Sweet Honey in the Rock, the Washington-based a cappella group, is renowned for an eclectic repertoire that reverberates with black American musical traditions from spirituals, gospel and blues to rap, hip-hop and jazz improvisation. This week, the Grammy Award-winners make their Hylton Center debut. The members of the ensemble are Ysaye M. Barnwell, Nitanju Bolade Casel, Aisha Kahlil, Carol Maillard, Louise Robinson and Shirley Childress Saxton, the American Sign Language interpreter. Barnwell, the multitalented spokeswoman for the group since the retirement of its founder, Bernice Johnson Reagon, explained that this will be a departure from their usual concert.
“It will be more seasonal with songs from different traditions, including Hebrew and Arabic,” she said. “One of the loveliest songs, ‘The Nativity,’ is from a commission by the American Bible Society based on Luke’s story of the birth of Jesus. Others chosen from our repertoire express how we look at the season.
| Onstage |
| Sweet Honey in the Rock |
| Where: Hylton Performing Arts Center, 10960 George Mason Circle, Manassas |
| When: 8 p.m. Saturday |
| Info: $30 tp $46, Family Friendly, Youth through grade 12 half price with adult, at 888-845-2468 or hyltoncenter.org |
“The sign language component has not always been part of our performances. Our interest began in the 1970s when the women’s movement accommodated those with handicaps by providing matting for wheel chairs, large print for those with eye problems, child care for mothers and sign language for the deaf.”
Like her colleagues, Barnwell has been a musician all her life, beginning violin study at an early age, singing throughout school and founding the Jubilee Singers at Washington’s All Souls Unitarian Church in 1976. By that time, she was a speech pathologist and a professor in the University of Pittsburgh College of Dentistry. Her first role with Sweet Honey in the Rock was as sign language interpreter.
The name Sweet Honey in the Rock was inspired by Psalm 81:16, a reference to a sweet, nurturing substance and the strength of rock. The ensemble’s most powerful messages are proclaimed through an enormous catalog of songs addressing the world’s woes. They are currently occupied with immigration injustices, congressional greed and lack of compassion for hurting citizens, the environmental imbalance, racial issues and women’s issues.
“We don’t lack material,” Dr. Barnwell said. “After every concert, we come in contact with people who respond in many ways to our music. Recently, after singing, ‘Will you Harbor Me,’ a song about a Korean, a Haitian and a Czech, a native of Korea came up and thanked us, saying, ‘I never heard a Korean mentioned in a song.'”
