Music and Message Mix in Richie Havens’ Activism

Trying to keep up with Richie Havens has never been an easy task.

Best known for his mystical performance as the first performer on the stage at the Woodstock Music & Art Festival in 1969 and a series of solo albums, Havens has always been a man in motion.

Havens has spent the last couple of weeks singing, traveling and working on several of his environmental and educational projects.

“I went from New York to Prague in two days,” he said over the telephone from his New York office. “I was invited to do a TV show that was shown in Italy and distributed throughout Europe. It was called ‘Freedom.’ Joe Cocker and Billy Preston were there, too. They had 50,000 people out there in the town square.”

For Havens, there was no hesitation to jet over to Czechoslovakia for the opportunity to reach yet another international audience, because for the singer-songwriter, environmental and peace activist, music is the medium for his message.

“Youth around the world are in agreement that music is a way to talk to each other,” he said. “It is a viable tool for passing information from youth to youth. That’s what’s been going on, since rock ‘n’ roll was invented. Rock ‘n’ roll was a primal scream of the first-born, postwar babies. It was an actual social phenomenon that was commercialized. We’re in the pangs of invention again, because kids have invented their own sound--rap.”

Primary on his activist agenda these days are his projects aimed at children. Along with Michael Sandlofer, he is the co-founder of the North Wind Undersea Institute on City Island in New York City, an innovative organization that serves as a “hands-on” educational experience for anyone interested in learning about the ocean, but particularly children.

The institute has also pioneered painless devices to rescue whales and is working with harbor seals to teach them how to rescue people trapped underwater.

The Natural Guard, an extension of the museum, is an environmental organization that is bringing the more educational aspects of the institute to cities across the country.

“We’re doing the Natural Guard under the umbrella of the environment, because it (the environment) exists everywhere,” Havens said. “We realized that children’s minds take a lot of information from TV, so children need to get a way to address their own problems--all of the problems of the community, not only the city but the country, too.

“You can only do that when you start to learn that it is ecological safety that is part of the (total) community. As an example, the ‘Just Say No’ (drug campaign) was wrong because it treated kids as potential drug takers. We have to empower them as peer groups to help their friends.”

Even with all his outside activities, Havens still finds time for music.

He recently began work on a new album for CBS Records, his first major record deal since his days with Warner Brothers Records. He will head to California to work on the album, which will be a mix of new Havens compositions and interpreting songs by other, primarily new writers.

“I like to find songs by young people talking about what is happening now,” he said, noting that one song he will likely record is Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time.”