Bernice Johnson Reagon
Bernice Johnson Reagon
Bernice Johnson Reagonis a singer, composer, scholar, and social activist, who founded the a cappella ensemble Sweet Honey in the Rock in 1973...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionMusician
Date of Birth4 October 1942
CountryUnited States of America
rights people focus
I came out of the Civil Rights Movement, and I had a different kind of focus than most people who have just the academic background as their primary training experience
song thinking people
I learned that if you bring black people together, you bring them together with a song. To this day, I don't understand how people think they can bring anybody together without a song.
people trying topics
Most people come out of their Ph.D. experience trying to prove themselves, trying to get ahead, trying to get published. You're scared everybody else is going to do your research and get your topic.
perspective discipline people
It makes sense that whatever the topic is, it's more compelling if you can provide the audience with a range of perspectives, and you can cross disciplines. And you don't have to control what people take out of it.
people asking firsts
Well, the first time I ran into the term religion, people were asking whether you had any. You know, some people had religion and some people didn't have religion
america effort mind
The Smithsonian Festival of American Folklife, actually, was an effort to put something on the mall in Washington so American tourists could walk through America, and in their minds everything on the mall would be American
church loud saved
I went to a church where you could not sing out loud in the service until you had been saved
voice jail movement
The voice I have now, I got the first time I sang in a movement meeting, after I got out of jail... and I'd never heard it before in my life.
mean years twenties
I was at the Smithsonian for twenty years, and I'm still at the Smithsonian as a curator emeritus, and I still plan to figure out what that means for me at this point in my life
song thinking proof
And I used to think that proof that I had religion was whether I knew how to sing all of the songs.
song commercial-music rights
At the same time all this was happening, there was a folk song revival movement goingon, so the commercial music industry was actually changed by the Civil Rights Movement.
sweet rocks balance
I organized Sweet Honey In The Rock in 1973. The music was sanity and balance.
rights singing movement
The Civil Rights Movement also reaffirmed me as a singer. It taught me that singing was not entertainment, it was something else.
running sweet years
In fact when Sweet Honey was ten years old it was too big for me to run, and I knew it, but I ran it for another thirteen years because I couldn't convince other people to really do it. And this year, I'm not running it.