Sweet Honey in the Rock

Sweet Honey in the Rock

Gospel group

For the Record…

Selected discography

Sources

“Part community sing, part singing community,” as Jon Pareles described them in the New York Times, Sweet Honey in the Rock has become one of the most popular vocal groups in concert and on recordings. Five women integrating their voices into soaring harmonies with exhilerating rhythms, Sweet Honey in the Rock is a “girl’s group” as reinterpreted for the politically aware, feminist 1980s. The quintet was formed by Bernice Johnson Reagon in 1973. A long-time civil rights activist from Albany, Georgia, she was serving as vocal director for the highly acclaimed D.C. Black Repertory Theater in Washington. A workshop that she led for unaccompanied voices developed into the present group when only four women appeared at the first rehearsal. As Reagon said in an article in Scholastic Scope, “the sound fell into place.”

Over twenty women have appeared with Sweet Honey in the Rock over the last fifteen years. Currently, the members are Reagon, Evelyn Harris (who joined in 1974), health care profession Ysaye Maria Barnwell (bass line maintainer since 1979), choreographer Aisha Kahlil (since 1981) and Nitanju Bolade, trained in African-based folklore. Sweet Honey in the Rock performs with a non-singing signer for deaf members of the audience, Shirley Childres Johnson. The vocalists provide their own percussion accompaniment on tambourines, rattles and hand-held drums. The audience’s rhythmic clapping adds to the pulsating beat.

Sweet Honey in the Rock continues to perform a capella. The group’s ability to create a full sound without backup instrumentalists—a choice that has become more popular with a variety of musical groups over the past decade—still astonishes audiences and critics alike. Although a London reviewer for The Observer titled his article “Disturbing discords,” American critics, more used to the harmonies of Gospel, West African music, and minimalists, defend the sound as “luminous, virtuosic, ingenious and luxuriant.” As Doris Worsham described them in the Oakland Tribune in 1985, “Sweet Honey pours forth harmonies of the world.”

The political activism and Black-conciousness of Reagon’s past is very much present in the Sweet Honey in the Rock concerts and recordings. Reagon’s own lyrics are influenced by the writings of black novelists and poets June Jordan, Alice Walder, and Ralph Ellison, whose philsophy “The choice is to live with music or to die with noise,” she cited in the Scholastic Scope article. The group was chosen to perform at the 1985 United Nations Decade for Women conference in Nairobi, Kenya, and has presented its stirring music at concerts and rallies dedicated to disarmament, African liberation, safe energy, and PUSH.

The range of music performed in each concert and recording has given Sweet Honey in the Rock a unique feel. The group derives its title, and part of its repertory, from the Southern gospel songs that Reagon learned as a child. They have championed the authored hymns of Reverend Charles Albert Tindley and William Herbert Brewster, as well as American protest music of the 1930s, by Woodie Guthrie and Leadbelly. Their annual Carnegie Hall concert in 1988, for example, included Leadbelly.’s “Sylvie,” a Georgia White blues lament from the 1930s, the ageless hymn “Let Your Little Light Shine,” a reggae number, “Rivers of Babylon,” and a new song by Reagon, “Ode to the International Debt.”

Sweet Honey in the Rock has also toured extensively in the United States and Canada, with appearences on college campuses, folk clubs, Baptist and AME churches and festivals, and folk and women’s music. Their performances have been cheered at the Smithsonian Institution’s Festival of American Folk Life on the Mall in their native District of Columbia, at the 1984 Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors in New York City, and at the Edinburgh Festival in Scotland. A Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) profile of the group has brought their music and message to millions more who have not seen them in person.

For the Record…

Formed as a capella gospel quintet in 1973 by Bernice Johnson Reagon; current members include Reagon, Evelyn Harris (1974—), Ysaye Maria Barnwell (1979—), Aisha Kahlil (1981—), and Nitanju Bolade (1985—); group performs with non-singing signer for deaf members of the audience, Shirley Childres Johnson .

Awards: B’lieuel’llRun On… See WhattheEnd’sGonnaBe named best women’s album, 1979, by National Association of Independent Record Distributors.

Addresses: Office –Roadwork, Inc. 1475 Harvard St. NW, Washington, DC 20009. Record company —Flying Fish Records, 1304 West Schubert, Chicago, IL 60614.

Recordings for the Flying Fish and Redwood labels also display the diversity of the group in live performance and in studios. The 1985 Feel Something Drawing Me On included only sacred music—from Southern gospel to “Meyango,” a West African funeral song. Their other six albums, however, include a full range of Sweet Honey songs. B’lieve I’ll Run On … See What the End’s Gonna Be (1978) was named best women’s album by the National Association of Independent Record Distributors for 1979. Among the cuts that have received individual praise are the group’s version of “[Ain’t Gonna] Study War No More,” Woody Guthrie’s “Deportees,” and “Mandiacapella,” improvised from West African drum rhythms.

Selected discography

Sweet Honey in the Rock, Flying Fish, 1976.

B’lieve I’ll Run On … See What the End’s Gonna Be, Redwood Records, 1978.

Good News, Flying Fish, 1982.

We All… Everyone of Us, Flying Fish, 1983.

Feel Something Drawing Me On, Flying Fish, 1985.

The Other Side, Flying Fish, 1985.

Sweet Honey in the Rock at Carnegie Hall, Flying Fish, 1988.

Breaths (anthology), Flying Fish, 1988 [released only on compact disc].

Sources

New York Times, October 26, 1988.

Oakland Tribune, October 18, 1985.

The Observer (London), March 27, 1983.

Scholastic Scope, Media Focus section, March 21, 1985.

Washington Post Weekend, November 15, 1985.

—Barbara Stratyner