Monday, November 17, 2008

Dr. Bernice Reagon -- Founder of Sweet Honey In The Rock

I love Sweet Honey In The Rock and I was searching Youtube for a video and I found this jewel:


Here is a bio I copy and pasted from Wikipedia:
She is a specialist in African-American oral history, performance and protest traditions. She was featured in 1992 in the Emmy-nominated PBS documentary The Songs Are Free: Bernice Johnson Reagon with Bill Moyers. She has served as music constultant, producer, composer, and performer on several award-winning film projects and was the conceptual producer and narrator of the Peabody Award-winning radio series, Wade in the Water, African American Sacred Music Traditions.

Reagon's work as a scholar and composer is reflected in publications on African American culture and history, including: a collection of essays entitled If You Don’t Go, Don’t Hinder Me: The African American Sacred Song Tradition (University of Nebraska Press, 2001); We Who Believe In Freedom: Sweet Honey In The Rock: Still on the Journey, (Anchor Books, 1993); and We'll Understand It Better By And By: Pioneering African American Gospel Composers (Smithsonian Press, 1992).

Reagon has recorded on several albums on Folkways Records including "Folk Songs: The South," "Wade in the Water," and "Lest We Forget, Vol. 3: Sing for Freedom."[2]

Reagon is Professor Emeritus of History at American University in Washington, DC, and holds the title of Curator Emeritus at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History in Washington, DC, and was the 2002-04 Cosby Chair Professor of Fine Arts at Spelman College in Atlanta Georgia

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