Word: reagon
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Sweet Honey are an incredible group. In addition to being phenomenal singers, composers and arrangers, having contributed music to films, scored ballets and acted on stage and TV, many of the members hold doctorate degrees. Berenice Johnson Reagon, the founder, is Distinguished Professor of History at the American University, and Curator Emeritus at the Smithsonian Institution, which gave her words an extra weight when she spoke of the example set by leaders “who feel that you lose something when you say ‘I’m sorry’ instead...
DIED. CORDELL HULL REAGON, 53, civil rights leader and founding member of the 1960s Freedom Singers; of a gunshot wound; in Berkeley, California...
...series is something of a personal journey for Reagon, who is a curator at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History and the founder of the Washington-based a cappella black female singing group Sweet Honey in the Rock. In the series Reagon frequently relates the development of sacred music to her own experiences: singing in church as a child in southwest Georgia; hearing a blues song for the first time (her reaction: "My God, I've found a piece of myself!"); touring with the Freedom Singers in the 1960s and fighting for civil rights by singing...
...Reagon first envisioned a series on black spiritual music 15 years ago. It took five years to produce, at a cost of $1 million, quite a sum for radio (most of the funding came from the National Endowment for the Humanities). The production crew unearthed rare archival material and conducted more than 250 hours of interviews. Some of the older gospel singers interviewed died before the series was completed, and that brought home to Reagon the importance of her efforts: "I realized I was creating a record of a part of society that would probably be passed over...
Modern pop music has borrowed from sacred music but missed its heart. "You can listen to a song and be moved," Reagon says in one episode. "But within the African-American tradition there is a high value put on being caught up in the singing." Listening to Aretha Franklin's graceful flight through the softly powerful hymn Never Grow Old, or the Barrett Sisters' vocal exodus through the redemptive gospel song I Don't Feel Noways Tired, one cannot help being caught up, regardless of one's personal faith. Wade in the Water is a deluge of joy that sweeps...