[originaltext] The American soul singer James Brown has died at the age of 73.

The American soul singer James Brown has died at the age of 73. His agent told the BBC the singer had died in a hospital in Atlanta, where he’d been treated for pneumonia. The man, who became known as the God father of soul, was a former shoeshine boy. He grew up in poverty in the American south, who went on to write and produce some of the most successful anthems of the civil rights movement in the United States in the 1960s. The U.S. civil rights activist Derevent al Shopton paid his respects, "James Brown was not just a guy who’d made a lot of hits, he changed culture for us. He made the common landmark. We’ve lost more than loves. We have lost the way of life."