Sweet Honey In the Rock - Dream Variations
OK, look. I know I said July was done, but I'm kind of pissed off.
I got annoyed enough this morning to whip this entire post up -- from stream capture to remastered to your door -- in one afternoon.
See this lady here? She's one of my all time musical heroes and treasured realest-of-the-real ones.
Two weeks ago, at the age of almost 82, she passed away.
Almost nothing about the event, her life or her impact appeared in the mass media. At least not much that I saw.
In the two weeks since, there's been nary a mention, not of her or the beloved, towering a cappella group she founded over 50 years ago in Washington, DC.
As I've been down on antibiotics-and-steroid treatment for my ear stuff, I've gotten progressively more perturbed that this integral, multifaceted warrior woman has not received a scintilla of due.
Her music, both solo and with her band, has been of unquantifiably soothing solace to me since I first heard her when I was a teen.
Yes, Bernice Johnson Reagon did it all: OG Civil Rights activist, top-level song leader of that movement, founder of Sweet Honey In the Rock, Smithsonian-appointed music historian, ambassador of human rights worldwide.
And not much of a ripple when, after 60+ years in the thick of it, she leaves this mortal coil.
What a chef's kiss of a life, and what a culturally bereft, mnemonically-challenged country the US must truly be to gloss over someone of this passion, power and potency.
ROIOs involving her or Sweet Honey In the Rock are few and far between, but they were at one of the greatest benefit concerts of all time. In Madison Square Garden.
They have one song on the original No Nukes concert LP, but their whole contribution to those 1979 festivities is on (oh no! not that site again!), albeit in somewhat lossy-ish form like they all are.
I felt my ears were recovered enough and my anger was justified enough, so I spent all day working on this -- they were all lossless below 16 kHz, like any FM broadcast might be anyway -- that there be some token of remembrance for BJR as we end the month here.
Bonus tracks are from the Oakland Coliseum (surely the most storied multi-purpose entertainment facility of the 20th century, whatta venue and R.I.P. in just two months from now), at just the sort of Day On the Green vs. South African Apartheid event The Bay is famous for.
Sweet Honey In the Rock
"No Nukes"
Muse Concerts for a Non-Nuclear Future
New York City, New York USA
9.20-23.1979
01 introduction
02 Believe I'll Run On
03 A Woman
04 Echo
05 If You Had Lived
06 Cape Fear River Chant
07 A Woman
08 Dream Variations
09 As Long As I Have Breath In My Body
10 You Better Mind
11 Believe I'll Run On/As Long As I Have Breath In My Body (reprise)
12 Crying for Freedom In South Africa (bonus track, Oakland 1990)
13 State of Emergency (bonus track, Oakland 1990)
Total time: 51:45
Tracks 02, 06-08: Madison Square Garden, NYC 9.20.1979
Tracks 03-05: Madison Square Garden, NYC 9.21.1979
Tracks 09-11: Battery Park City, NYC 9.23.1979
Tracks 01, 12-13: Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum, Oakland CA 6.30.1990
Track 08 is a poem by Langston Hughes
Bernice Johnson Reagon - vocals
Carol Lynn Maillard - vocals
Evelyn Harris - vocals
Louise Robinson - vocals
Nitanju Bolade Casel - vocals
Aisha Kahlil - vocals
Shirley Childress Johnson - vocals
Ysaye Maria Barnwell - vocals
with percussion by the ensemble
320/48k audio streamed from Wolfgang's Vault
spectral analysis was lossless to 16 kHz, making this more or less equivalent to an FM source
converted to 16/44 CD Audio, edited, tracked, denoised and slightly remastered by EN, July 2024
321 MB FLAC/direct link
321 MB FLAC/direct link
So that's it for July for real, OK? I made it to the customary 5 despite my (debilitating, thanks for asking) physical issues and Bernice Johnson Reagon got a shred of the grain of sand on the metaphorical beach of human acclaim and gratitude she deserves.
I've been looking at August and I will return in a bit to make it fit. But I'm dreaming someone gets next to BJR/Sweet Honey through this little screed and concert mashup I made, and as someone who knew once said, nothing lights a fire like a dream deferred.--J.
10.4.1942 - 7.16.2024