#emotional healing seminar king george | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

independentartistbuzz · 3 years ago

Text

Indie 5-0: 5 Questions with Reggie Harris

A teaching artist in the Kennedy Center’s CETA program (Changing Education Through the Arts) and a fellow for the prestigious Council of Independent College lecture program, Reggie Harris also serves as Co-President and Director of Music Education for the Living Legacy Project—an advocacy group that sponsors Civil Rights pilgrimages throughout the South and online education seminars worldwide. His new album On Solid Ground is about all healing and inspiration in the face of injustice and dissension. From love songs (“Come What May”) to protest songs (“Standing in Freedom's Name”) to the album-closing tribute (“High Over the Hudson”) to his friend and mentor Pete Seeger, On Solid Ground has a little bit of something for everyone. Harris is the 2021 recipient of Folk Alliance International's Spirit of Folk Award and is a DJ on the new program Prisms: The Sound Of Color on SiriusXM’s The Village. He was recently featured on CNN’s Silence is Not An Option with Don Lemon and in The New York Times.

Listen to Reggie Harris via Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/0HWFtZHIDLRaW9POYMsAtp

1. At what age did you realize that music was the career you wanted to pursue? What was your ‘ah-ha’ moment? Wow. It came late. I mean, I’ve been singing since I was three or four years old, but I never really had any reason to think of music as a possible career. No one in my family or for that matter, in my social circle, did anything of the sort. People asked that question “What do you wanna be?” all the time but I saw music as just something you did in church or at school or in family sings around the piano. I always loved music and I was always good at it. I learned to harmonize really early and I sang all through high school but never gave any thought to it as a profession. I thought I’d be a teacher. But the “aha moment” came when I heard James Taylors' "Fire and Rain" on the radio one night in 12th grade. Something about his guitar and his expressive voice lit a fire that burned inside until I got a guitar in my hands in 1974. That happened when a young woman I was dating dared me to learn 3 chord on the guitar. That event unleashed something inside of me that had gone untapped in all my years of singing in choirs and groups and at school. I now had the ability to accompany myself with music that I heard from within. I bought the album Sweet Baby James and played the grooves out. That opened the door to Gordon Lightfoot, Don McClean, Cat Stevens, Kenny Rankin and the singer songwriters. I started watching shows like The Midnight Special or Don Kirschner’s Rock Concert and I started going to concerts. And around that same time, I met another young woman named Kim who played guitar and loved the same artists I did. She and I started meeting up and practicing songs, then we began writing songs and quickly became singing partners. Eventually we got married and I’d say, we pushed each other out the door and onto the stage. We were both passionate about making music and helped each other learn and grow and we were both willing to struggle to make it work. We did that for forty years and then separated and I became a solo act in 2016. I love the way it feels to spend hours making music and I really love how it makes other people feel when they hear it. It also gives me a voice to express what I see in the world. My passion for creating music and connecting the dots is stronger than ever. 2. Who are your musical inspirations? What artists inspired you to start your career and find your musical passion? My musical inspiration started early and there have been so many streams. Hearing the “old folks” in my church sing spirituals and hymns was formative and Sunday afternoon church events where 6 or 7 or more church choirs would travel around and have a gospel song fest at another church was exciting and grounding. All those amazing singers covering those great songs. I remember hearing Harry Belafonte, Mahalia Jackson, Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald, Sam Cooke and others on my mother's radio in the morning as she got ready for work. Their voices just made you feel emotions like nothing else in the world. Our teachers in elementary taught us the songs of Woody Guthrie, Paul Robeson, Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan and we sang “Blowing in the Wind” (The Peter, Paul, and Mary version) and "If I Had A Hammer" for 6th grade graduation. I remember standing on the steps of my house in Philly with three of my friends, in the summer of 1964, singing “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” at the top of our lungs. We all took different roles as The Beatles. I thought I was Paul of course! That strikes me funny now… four little black boys in inner-city Philadelphia thinking they were English rockers? Why not The Temps? Or Smokey and the Miracles? There was also Aretha Franklin and The Stones in 1965 with "Satisfaction." Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder fascinated me and all those great Motown artist’s voices came floating down the hall to my room as my sister came of age. I paid attention to the musicians and the arrangements too. Years later, after I discovered the guitar, I met Pete Seeger, Tom Paxton and Ritchie Havens and other folk musicians and started to find a groove that combined what they were doing with other music I loved. My inspiration stream crosses genres, race, decade and style. Stevie Wonder to Pete Seeger, to Bach to Dolly Parton to Joan Armatrading to the Yellow Jackets to Beyonce. Listening across genres gives me more information to process which I can incorporate in melodies, harmonies or language for lyrics. 3. What inspired you to write & record On Solid Ground? I got home on March 8, 2020 after my tour was abruptly ended by COVID-19 shutdowns. For 3 weeks, I sat watching the news, talking with friends, feeling the world come apart as concert dates disappeared from my calendar for months and months into the future. Since concerts, lectures and school programs are the major ways that I get to sow seeds of hope in the world, I felt at a great loss. Like everyone else, I saw tensions building and protests against the various issues of hate and division exploding in the streets and felt that I needed to make sense of it all.

