by Marta J. Effinger

Effinger: What was it like for you growing up in Georgia? What type of music did you hear?

Reagon: I grew up in a rural area in southwest Georgia. The strongest places for music for me were in church, in school, on the playground, and in my home. All the music was unaccompanied, and it was done with all of us singing together. I did not sing with accompaniment until I was eleven years old, when I joined the church. The church had just bought a piano, and my sister formed a gospel choir and I was in that choir. The music was gospel music.

I moved from there to singing with the high school choir. We did unaccompanied spirituals, but not like the ones at church. These were arranged spirituals, the type of music started by the Fisk Jubilee Singers. The other thing about the music we sang was the way we sang it. And now I am talking about the performance style.

You were supposed to stand, and you were supposed to stand still. There was no patting of the feet or moving of the body. You were supposed to have energy, power, and animation at times, but it was very different from what happened in church, where the music was supposed to open you up and energize you and there were no restrictions on the way you would physically move with the music. It was expected that you would pat your feet and clap your hands or, if the song really got going, you could stand up or, if you were deeply moved, you could cry.

But in my high school chorus, I entered into what I really think is the education culture of African Americans. We sang these spirituals, but the performance tradition was set by Western choral standards. The other thing we had to learn was how to sound in our voices. You actually had to cover your tone, so that your voice sounded smooth. In church, it was very important to use open, uncovered tones, especially in the front of the face.

In high school, I was actually using three different systems: the congregational style that actually comes out of the 19^th century; the gospel music that I was singing in the choir, which is the 20^th-century music created by African Americans; and a new concert genre, African American concert music, which blended our original song with European choral principles.

Effinger: How did Henry T. Burleigh help to make [African American concert music] popular?

Reagon: Harry T. Burleigh was the first musician to arrange spirituals for the solo voice. And he created a piano accompaniment for the spirituals. And what's important about this is that as this genre of concert spirituals developed . . . there developed a body of standards about the appropriate way to perform. And most of the time if it was the choir, it was always unaccompanied. And if it was a solo, it was almost always accompanied by piano and that was sort of the standard and that was . . . changed a bit by the people who perform today. For example, Jessye Norman and Kathleen Battle did a historic concert of spirituals at Carnegie Hall [in New York City]. They had a choir, an organ, a piano, a flutist, and had new arrangements and new concepts. Some people who were used to the older standards commented about hearing choral renditions of the spirituals accompanied by an orchestra. There is a way, we were told, in which in the early decades of performing spirituals were supposed to be performed. Because this is an African American genre, you can guarantee that it will change, and so change it did and it has.

The other music that was important to me was quartet music. Most people think quartet music is the same as gospel music, because both are sacred music. But it is important to understand that African American quartets who do sacred music pull first from the arranged spirituals tradition that was developed on our school campuses. They also developed a rehearsed tradition. What's important about that is there is no rehearsed tradition in congregational music.

Nobody called a rehearsal so that I would learn to sing hymns or would learn to sing spirituals. You learned sitting in the congregation and finding your voice by listening to people who sort of sang in your range. Rehearsed traditions were usually associated in some way with more Westernized forms. And so quartets, which began to be organized in the black community and actually created by working class people, really began to do these arranged spirituals. Initially they were called Jubilee quartets. The Golden Gate Quartet out of Tidewater, Virginia, is one of the most famous, but that quartet is also very innovative because in addition to doing the arranged spirituals from the 19^th century, their lead singer wrote incredible ballads based on the Bible stories. So, when you think about quartets today, like the Soul Stirrers, Pilgrim Travelers, Spirit of Memphis Quartet, Swan Silvertones, these are gospel quartets. They came out of that working-class tradition. What is really important, is that here you have an arranged concert form that begins with the Fisk Jubilee Singers that is a part of the African American education music culture and runs parallel to the whole 20^th century.

When I got into college, I was doing 19^th-century congregational music in church and I was doing Western choral music. I was the contralto solo. In 1961, I was arrested because I began to be involved in the Civil Rights Movement. This was the Albany, Georgia, Movement in December 1951. In one week, they arrested over 700 people in Albany, Georgia. We were protesting the fact that they had arrested some of our students because they tried to buy tickets at the segregated Trailway bus station. And the Albany Movement comes out of that activity.

One of the things that happened in jail was music. And I found it interesting that the best music was the oldest music. Now in jail, we had old people over sixty, we had working people, professionals, and students in college and high school. So you've got a very small space and people of all ages. And these were not people who lived together or ran together or were members of the same church. It was the older songs that we could sing, and the other thing we could do was sing some of the arranged spirituals.

Coming out of the jail experience, I actually understood something else about what music was, because in that particular case, when I was arrested, I was pretty sure I would be suspended from school. I was on scholarship, and I had put my future at risk. I was absolutely determined to be in the Movement, but it was not a reassuring time. It was not a time when you knew what was going to happen. I found that music was grounding for all of us.

Before you went on a march you could sing and it sort of pulled you together. I came out understanding something about music that I had not been taught. If you studied music in music departments at that time, you were taught about music theory, you were taught about harmony, you were taught the melody, you were taught the scales, and what genre it was. And if you were performing it, you were taught how to sing it.

You were never taught why the music existed, and you were not taught that some of our songs were instruments of our survival, instruments of sanity. I came out of the Movement experience wanting never to sing outside of that boundary. I liked the idea that I was fighting racism in the United States of America and the most articulate way I could do it was through singing a song.

