An excellent evening with Bernice Johnson Reagon
Bettina Blake has funded a new Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Liberal Arts position here at UMM. Our first such Professor is Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon, and her visit officially began tonight with an excellent lecture.
In the early 1960’s, Reagon was active in SNCC and a founding member of the Freedom Singers, and in the 70’s became a historian for the Smithsonian’s Museum of American History while also founding the fine group Sweet Honey in the Rock.
WeatherGirl and I got to see Sweet Honey in the Rock several years ago when they performed here as part of the Performing Arts Series, which was a great show. Reagon’s lecture tonight was just as good, and certainly an excellent start to the visit of a distinguished professor in the liberal arts. She blended history, and thoughts on what history means to us as a culture, with her personal stories and great songs and fragments thereof.
For me the best bit was the wonderful way that she got us to sing. There she had a bunch of unmoving Minnesota lumps (I’ve never seen a people so capable of stillness in the face of great rhythm as these Minnesotans) who for the most part weren’t used to singing in public and certainly hadn’t ever sung together. And she got us to sing. In harmony. Really well. It was quite something and I’m thrilled to have been part of that moment.
Other neat bits included:
- “I have faith because I remember” - that knowledge of history can give us the ability to manage our present and envision our future.
- We are all living archealogical evidence of our past - that the lives and struggles and choices and successes of our ancestors live on through us and that we are witnesses to their stories. (Reminded me a bit of PZ’s excellent piece “The proper reverance due to those who have gone before”.)
- When we started (spontaneously) to sing in harmony she commented that the “big chord” (the harmony) was courage, as it takes courage to not just follow the melody. I really liked that idea, and it could be a cool concept for my Roots Music class.
- There was an interesting question from Paula about why there aren’t songs in the current movements like there were in the Civil Rights Movement, and her answer echoed many things I’ve thought/said. (Nancy Schuman and I discussed this at some length after my “Music in the Civil Rights Movement” talk.) The short version is that the Civil Rights Movement came out of a culture of song, which isn’t true of most/many of the current “movements”. Also two important things have changed since the early 60’s: The music industry has set up the (false) dichotomy of producers and consumers of music, and the incredible availability of cheap (or free) recorded music means people no longer have to sing (to themselves or to each other) in order to preserve and propogate songs. While I think she’s spot on in most of this, I think she and I differ in some ways on where the future takes us from here. I’ll need to think about it some more, though. Stay tuned?
Added 27 Apr, 9:25am
Last night I gapped one of the coolest ideas from her talk. (I stopped taking notes once she started singing - it was just too engaging.) She talked about Pete Seeger coming down to help with the Movement in the 60’s and helping her change her vision of what being a “musician” was/could be. Instead of focussing on trying to “get a hit” and “make it big”, he talked about a musician as having a job like a teacher or plumber or grocer, where if you get up each morning and get on with it you can make it work. You may not make millions, but you can make it work. I really like that idea, and probably should share it with my Roots Music students.
I know that I’ve been trapped in that kind of thinking in the past, which is weird since I have no aspirations to great fame or fortune. Performing as part of the open mic nights this semester, though, as been really liberating and fun, and has done a lot to make music a more active event in my life instead of just listening endlessly and never making.
What sucks is that it’s taken me until my early 40’s to reach a point where I’m singing in public. Happily Sub-Evil Boy is happily singing away and I know I’ll work really hard to keep that going through the difficult puberty-laden years ahead. Last night while we were talking to my Mom he just launched into “Uncle Achin” and we ended up belting out that and “Ain’t no booze (Fireman save my child)” together there in the kitchen and it was a total blast. (These were the songs that I opened and closed the evening with at the February open mic night when I MC’ed.) God only knows what Mom thought :).
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