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| Howard T. Cash photo, courtesy of SHIR website |
Sweet Honey in the Rock is honest and
true in a vanishing universe of honest and true things. Last seen in
Madison at the Wisconsin Union Theater a decade ago, the world-famous a capella
group of African-American women returns on February 29, Leap Year Day, to
Overture Hall, capping Black History Month. The 2020 theme has been African
Americans and the Vote, so Sweet Honey’s sweet inspiration is right on time
this urgent election year.
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| Carol Maillard. Howard T. Cash photo |
What other musical entity is as
deeply enmeshed in our national history as Sweet Honey, whose polyphonic vocal
harmonies are born of West Africa, two-plus centuries of Black American music,
the Civil Rights Movement of the ‘50s and ‘60s and the bitter edges of current
events? If you’re new to Sweet Honey, please
take a minute to read about Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon, who founded the
group in 1973 and retired in 2004. There’ve been lots of personnel changes over the
years, though the current group of four voices includes Carol Maillard and
Louise Robinson, who’ve been there, on and off, since the beginning. I had the good fortune to interview Maillard
on the phone last week.
CulturalOyster: Your
website says this is your 45th anniversary tour. I don’t want to ask about the whole history
of the group – that would be a book, or maybe two. But is there one thing you can say about
Sweet Honey that just nails it?
Maillard: Actually
we’re in our 46th-47th year. There’ve been lots of changes. No one has been with the group for its whole
history. I was in it from ’73 through
’77 and then I was doing my acting career in New York, but every now and then
when they needed a substitute I’d come back. And then I came back full time in
’92, so about 27-ish years.
From
experiencing what people say I think we keep going because we bring our energy
into the community. Lots of artists have booking powerhouses that organize their
tours – we don’t have that. Our fans have a need and they may express it to a
theater or an organization to get us to appear there. We’re invited. We get
around the world because people ask us to come. That has a lot to do with our
longevity and with the spiritual need of the communities we visit. Not a lot of
artists have that. The music of the group is a mission – we bring people to
awareness of their own voice and power – the things they need to make
themselves feel whole. It’s about healing – people heal by speaking up. It is
really important. People and communities have a voice, and they need to use
it.
CulturalOyster: You
often sing lead. Last time you were here you led one of those rafter-raising,
soul clapping, call-and-response gospel tunes that epitomize what I need from
music, and I’ve been trying to track it down ever since. All I know to call it is
“I’m Goin’ Home One Sweet Day.” It blew
me away – I wrote about it in my year-end review. What is that song?
Maillard: Oh,
that’s Thomas A. Dorsey. I’m not sure of the right title. I guess it has two. “If
You See My Savior” is one; the other is “Standing by the Bedside of a Neighbor.”
That may be the official title. Bernice was the original performer; we recorded
it, I think you can find a YouTube video with her singing the lead.
I had
an incident once – I had taken over the lead for that song and always
introduced it as “Standing by the Bedside of a Neighbor.” We were on the Bobby Jones
Gospel Hour on BET and we were talking, I did an interview and then he said
“and now Sweet Honey’s gonna sing “If You See My Savior” – he started it with
those words and I started singing the second verse, which starts like that, and
I didn’t know how to get out of it! I was thinking “you’re not on the right
verse, the others are answering you but you’re not in the right part!” All this was going on in my head while I was
singing and I finally I busted out laughing. I went “hold it everybody, stop!” We
stopped the song and the filming and I said “he started with those words and
I’m in the wrong place!” The audieuce fell out laughing!
CulturalOyster: You
released an album, Love in Evolution,
in 2016 – that’s the newest one I know of. Since then you’ve been working with
a bass player – a guy – Romeir Mendez. How does that change the feel of Sweet
Honey?
Maillard: That’s
nothing, everybody’s on this earth and we love everybody, we love the proper
male energy, I’ll put it that way. It
doesn’t really shift the energy of what we do. Romeir is a wonderful young man,
he understood right away he was a complimentary voice. He’s grown and we have
grown learning to to work with him. He plays on pitch, and that really does
have an effect on us, ‘cause we can sing with each other anywhere, above the
notes or below, we just have a way of doing that – the voices are very much a
unit. It doesn’t matter if we have the right pitch vibration or not. We have a
way of going right where the person leading us goes and we have a tendency to
veer, or speed up or slow down – the audiences only hear trained musicians, it
sounds great, but the main thing with Romeir is he keeps the pitch and rhythm
and he keeps things fresh.
CulturalOyster: We’re living in dark times right now – much different than
when you were here in 2011. Your music has always been political – sometimes
overtly, sometimes covertly, in the uplift you bring to keep us from going
down. So I’m curious – how do the times
we’re living in right now influence the repertory you’re working with on this
tour?
Maillard: I
think a lot of the music the group has done since it’s inception has a timeless
feeling. Some of it is very art historical. You call up what you need to help
you need to get through and make the next step forward, so sometimes we won’t
want to do a particular song, or somebody will say we should bring that song
back out because it’s relevant. When you introduce the song, that’s where you
can bring it into contemporary times. We are wading in the water right now, and
the waters are troubled.
CulturalOyster: I
think of your repertory as having two basic threads – there are contemporary,
topical songs that address what’s going on in both rhythm / genre and words,
and then there’s the deep gospel repertory, as old and primal as dust even when
the songs are recent. What unifies these two threads? Or are there more
threads, or is there only one?
Maillard: I think it really is multifaceted. We draw
from our culture and our history and we come from people who are resilient and
strong. When I think about what our ancestors experienced – that horrifying
boat trip – the ones who survived had to learn to protect themselves and we
still have to teach our young men and women how to survive in this world, to be
aware that anything could happen to you at any time because of who your people
are. I think all of us of African descent around the diaspora have come to
bless this planet, I’ll just say that. Our struggle inspires our resilience and
sometimes we take that for granted but we’re still here and we’re not goin’
nowhere. Everybody needs to calm down and be together and make all that greed
and power and racism and sexism and all these things that isolate everyone go
away. The world has to become more equal, more tolerable for all people.
CulturalOyster: Is
there anything I should have asked but didn’t?
Maillard: Hmm.
We love hearing from fans. Like I said, we really do exist because of the
audiences, the people who invite us. We want people to know we’re on social
media and we love it when people respond – if they post comments or pictures
they take, which we know they’re doing.
And
please ask the people of Madison to go out and do something kind, especially
for someone they don’t know. Ask a kid at a bus stop how they’re doing. Tell somebody hey, walk in health. Give a
dollar somewhere. It’s a good mantra for us this year, with all this craziness
going on.
__________________________________________________ interview by SK
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