Music is the place I go when I need the world to make sense. So I started doing online concerts and that helped me to see how hungry people were for music and connection. My answer to the desperation and fear that I saw rising all around was to write the song "On Solid Ground." It’s written in the style and frame of the spirituals which are songs I grew up singing and that I still sing now. They are songs composed by people who endured slavery…people who were suffering through devastatingly tough times and still found ways to persevere through music and community. So my message? We can get through this time of challenge and change if we pull together and face ourselves.

Then the floodgates opened. I watched people flood into the streets to protest the George Floyd and Breonna Taylor killings and the growing acts of election suppression and wrote “Standing in Freedom’s Name” and “Let’s Meet Up Early.” I also arranged Malvina Reynolds' “It Isn’t Nice" as a tribute. Inspired by articles about workers who were being put in danger by callous factory owners and government officials, I wrote “My Working Bones.”

In the isolation of missing my girlfriend, who lives 10 hours away, I wrote “Come What May.” Then, watching street scenes on TV in 2020 that mirrored C.T. Vivian’s classic stand-off with Sheriff Jim Clark in Selma in 1965, I was inspired to write “It’s Who We Are.” It’s my challenge to the avoidance of questions of race, inequality and disenfranchisement that we as a nation are still struggling to face. But the protests showed a possible willingness to change?

I wrote the song "High Over the Hudson" about Pete Seeger in 2014 but never put it on a CD. And "Maybe It’s Love" was a fun writing exercise about the nature of romance. Song after song was born as a timely reflection on what was on my mind every day and as I would finish one song, another would rise up.

Soon I had 9 originals and 4 songs that I was inspired to arrange as covers and I thought, ”Looks like a CD to me.” 4. What was the process like bringing the album to life, and who did you work with to create it?

Recording this CD was both supremely challenging, deeply therapeutic and also the most relaxed I’ve ever been in the studio. The project gave me an outlet for stress. We had to be very careful about COVID-19 protocols and close proximity at all times. Travel was weird and in a few impossible moments, we worked remotely. I was also wondering if I’d ever get to go out and perform the songs once they were done or if anyone would ever buy physical music again since that has been decreasing for years. But as I called on musicians who were not only good friends but who I knew would respond to my vision, the way to proceed got clearer. My core co-contributors, Greg Greenway and Dave Schonauer, have been critical collaborators on my last three CDs. Greg and I have known each other for over 30 years and were born three days apart. So we have a language that just flows. We met and did pre-production in August and then hit the studio in September. Dave, the engineer at Morningstar Studios, is just brilliant. He makes things possible that most people don’t think of. Pat Wictor is my improvisational exploration brother as is Tom Prasado-Rao. Pat got up from a bout with COVID-19 and a recovery from tearing a tendon in his arm and played his newly retrained fingers off. Tom came out of a major bout with cancer and simmered with vocal ideas. They were all amazing at helping me chase my vision and “letting me be me" while adding brilliance and calling me on things didn’t quite measure up. We work at a level of trust that transcends words. I met bassist Chico Huff and drummer Matt Scarano when I recorded the CD Ready to Go in 2017-18 and they both play my music like they were there when I wrote it! Eric Byrd is a friend who is an amazing musical force and funny as hell. And Colleen Kattau, Mark Murphy and Ken Ulansey are longtime friends who just find the right temperature and vibe all the time. Everyone did what I love: They came in the door with passion and flexibility, brought their “A” games and didn’t leave until we got it right. And now Kari Estrin, Sarah Bennett and my friend Joann Murdock are helping me get it out to the world. 5. What do you have in store for the rest of 2021? I’m looking forward to continuing to unveil these songs, first during online concerts and then, as things begin to open up, with the start of whatever the new in-person performing landscape will become. I’ll continue to provide education videos for schools and doing lectures and residency work with colleges and universities on my own and through the Council of independent Colleges. The pandemic also gave me the time to work on a memoir which I’m trying to finish with a friend who is co-writing. And I’ll continue my work in civil, voting and human rights with the Living Legacy Project organization as we work to extend awareness and social activism. In my spare time, I hope to go to a few baseball games, see fully vaccinated friends for visits and hugs, watch a few movies and hopefully see my 76ers win the NBA championship. And I think I also need to get some rest.

