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Hailing the King -- honoring Martin Luther King Jr.
'Songtalker' Bernice Johnson Reagon will be at Willamette University
By Barbara Curtain
Sunday, January 18, 2009
The Statesman Journal
Long before a black man could dream of being president, long before Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. could dream of a better view from the mountaintop, African American people raised their voices in song.
Miss those songs and you miss a crucial part of America's history, said Bernice Johnson Reagon, who will visit Willamette University Friday as part of its of Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration.
Reagon is a singer, composer and scholar on the role of African-American music in history. Many know her face and voice from Sweet Honey in the Rock, the a cappella women's group she founded in 1973 and sang with until her retirement in 2004.
Her Web site describes her as a "songtalker." But she is reluctant to pin down what will happen at Friday's appearance.
"I am a person who makes an oral presentation," she said last week by phone from her office in Washington, D.C. "I weave a song and talk. That is as much as I can actually talk about. It's not a concert."
She had been rehearsing for her performance at one of the upcoming inaugural balls — the Peace Ball in the Smithsonian Postal Museum, where she will share the stage with her daughter, Toshi Reagon, a singer, guitarist and producer.
Although Bernice Reagon was delighted to be part of Barack Obama's inauguration, she said she was even more elated over the campaign itself.
"I was deeply moved by how much it felt like people on the community, on the local level were taking ownership of this decision to make a choice of the next president," she said. "I have not seen anything like it since the voter registration drives in the South in the '50s and '60s."
On Election Day at her polling place, she had to wait in a long line, but people were chatting like friends. "I have trouble standing, but I said, 'Today I will stand.'"
Reagon, 66, has a doctorate from Howard University in African-American history. Among her many awards is a MacArthur "genius" fellowship.
It changed her life. She had proposed producing a series of 13 half-hour radio programs for the Smithsonian; she wound up spending four years, full time, leading a National Public Radio team in producing a series of 26 hour-long shows plus a family exhibition for the Smithsonian.
"None of that would have been possible without the resources and validation made possible by the MacArthur," she said.
Reagon won't predict what her young, largely white audience might take away from Friday's appearance. But she would love to meet people afterward and hear their own ideas about what they think should happen next.
"I learned a long time ago that that territory is not mine to shape," she said. "What people take away from what I am offering is going to have a lot to do with what people bring to it."