The Songs Are Free (with Bill Moyers)
The Songs Are Free (with Bill Moyers)(1991) Bernice Johnson Reagon is an extraordinary individual. Her activism was unleashing during the Civil Rights movement of the sixties. Singing has been part of her life from her early communal singing and the repertoire rooted in the African-American church. With a PhD. and an curator of African-American music at the Smithsonian Institution, Ms. Reagon is uniquely qualified to discuss and perform spiritual music reflecting the African-American culture.
She is the founder of Sweet Honey in the Rock, a distinguished women’s singing group that has performed throughout the United States and abroad since the early 1970s. This documentary uses some of her group’s songs to illustrate the history that Ms. Reagon discusses and sings with Bill Moyers.
Ms . Reagon demonstrates the spiritual and slave world antecedents of much of her repertoire. During slavery, song and metaphor were the safest way for slaves to communicate. Ms. Reagon, whose hero is Mary Lou Hammer, remains committed to protest, whether about the rights of women, what’s happening in Africa, or other injustices. These aspects are beautifully integrated in her interview with Mr. Moyers. Her solo renditions are superb. The tenor of her group’s songs are reflected in the following:
Sojourner's Battle Hymn
(lyrics created, to the tune of John Brown's Body, for
the First Michigan Regiment of Colored Soldiers)
We are colored Yankee soldiers
Who've listed for the war
We are fighting for the Union
We are fighting for the Lord
We can shoot a rebel farther
Than a white man ever saw
As we go marching on...
We are done with hoeing cotton
We are done with hoeing corn
We are colored Yankee soldiers
As sure as you are born
When the rebels hear us shouting
They will think it's Gabriel's horn
As we go marching on...
Abraham has spoken
And the message has been sent
The prison door has opened
And out the prisoners went
To join the sable army of African descent
As we go marching on.
