My most resonant memory of 70s music is when during the preparations of  our school annual functions, we would hear Lipps Incorporated’s Funky Town again and again. And again. We had no access to Western music except on radio and how this record landed up in a small town and in a school library beats me.

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Then ofcourse I discovered Donna Summer like one discovers a forbidden secret. That song and you know which one am referring to is still impossible to play in a house full of kids and old people so imagine our shock that someone was singing out aloud Love to Love You Baby the way she did. Yet there was something innocent about her. Despite the sultry heat, the grunts that made many radio stations of that time ban the song in question. For one she was a real singer..not just a flavour of the season. She had a VOICE. A soul. A real core that had real music.
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Like Anita Ward, Tina Charles, Diana Ross, she exemplified an era that we now look back at with sweet and sorrowful nostalgia. An age where listening to music was like being initiated into a world of  something new and exciting. When music was a journey, a memory of unfurling youth. When music intended to make your feet and your soul dance and to be memorable and hummable. When melodies were sweet, voices bare and unadorned and lyrics simple.This was music without an agenda and we loved it. There was nothing shatteringly intellectual about She Works Hard For Her Money or Hot Stuff but by God, that voice! And the things it did to these songs. This was the voice of the Disco era. Plaintive yet powerful. Fearlessly uninhibited and in a way defining what we would expect from female voices in pop music, in the decades to come. Originality, self-definition and character.
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Her influence can be measured by the fact (sourced From Wikipedia) that her hit I Feel Love was sampled by Madonna, Bette Middler, Britney Spears, Robbie Williams, David Guetta and counting. Her success and early fame notwithstanding, this was a woman with many demons. Failed relationships, suicide attempts, fear and anxiety and addiction. And then faith saved her till cancer claimed her. She  allegedly made some homophobic remarks at one point, apologised and in the end,  made peace with life and the world made peace with her.
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Her life tells us that we are all mortal. That success is not a guarantee against unhappiness and loneliness and guilt and errors of judgement. But also that, if we put something out there that is created from the best within and with love, it will survive and be remembered. Like the music of Donna Summer. That voice is still out there singing though she has passed on, to start all over again, some place else.
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Reema Moudgil is the author of Perfect Eight (http://www.flipkart.com/perfect-eight-9380032870/p/itmdf87fpkhszfkb?pid=9789380032870&_l=A0vO9n9FWsBsMJKAKw47rw–&_r=dyRavyz2qKxOF7Yuc