Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, February 28, 1992 TAG: 9202280251
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BETH MACY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
SWEET AS HONEY
Bernice Johnson Reagon doesn't intend for the hairs on the back of your neck to stand up when her group, Sweet Honey in the Rock, takes the stage.But more than likely, that's just what happens when the all-woman a cappella group opens its collective mouth and the sweet five-part harmonies come flowing out.
Traditional hymns about love and oppression. Contemporary songs about civil rights. Messages about the frustrations of a global market that exploits Third World laborers.
From its Washington, D.C., base, Sweet Honey has performed across the world for 19 years. The quintet will sing tonight at Blacksburg High School - not only as part of Virginia Tech's Women's Week, but in a celebration of Black History Month as well.
Sweet Honey is grounded in the 19th- and early 20th-century black choral tradition. To Reagon, it's a tradition so ingrained that she seems nonchalant about the reaction the group sometimes gets. Like those back-of-the-neck hairs.
"It doesn't feel like magic to me; it's simply the way people make music," she said in a telephone interview. "I'm trying to describe a culture where music is everywhere . . . on the playground, in school, at church.
"If you were in the fields working, you sang; music was an integral part of your life."
The daughter of a Baptist minister, Johnson grew up in Albany, Ga., cutting her political teeth in the civil rights campaigns of the 1960s as a member of the Freedom Singers.
Sweet Honey grew out Reagon's work as vocal director of the Black Repertory Theatre in Washington. Although the group has not achieved widespread success in the commercial sense, it did share a Grammy Award in 1989 for the compilation album "Folkways: A Vision Shared," a tribute to Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly (Hudie Ledbetter). The song "Emergency," from the group's latest release, "Live at Carnegie Hall," was nominated for a Grammy in contemporary folk as well.
Sweet Honey draws from a range of styles that include jazz, gospel, reggae and blues. As a Billboard reviewer once said: "In a world of ear candy, this is music with meat on its bones."
And the group is just as interesting visually: Each woman wears bright, loose clothes patterned from traditional African garb. Member Shirley Childress Johnson adds to the palette with her graceful sign-language translations for the hearing-impaired.
Accompanied by nothing but an occasional gourd or tambourine, the group projects "a strong sense of being black and being women in this world," Reagon said. "Our music has always been about struggle as well as tradition."
Member Ysaye Maria Barnwell, who supports the five-part harmonies with an amazing bass range, set to music this poem by Waring Cuney called "No Images":
She does not know her beauty,
She thinks her brown body has no glory,
but if she could dance naked 'neath palm trees
and see her reflection in the river
then she would know.
But there are no trees in the street where she lives
and dishwater gives back no images.
Indeed, each Sweet Honey concert is a veritable crash course in social consciousness. Their tribute to Winnie Mandela, "Denko," is a choral feast about the sacrifices a mother must make to maintain the welfare of her children.
In "Ode to the Internatal Debt," Reagon writes:
But money borrowed and loaned for
Guns you can't eat
And buildings you can't live in
And trinkets you can't wear
It is a debt not owed by the people.
Traveling with Sweet Honey on weekends, Reagon works full-time during the week, as do the other members. A Ph.D. historian, she is a Smithsonian Institution curator for the National Museum of American History. The 50-year-old vocalist recently was awarded a $275,000 fellowship from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation for her research of worship communities in southwest Georgia. The award was also based partly on her work with Sweet Honey.
"It is an incredible experience to have that kind of group say to you that what you do in your life makes sense," Reagon said of the honor.
Her work with Sweet Honey in the Rock not only makes good sense, it makes a powerful statement. Despite the group's lack of commercial stardom, Reagon feels richly rewarded.
"We come out of a tradition for which there really wasn't a model," she said. "And to have lasted this long and been able to do what we've done and make a difference in the culture and the environment, I feel the group has been very successful."
Sweet Honey in the Rock, 8 p.m. tonight, Blacksburg High School. $8 advance, $10 at the door. 231-7615.