<![CDATA[ Roberta Flack (1937-2025), uma das maiores vozes do R&B, da Soul e do Jazz ]]>

Roberta Flack died at the age of 88, surrounded by her family after several health complications. The American artist suffered a stroke in 2016, contracted Covid in 2022 and, that same year, announced the end of her career due to suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Throughout her musical career, she reached the top of the Billboard charts three times and won the Grammy for Album of the Year twice in a row ( The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face and Killing Me Softly with His Song ).

It all started in North Carolina, where this daughter of pianists was born and spent her childhood. The presence of an old piano at home led her to try the instrument and "countless hours" of practice followed, as she herself recalled in an interview when announcing the end of her career. Next came the local church choir and a surprising scholarship, at the age of 15, to Howard University in Washington. The child prodigy seemed to have a brilliant career ahead of her and would eventually achieve it, but it wasn't that simple. After finishing her degree, she ended up returning home, given the sudden death of her father. The lack of a steady income led her to choose to teach music and English, but for a short time. In 1968, at the age of 31, she was hired to sing in a restaurant and, less than a year later, she recorded her first album - First Take , which, in 2020, entered Rolling Stone's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.

In 1973, Roberta Flack recorded the song that would become a permanent fixture in her life: Killing Me Softly with His Song . The song was originally written by Lori Lieberman, but it was with Flack that it reached number 1 on the Billboard charts that year. After Flack, many other artists presented their versions of the song, such as Tori Amos, Toni Braxton and Alicia Keys, but only The Fugees, in 1996, left their mark on the collective memory.

Roberta Flack was one of the greatest voices in R&B, Soul and Jazz, the territories she explored. Her latest work was released in 2012, a tribute to The Beatles - Let it Be Roberta .