Sweet!

Before I was married the best roommate I ever have had was my friend Kathy. Aside from the fact that we were great friends, we also fit together well. She couldn’t stand dirt and dust – two things I can ignore for months on end – so she kept the apartment very clean. I, on the other hand, can’t stand clutter, so I was always picking up and straightening. It was a match made in heaven.

We shared a lot of musical tastes, though she was even more into show tunes than I: Pippin and Godspell are two albums that come to mind. She was also into a group about whom I knew enough to respect, but whose music I didn’t know: Sweet Honey in the Rock.

This a capella gathering of six women came together in 1973. Somehow I have managed to avoid them for thirty-eight years, but today I finally rectified that error. As part of Yale’s celebration of Martin Luther King’s legacy Sweet Honey performed a free concert to a near capacity crowd at Woolsey Hall.

It was, in a word, magical.

They are, in a word, incredible.

I was transfixed.

And transported back to a time when music was not just fun but also important, meaningful and purposeful. Although “We Shall Not Be Moved” was the only song they sang that I knew, every song grabbed me because of the strong delivery these incredible women gave each number. They had us up on our feet, or answering their call, or clapping along – and loving every minute of it.

The cynic in me melted through the cracks of the floor.

Damn powerful women!

And this happened two days after I read a piece on the NPR website, “When did Kumbaya become such a bad thing?” that makes the point “Rather than kumbaya representing strength and power in togetherness and harmony as it once did, the word has come to reflect weakness and wimpiness.”

I admit I have sneered at the thought of singing Kumbaya, but if Sweet Honey had added it to the program – or We Shall Overcome or Blowin’ in the Wind – I would have been singing along, smiling as if it were 1968.