Obama and Favreau did not lean quite so heavily on any one device, but they made a powerful combo in part because they thought about speeches the way Savan Kotecha and other songwriters think about songs—as requiring hooks, choruses, and clear structures. They often drew on the speeches of Martin Luther King for inspiration, which were biblical, rhythmic, and propelled by a musicality that was explicit in the black preaching tradition. In The Hum: Call and Response in African American Preaching, the theologian Evans Crawford compared sermons to blues riffs, “characterized by improvised free
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