Quote of the Day: Odetta

Odetta, extract from an interview in Radiance, Winter 1999

First of all, I have this feeling that I should be listening to rap, and I’ve had it on, and I can’t even understand what is being said. Of course, I know people do hear the words, and it means a lot to people, and it is valid because it’s coming out of people. But that drum thing is enough to kill me—over and over and over again, that relentless beating at me. I have a society that does that to me, okay? So I don’t want that represented in the music. But I’ve thought that I really should find a way to hear what is being said because the rappers are coming out of the community that is most terrorized by the system. And we fill up the prisons with them, so that they can work in there for next to nothing, and we’ve got slavery again. A few months ago, in Georgia or Alabama, they were thinking of putting chains on the prisoners again. Chain gangs!

Odetta Holmes
Radiance magazine interview
Winter 1999 issue