By Audrey Anderson
Hometown Weekly Reporter
Needham’s venerable Great Hall Concert Series, celebrating 10 years in 2023-2024, presented Sweet Honey In the Rock®, celebrating their 50th year in Powers Hall. Sweet Honey in the Rock, an all-woman, African-American a cappella group, was established in 1973. The enormously talented group specializes in gospel and blues music and the spoken word.
Needham’s middle school chorus opened the evening with a performance of “Elijah Rock,” a rhythmic, syncopated spiritual. The singers were attentive to their conductor, Hannah White Rivera, and they entertained the audience with their musicality, excellent pitch, and diction.
Sweet Honey in the Rock followed, and the crowd welcomed them with vigorous applause. While the singers have changed over the years, according to their web site, Sweet Honey in the Rock stays true to its mission of “educating, entertaining, and empowering its audience and community through the dynamic vehicles of a cappella singing and American Sign Language interpretation for the deaf and hard of hearing.” They also have retained their activist spirit born in the 1970s, and they speak out, or sing out, about contemporary issues, such as gun violence, reproductive freedom, and the environment.
Barbara Hunt is the member of the group who interprets their performances in American Sign Language while on stage beside the singers. She not only interprets the words in the songs, but also communicates the rhythm, dynamics, and vibe of the music. Her performance was enthralling, as she moved her arms, hips, legs and feet to express the full experience of the music for the deaf and hard of hearing.
The singing members of the group, Carol Maillard, Louise Robinson, Nitanju Bolade Casel, and Aisha Kahlil, pulled out all the stops to amaze the audience with their harmonies, energy, masterful solos. They bonded with the audience through spirituality in music. They began with the reverent “They Took the Time to Pray for Me,” singing “rhythm, energy, spirit bring us to a healing.” “The Living Waters,” a song composed and performed by the enormously talented Aisha Kahlil, began with a drum that makes the sound of ocean waves. The lyrics praised the water-soul connection that brings about healing and laments “poisoned seas,” in a chant and gloriously improvised singing. Through the lyrics, Kahlil asked people to be conscious of how they use water by keeping it clean and pure and not wasting it.
In 2013, when Hadiya Pendleton was killed by gunfire in Chicago because she was mistaken for a gang member, Sweet Honey in the Rock sang their song, “The Women Gather,” to help the community process the gun violence experience. In their Needham concert, they included the strengthening, gospel-inspired, layered, song. The lyrics included refrains of “how much more death can come our way . . . somebody’s mother, brother, best friend, sister, lover” and “The women gather, crying tears that fill a million oceans. It doesn’t matter where you’re living . . . .”
In “Colours,” some of the group chanted “womb, womb, womb-womb, womb” while others sang about scenes of rape and incest, and finished with
‘Now the President and all his men try to say (Womb-womb)
When I might, or when I may (Womb-womb)
Make the decisions that they set me up for anyway (Womb-womb)
Insult my mind, my rights, the issues of my womb/(Womb)’
Next the group led the audience in “Hallelujah,” telling the audience “What happens in a space is the result of every person in the space,” and singing “pray for redemption, forgiveness, salvation . . . Where you going to hide, where you going to run when retribution comes,” while chanting, “Vote, Vote, Vote, Vote.”
After intermission, a magical bass solo was performed by the talented Romeir Mendez and the solo was interpreted in sign language by Barbara Hunt. Hunt embodied the feeling and rhythm of the music through her hands and whole body. Then the group encouraged the audience to join in a song about “people who do not live in peace” by “raising your voice to permeate the wall and floor with spirit” and to close their eyes and hum, “moving out of town, the east coast, over the water, and into the skies . . .” for spiritual connection through music with war-torn regions.
The group finished their concert with “I Feel Good,” a song about celebrating feeling good, even in the midst of our uncertain and troubled world. After this joyous song, the audience rewarded Sweet Honey In the Rock for their soulful performance with long applause, shouts, and a standing ovation, and brought they the group back for an encore, “Let There Be Peace on Earth,” in which heartfelt solos soared over the rhythmic accompaniment of the other singers.
See sweethoneyintherock.org for more information and to hear the group’s music.
