When I last heard Sweet Honey in the Rock weaving their vocal magic their guiding light Bernice Johnson Reagon was still a powerful force on stage. Reagon’s death in July this year has added a sober note to the group’s fiftieth anniversary celebrations (they mark their half-centenary in November) but although their founder retired in 2004 they insist her presence can still be felt.
And not just her. Sweet Honey’s music has always been a collective work, in their spine-tingling acapella vocals and in researching and developing songs. They honour the ancestors while paying attention to the news, and explain their belief that the contributions of all 38 women who have sung with them can still be heard in the way they perform.
That artistic continuity is cemented by the fact that, remarkably, two of the original quartet – Louise Robinson and Carol Maillard – appear in the current formation. Nowadays, though, they are joined by a trio of more recent recruits, not to mention Romeir Mendez on basses, and there are back projected stills to illuminate their songs and commentary.
Otherwise, the vision is splendidly unchanged. The vocal style is rooted in gospel, spiritual, and soul, with a few more contemporary touches. The songs, in a now vast repertoire, continue to protest abuse of rights of all kinds – as last year’s arresting single Retribution testifies. And the sound remains superbly infectious: as you’d hope in a concert that is part of Llias, Cardiff’s arts festival devoted to the voice, the entire audience in the Millennium Centre’s sumptuous auditorium are singing on command before the first number is over.
There follows nearly two hours of songs old and new, from Feeling Good to the Africanisms of Oh, Sankofa to the newest, the eco-hymn The Living Waters. There’s time also for a medley of Reagon’s songs, a string bass feature and some wild scatting.
But it is the blended voices that thrill, an acoustic sensation that, in a world blessed with an astonishing array of new ways of making air vibrate, still can’t be matched any other way. Fifty years on, Sweet Honey have, I suppose, some of the qualities of middle age. There’s a slightly earnest tone to the presentation at times, and some of the spoken intros go on a little too long. But when they get to the main business they still deliver a sound that makes you feel better about human beings declaiming their presence, even as the songs draw attention to all the terrible things we do. Here’s to the next fifty years.