When the Freedom Singers were formed in 1962, it was because of the power of singing in southwest Georgia. The Freedom Singers traveled all over the country using the songs to tell the story of the struggle in the Civil Rights Movement. And so the first time I appeared at Carnegie Hall it was in concert as a singer who had been suspended from school because she was in the Movement. That was an important way for me to go to the concert stages of this country because I didn't have be famous, discovered, and I didn't have to have a hit, and I didn't have to be on the Top 40. When I organized Sweet Honey in the Rock in 1973, instead of using the structures of the music industry, I went back to the community structures that I knew, the quartets.

Small groups would get together one night a week and they would sing on the weekends. Sweet Honey is 28 years old, and we still use that model. Most of the time, as a group of black women singers, we are at home with our families. We do about 50 concerts a year. Our repertoire is interesting because when I set up the structure for the repertoire, I wanted to honor those people who lived and died in such a way that we are still here. And what that meant for me was that we had to sing spirituals and hymns from the 18^th and 19^th centuries, and we do that.

The other thing the Movement taught me was that you could do those songs, the old songs, and sometimes if you changed the words, a song from the 19^th century would be just right for something that happened that day in Albany, Georgia, in the 20^th century. And that made me know that anybody who honored the tradition had to do more than sing the old songs. You had to also create new songs. So I set up a structure in Sweet Honey so that everyone was responsible for repertoire and everybody had to bring in songs, either songs they wrote, songs they arranged, or songs they heard that they thought would work for the group. And so the Sweet Honey repertoire is one where we have songs from the 18^th, 19^th, early 20^th centuries, and contemporary songs. We are a group known for having songs that tell stories, and that talk about our experiences, our beliefs. The songs take on a political stance on issues concerning us as a people. And this happened because of what happened to me in the Civil Rights Movement.

Effinger: You seem to suggest that the music must do more than entertain?

Reagon: I decided I needed to find a way to share contemporary music in a way that reflected the function songs had for slaves and during the Civil Rights Movement. Somehow, I needed to convey that music is another way of reinforcing yourself, affirming yourself, soothing yourself, expressing yourself - it is a part of what you need to get through the world. And that it should be entertaining as well. We are talking about presenting to your audiences really fine music, but not separating that music from life. That's very central to what we are trying to do in Sweet Honey.

Effinger: How are spirituals a music of faith and how do you try to share this music with your audiences?

Reagon: When I look at spirituals, that term is from African Americans. There is a quote from a woman who had been a slave: "We call them spirituals because that's where they come from - the spirit." I think there is a way in which you can pull inside of yourself beyond the physical, intellectual, and emotional and lean on another part of your being that we call the spirit, the soul, which is part of the everlasting. These songs take you to that place.

I grew up as a Baptist, and I thought faith was when you come to the edge of a cliff and you can't see the bridge, and you believe and step out anyway. When you go through impossible situations, it strengthens your faith. It is also knowing about the journey. If you know how far our people have come, it can strengthen your faith so that you, too, can carry your part of the distance, and the race that needs to be run.

My mother was a domestic worker, and her boss lady who paid her $18 a week could not figure out how she could have four children in college. My mother said she couldn't figure it out either and, if she waited until she could, her children would not have gone to college. So sometimes you can't wait until you know how it's going to be done, you have to step out on faith. It's really a lesson I learned from my mother. She would say I might not be able to get to the goal, but I can make the first step. And if you make the first step, you can see the next step.

Effinger: What are your concerts like for young people? How do they differ from the concerts for adults?

Reagon: When we perform for young people, we want them to deal with the same themes. We talk about the Civil Rights Movement. We do freedom songs, but we take the time to tell the story about something in the Movement. We will ask them questions such as, "What is freedom for you?" We have a song, "Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child," it's a spiritual. And we will ask, "How many people in the audience have their mothers?" "And how many people in the audience don't have their mothers?"

There is always somebody in the audience who is being raised by their grandparents or their cousins, and then we talk about it and what it feels like sometimes if you don't have your particular parent, or if you don't have your sister or brother. We'll sing that song, and then right after that song, we'll sing a song called "So Glad I'm Here."

So with children we do fewer songs, and we take the time to deal with concepts and ask questions. We ask the children to tell us stories so that there is a chance that they really understand. And, of course, we have a lot of play songs so that they can laugh too.

Effinger: Is rap music the music of young people? How have you used it in your performances to reach young people?

Reagon: Sweet Honey in the Rock's music is brought in by members of the group. We have two women who write rap. And so the use is not a big issue. The only thing I say about any genre of song is that it is what it is. You don't say gospel is great, blues is great, rap is great, country is great, [or] jazz is great. You have to [ask] what does it do for me? What does it say? Does it help to build my life? Does it help to surround my life? Does it help me to be who I need to be? And so any genre needs to be looked at that way.

I feel that music is a very powerful force, and people should pick their music. I think every generation has its music. With us, it was rhythm and blues, doo wop, and rock 'n' roll. With the generation after us, it was soul and funk. And so, today, people do rap and hip-hop. And there is a new sort of thing happening, a different kind of ballad, which is interesting. What is very important with 20th-century African American music is that at the same time we are creating it for ourselves, we are also buying and selling it, sometimes it serves and sometimes it does not serve.