By Alliance Communications Coordinator Amy Durr and Alliance President Terry Gips
Celebrate Black History Month with the music of all-female, Black a cappela Sweet Honey in the Rock, who played a key role in the Civil Rights Movement. Sweet Honey’s Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon honored her mentor and Black Freedom Movement leader Ella Baker in the 80s with the impactful Ella’s Song, embodying Baker’s own words. “Reagon arranged the vocals so that they begin with one voice, which is supported and propelled further by the low, rhythmic voices of others, until they all join together in harmony at the end,” says NPR’s Kim Ruehl.
During their freedom songs, Sweet Honey draws from a deep well of African culture and enslavement as well as their entire beings in calling for liberation. “Built only on harmony and vocal percussion, the music they make is equal parts declaration and release,” says Ruehl. Reagon formed the famed ensemble in 1973 and led it until 2004, according to her website. Sweet Honey mirrors the effort of the movement from which it sprung: to raise voices, to empower individuals and to accomplish together what we cannot accomplish alone.
Ella’s Song
By Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon (1988)
Until the killing of black men, black mothers’ sons
Is as important as the killing of white men, white mothers’ sons
I’m a woman who speaks in a voice and I must be heard
At times I can be quite difficult, I’ll bow to no man’s word
We who believe in freedom shall not rest
We who believe in freedom shall not rest until it comes
Reagon Moved by Her Mentor’s Words: “We who believe in freedom shall not rest until it comes“
“Reagon’s life and work supports the concept of community-based culture with an enlarged capacity for mutual respect: for self, for those who move among us who seem to be different than us, respect and care for our home, the environment — including the planet that sustains life as we know it,” her website shares.
Reagon helped cement the role of a cappella singing in freedom movements as part of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which got her expelled from college. She built upon that concept further when she founded Sweet Honey in the Rock in 1973.
Sweet Honey Models the Essential Elements for Fundamental Systems Change
NPR’s Ruehl provides an astounding exploration of the underlying power of Sweet Honey. We feel she names the internal dynamic of Sweet Honey in such a valuable step-by-step guide into essential, insightful ways of being that we will let her words speak for themselves with our subtitles and bolding to frame the significance of each element. They show how diverse people can come together in common cause to transcend our deep polarization.
The Significance of Signing and Embodying African Spirituals and American Gospel
Sweet Honey in the Rock has been approaching music this way for decades, as they’ve introduced African folk hymns alongside American gospel songs. The group pulls equally from the deep well of traditional music and its own compositions. Its fifth member performs the songs in sign language, to bring the music to the widest possible audience. For Sweet Honey’s mission of using music to obtain a better world is nothing if anyone is excluded.
A Black Feminist Statement of Connection, Relationship and Agreement in Disagreement
That the members are all female is itself a statement, as the cherishing of connection and relationship, of finding agreement even in disagreement, is fundamentally feminist. Further, the role of black women in struggles for freedom in America is frequently overlooked, but it becomes un-ignorable at a Sweet Honey performance.
The Intimacy of Sitting in Chairs in a Non-Hierarchical Line
Live, they often sit in chairs, in a line across the front of the stage. Women sitting in chairs is an intimate thing, and it can feel as though the concert hall or theater is really someone’s living room; as though these women have been hard at work all day and now is the time to sit down, rest and sing.
The Power of Singing Together for Transcending Injustice
As generations of movement participants have experienced, music can be a meaningful tool in a protest — civil rights groups famously filled the jails and sang freedom songs to the guards. But as Reagon and Sweet Honey well know, the transformative effects of singing go much deeper than merely being a form of protest. Singing can help us understand how to transcend injustice.
Cooperation and Self-Modulation Even Amidst Disagreement
When we sing in a group, we have to listen to one another, adjusting our individual voices to match one another in tone, volume and pitch. We must cooperate rather than trying to drown one another out. And while the sound of a group of people singing at a protest can draw others’ attention to what’s wrong, it can also invite people to experience what it might feel like to cooperate, even if through disagreement.
Deep Listening and Intertwining
All of this becomes more tangible when Sweet Honey sings. Some of its members (23 women have, at some point, sung as part of the group) close their eyes to listen more closely to one another. They exchange glances and smile, gesture with their hands to pick up the rhythm or bring another part of the harmony in.
True Harmony Despite Different Ways of Thinking and Believing
Harmony, synonymous with agreement, is the key. In music, harmony is when two or more voices, singing different notes, join together. In harmony, we don’t have to sing the same line — or think the same way, or believe the same thing — in order to get along. Add counterpoint — the musical practice of synchronizing melodies so that a natural rhythm emerges — and you get a physical and aural practice in the way very different individuals can work together. The lessons of harmony and counterpoint can be learned by watching; they’re far more powerful the more people participate. (Just as, incidentally, citizenship is more powerful when more people participate.)
Finding Common Humanity Through Singing
For any movement to succeed, especially any nonviolent movement, it’s important for those who are sympathetic to understand they don’t have to agree on everything. They need only acknowledge their common humanity, their common goals, and then work toward them together. Sweet Honey’s music reminds us that singing together is an opportunity to practice that in real time, through harmony.
Recognizing Legacy
They harness the legacies of countless singers and song leaders, from their African ancestors to Highlander’s own Zilphia Horton, folk singers like Joan Baez, and beyond, to create a vehicle of harmony and rhythm that drives the meaning of the songs straight into their audience’s heart.
The Alliance and the Power of Music and the Arts to Co-Create Sustainability
We want to thank Kim Ruehl for highlighting the subtle but profound aspects of liberation and transformation that Sweet Honey in the Rock embodies. This is no little thing, as Ruehl and Sweet Honey get to the heart of why the Alliance has always called forth the power of music, arts and culture as essential to sustainability. Together we have the power in our voices to transform our world.