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On Monday (March 10th) the life of R&B legend Roberta Flack was celebrated. Numerous musicians came to the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, New York, to honor the singer.
Among them were also the Fugees members Lauryn Hill and Wyclef Jean. You only cover Flack’s classic “The First Time ever I Saw your face”, then – of course! -to present the fugees version of “Killing Me Softly with his song”.
With the cover version of the perhaps best known song of the musician who died on February 24 at the age of 88 with the big voice, the fugue had once become world famous. It has also remained her biggest hit.
“We were not officially asked to be here because I think they were a little shy to ask us if we wanted to participate,” said Lauryn Hill loudly “Billboard” During the memorial concert. “So we cheated a little in there, because it would have been impossible for us to just stand and watch in the corner.”
Lauryn Hill about the influence of Roberta Flack
Hill celebrated Flack as an influential artist and found profound words for her work: “Like Nina Simone, she paved a path of soulful, black, intellectual, sublime beauty, which not only addresses black resistance directly in poetry and statement, but is also a black resistance to racism, bigotry and restrictions”.
Hill continued: “She not only wrote about the beauty, she was pure beauty. She not only wrote about the resistance, but her existence was a form of resistance. She wrote our stories in forms that could not deny the established authorities of the time. Compositions that were covered by graceful classic shapes and nuances that did not want to or could not be dismissed. ”
In addition to the Fugees, Dionne Warwick, Alicia Keys, India.arie, Peabo Bryson, Clive Davis and Stevie Wonder also performed at the moving celebration. The latter dedicated Roberta Flack to his song “If’s Magic”.