Aretha Franklin "helped define the American
experience" for more than six decades, former US President Barack
Obama and his wife Michelle said in a statement paying their respects
to the singer shortly after her death.
Her voice was "a glimpse of the divine," the Obamas said of Franklin,
who sang at the former leader's first presidential inauguration in
2009.
"In her voice, we could feel our history, all of it and in every
shade - our power and our pain, our darkness and our light, our quest
for redemption and our hard-won respect," they said in a statement.
"She helped us feel more connected to each other, more hopeful, more
human. And sometimes she helped us just forget about everything else
and dance," it said. "May the Queen of Soul rest in eternal peace."