unavoidably, is racism. After the 1980s, when new radio formats and outlets like MTV did much to undo the genre-busting experiments of the previous decade, Flack continued to be a regular presence on both the black-oriented R&B and white-dominated adult contemporary charts. But the influence of this firebrand who had openly defied others' definitions of "soul" was increasingly downplayed within the emerging histories of both rock and soul. (One obvious slight: Though she has been eligible since 1994, she's never even been nominated to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.) #RobertaFlack #BlackCreativeGenius #BlackWomenInMusic #Musician #SingerSongwriter #RnB #SoulMusic #HipHop #TraScapades #MusicIsLife #RockNRollHallOfFame https://www.instagram.com/p/B8Zzs8OA45U/?igshid=9itwr914gldk