#reggie harris

1 note · View note

riverwildla · 5 years ago

Photo

https://youtu.be/gegA9GsJ26A

Hurt & Heal

I remember April, 2018 like it was a century ago. 2 young men arrested in a Star-yucks for sitting at a table. I read every angle, took screenshots and stored them carelessly. This was my first wake up call from the very woke Rashon Nelson and Donte Robinson, two entrepreneurs who later settled with the City of Philidelphia for $1 each and negotiated a $200K grant to a charity. Then I hit snooze and fell back asleep. Today, however, I may never sleep the same again.

I used to say I was searching for my voice, conveniently delaying the action. Maybe stalling until the Hurt healed and I could put the pitchfork down, blunt the sharp stick I was carving. But screw that. Sick of it all, I hunger for something wide & scary to do in the aftermath of George Floyd’s live execution. So I talk now. Yell and cry a bit, then I will listen.

I’ve always felt like we need to go back to the day after the Civil War ended and have a dreaded 10 day roundtable with the South, first known black leaders and authors emerging and even some yankees present. Like coaches after a loss, or non-profits after a post-it note seminar. “What just happened?” to kick it off. “Where do we go from here?” to create an action plan. Lastly, “Who here is confused and angry about the outcome?” and go deep on the emotions. We haven’t ever addressed two century’s worth of denial, pain, suffering, and set back of a nation of millions who slaved and then had to stay.

The Confederates also must of had harsh emotions. Feeling resentment and little loyalty to a victor that stripped them of honor, culture and relegated them to the worse non-inclusive label of “Loser”. Then enduring two centuries of comedian’s jokes about how all Southerners are racist and inbred or dumb because they talk differently. That must hurt, too.

There should be a treasure trove of Civil War stories other than military odes to battles and photos of generals with beards. Every kid in America should be able to tell just one story about a slave who became a nurse named Susie King Taylor.

We made no reparations, do not teach it candidly in our schools (same goes for American War in Vietnam) so that each generation could have an ounce of understanding. Germany teaches rigorously about what happened in World War II and they don’t squirm away from the very painful time in their history.

We learned very little from the American Civil War. Did “we” win it? And who are we? Sure there were some proclamations, an amendment or two, a few monuments. But no thru-line, grand lessons from then that we revisit today.

We promised new hope after emancipation, the 40 acres and a mule, but then wiped our hands of the mess and never looked back. We’ve ignored what our black friends have been saying, feeling, believing and asking. Our black brothers and sisters have never have been “free” since.

It’s time to pull off that band aid and treat the wound. Our American society has come undone, is divided and so selfish. We must figure this out or be doomed to repeat the mistakes every century.

I finally can express my thoughts after a week of awe and horror. I drew George Floyd’s huge face thinking I could have done more for him. But now I donate money, started watching different docs and papers, I’m going back to Harry Allen, Angela Davis and Sly Stone. I have started dialogues outside my comfort zone. I’m brown, but not black. Slight shade difference, but huge perception difference.

I somehow got lucky this last half century of living. The little brown family that moved to an all-white suburb in the 70′s, I've only known stereotypes and insensitivity that was easy to thwart of shrug off until 2015. I never felt that deep pain of racism and hurt until I watched Donald Trump’s kick-off campaign speech that centered around scapegoating an entire Mexican population and vilified my history, my ethnicity and my core. I hurt but have a capacity to heal.

#BlackLivesMatter

#BlackLivesMatter GeorgeFloyd nowallnoban antiracist BlackandProud Chicano LARive

0 notes