POP : Sweet Honey Is Oh So Rich in Moral Fiber

For almost 18 years, Sweet Honey in the Rock has been making its way on voice power alone.

The all-woman a cappella folk-gospel singing group from Washington, D.C., has won wide acclaim for showing just how powerful five voices can be.

A Sweet Honey performance in Sydney, Australia, in December prompted ecstatic absolutes from one critic, who declared that “in more than 20 years of reviewing concerts, I have never been so deeply moved and so elated by a performance. . . . Perhaps if I tell you that the audience refused to leave even when the house lights came on . . . you will realise that I was not alone.”

Sound power, which the five voices of Sweet Honey project in abundance, can’t alone account for reactions like that. The group also packs moral authority with a repertoire that revolves around fundamental questions of freedom, worldly hardship and spiritual transcendence.

Sweet Honey can be as topical as today’s headlines and as simple and universal as the black spirituals, work songs, blues and African folk songs that form the backbone of its performances.

The group’s founder and leader, Bernice Johnson Reagon, has been singing politically charged music since 1961, when she became involved in the civil-rights movement as a member of the Freedom Singers. She started Sweet Honey in the Rock in 1973, as an offshoot of a theatrical group. The group went through a series of personnel changes in its early years, but the current lineup of Reagon, Ysaye Maria Barnwell, Nitanju Bolade Casel, Evelyn Harris, Aisha Kahlil and Shirley Childress Johnson, a non-singing member who serves as sign-language interpreter, has been together since 1985.

At a time when Bobby McFerrin and Take 6 have made a cappella group singing accessible to a large mainstream audience, Sweet Honey is content to move in humbler folk music circles. The group members all have outside professional pursuits that limit most of their touring to weekends.

Sweet Honey isn’t willing to blunt the bite of its message in hopes of possibly reaching a wider audience, member Aisha Kahlil said in a recent interview.

“I think a lot of people out there don’t want to hear the message songs about what’s happening on the political or social scene. For us to go out there for the fame and money, I don’t think it would be Sweet Honey in the Rock anymore.”

Who: Sweet Honey in the Rock.

When: Saturday, April 20, at 8 p.m.

Where: Chapman Auditorium at Chapman College, 333 N. Glassell St., Orange.

Whereabouts: Take Glassell Street north from the Garden Grove (22) Freeway. From the Orange (57) Freeway, take the Chapman Avenue exit and head east to Glassell, then go north; from the Costa Mesa (55) Freeway, exit on Chapman, head west to Glassell, then go north.

Wherewithal: $20 and $25.

Where to Call: (714) 997-6812.

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