Sweet Honey In The Rock Biography
Sweet Honey In The Rock were formed in 1973 at the Black Repertory Theater Company, Washington D.C., USA, by the civil rights activist Bernice Johnson Reagon was working there as music director. Sweet Honey In The Rock sing almost totally unaccompanied aside from hand claps, covering jazz, blues and gospel that blends historical sources with contemporary lyrical concerns. Though Reagon is the figurehead, the group has at various times included contributions from up to 20 other African-American women, each of whom built up songs from their own experiences. B'lieve I'll Run On (See What The End's Gonna Be) was a superior collection of songs about heroines such as Sojourner Truth and Fannie Lou Hamer. The live collection Good News featured "Breaths", a tour de force of full-blooded, passionate harmony. We All ... Everyone Of Us added "More Than A Paycheck" and "Battle For My Life" to a growing arsenal of songs. It preceded the more experimental The Other Side which ranged from scintillating a cappella to West African drum rhythms to a cover version of Woody Guthrie's "Deportees". On Feel Something Dawning On Me they covered the African funeral song, "Meyango", while Liberian congregational music contrasted with similar devotional songs from the Deep South. The sentiments were similar, though updated, when they returned with In This Land in 1992. As well as touching on the ethnocentricity of others (tackling the plight of Native Americans in a cover of Buffy Sainte-Marie's "Now That The Buffalo's Gone"), they also questioned society's response to AIDS and homelessness. Group member Yasaye Maria Barnwell also took part in a series of educational programmes, including a 1989 six-cassette teacher's course (Singing In The African American Tradition), to teach "choral and congregational vocal music", and a 1994 commission from the Women's Philharmonic in San Francisco depicting the life of Biblical Egyptian slave girl Hagar. This is very much in keeping with the tradition of Sweet Honey In The Rock, whose constant advocacy of their people demands more active participation in the struggle than simply singing the blues. The group celebrated their 25th anniversary in 1998.
Source: The Encyclopedia of Popular Music by Colin Larkin. Licensed from Muze.
|
