The Virtuoso

Turning the Tables is NPR’s ongoing multi-platform series dedicated to recentering the popular music canon on voices that have been marginalized, underappreciated, or hidden in plain sight. In 2020, we will publish an occasional series looking closely at the careers of significant women in music, treasured albums or significant scenes. This is the first in the series; find all Turning the Tables content here . Listen to a playlist of songs from across Roberta Flack’s career. Roberta Flack has always held two souls within her body. From her childhood days onward, she was herself, the daughter of a draftsman and a church choir organist who learned to play music at her mother’s knee. This Roberta strove to understand both Chopin and Methodist hymnody and was precocious enough to gain admission to Howard University at 15. She was a shy, awkward, diligent girl with her nose always in a book and fingers tired from practicing piano scales. Even then, in her deepest being, she was also Rubina