New Season, New Venues

Sunday afternoon found yours truly at the Schomburg Center up on 135th Street; it’s part of the New York Public Library system. The program, appropriately on the 50th anniversary, to the day, of the Birmingham, AL, church bombing, was “Songs of Freedom.” Performers included Jeremiah Hosea, Jerome Jordan, KimberlyNichole, Martha Redbone, and Tamar-kali as singers, with Messrs. Hosea and Jordan also playing guitar from time to time. Latasha N. Nevada Diggs provided oratory for a few songs as well as some nice tambourining (is so a word, I just used it!). Janelle Reichman came on later in the program for a saxophone solo (with keyboards, unfortunately I couldn’t get the keyboardist’s name), and there was also a drum set onstage. From the outset, the performers let us know that this was a community event. If a song title, listed on a projection slide, said Leader, we were encouraged to join in singing; if it said Soloist, the named performer would sing through alone, though this got a little fuzzy at times.

So, to the songs themselves. We heard/sang This Little Light of Mine, Woke Up This Morning with My Mind Stayed on Freedom (with some wild hand-clapping rhythm accompaniment), I’m on My Way to Freedom Land, Which Side Are You On?, Freedom Is a Constant Struggle/Letter from a Birmingham Jail (the second portion orated and linked to the song), In the Mississippi River, We Shall Not Be Moved, Come By Here (Kum-ba-yah—that had never occurred to me before), The Ballad of Medgar Evers, A Change Is Gonna Come (powerfully sung by Mr. Jordan), Mississippi Goddam (a Nina Simone song worked over by KimberlyNichole), Alabama (the saxophone solo), Keep on Pushin’ (a little on the weak side, with Mr. Hosea, a bass, singing in a falsetto—always difficult to bring off, especially as there were lots of instruments playing by then, so lyrics tended to get lost), Freedom Highway, Been in the Storm So Long/Fannie Lou Hamer’s Testimony (song and oratory, very nicely done by
Tamar-kali and Ms. Diggs), Will the Circle Be Unbroken, Eyes on the Prize, And Still I Rise (oration, with taped spoken loops added in electronically), finishing with We Shall Overcome.

All in all, the performances were quite good. Some of the harmonies were a bit rudimentary, but that’s to be expected in folk/freedom/protest songs. The meaning trumps the method sometimes. Some of the songs were completely unknown to me, some were familiar, and some I knew pretty well. The message was driven home without going over the top. And the message is just as important now as it was 50 years ago when those four young girls were murdered in an Alabama church.

So, this was a new type of concert for me in a new venue for me. I’m sure I’ll be revisiting some of my usual haunts during this new concert season, but I’ll also be on the lookout to broaden my geographic horizons.

ConcertMeister