Sweet Honey

General information

Sweet Honey In The Rock® remains among the most vibrant, versatile and ever relevant musical collectives in music today, both as a performance ensemble and as an ambassadorial African American organization founded on the triumvirate missions of empowerment, education and entertainment for its audience. Currently consisting of members Carol Maillard, Louise Robinson, Nitanju Bolade Casel and Aisha Kahlil, American Sign Language interpreter Shirley Childress who continues the group’s distinct and longstanding commitment to the deaf community (plus featured musician Romeir Mendez on upright acoustic bass and electric bass), Sweet Honey In The Rock is a powerful and unique concert entity that fuses the elastic 360 degree possibilities of the human voice with a theatrical flair that keeps avid audiences returning for more year after year. Kinetic, cultured and connected, this internationally renowned GRAMMY®-nominated female a cappella vocal quartet has over four decades of history of distinguished service via message music that matters as it pertains to spiritual fortification, social awareness and a positive loving activist stance toward making this planet a better place for all in which to live. Thus the theme of the group’s 24th recording, #LoveInEvolution, Sweet Honey In The Rock’s first studio album in nine years and most contemporary project to date, emphasizing love as a verb in full pro–activity.

#LoveInEvolution (released on the group’s own She Rocks 5 label, in partnership with Appleseed Recordings and distributed by Entertainment One) crackles with energy and innovation as Sweet Honey In The Rock meshes its time honed a cappella world, gospel, and folk roots with elements of hip hop, jazz and Rhythm & Blues at the service of the group’s most arresting collection of timely original material and timeless covers. Beyond solo—derived pieces brought in, the quartet also writes as an ensemble developing new material via their improvisational work. The strongest songs on #LoveInEvolution come literally ripped from the headlines of today’s world news, railing against systemic injustice as it pertains to people of color—past and present—police brutality, gun control and the Black Lives Matter movement.

The album’s stark second single “Second Line Blues” with its cryptic snare drum cadence, roll calls the names of innocent people such as Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland and the children of Sandy Hook Elementary School that have fallen victim to murder at the hands of anyone from deranged civilians to police abusing their license to kill. Carol Maillard (who along with Louise Robinson is a founding member of the group) states, “Since we started writing this piece, we’ve had to keep adding names…and sadly, we’ll be adding more before things change.” The group released a music video to accompany this haunting in your face reminder of why reforms are necessary for people’s rights to bear arms and the need for more stringent screenings for people placed in positions to police communities.

“I Don’t Want No Trouble At The River” picks up this thread as a lamentation and memorial graced in the middle by a group recitation of Dr. Maya Angelou’s poem “When Great Trees Fall,” proudly granted by her estate in solidarity. Then there is “A Prayer For The World” which weds “The Lord is My Shepherd” Psalms Bible passage to a bouncy bass fortified hip hop beat of praise.

Nitanju’s brilliantly written “Oh, Sankofa” details the 1920s Black Wall Street story of Greenwood, Oklahoma and its destruction at the hands of racists as a sharply telegraphed history lesson similar to the way her previously penned “Give the People a Right to Vote” told the story of how Washington DC has no right to vote in Congress on a purposeful technicality.

Aisha contributed the mind altering aural arrangement of “The Living Waters,” which speaks fluidly on the ravaging pollution of the world’s waterways in a piece that is as much a headphone’s experience as a mournful cry over the shameful senseless destruction of natural resources. This original is a kindred companion to Aisha’s loving arrangement of Marvin Gaye’s 1971 classic “Mercy, Mercy Me (The Ecology)” which the group has been performing for several years now, including an introduction that speaks on Gaye’s biography and the significance of the full conscious masterpiece, What’s Going On, from which the song originated.

“‘Mercy’ stems from a 2010 effort to take songs from the 60s and 70s by Stevie Wonder, The Isley Brothers and others then juxtapose them with sentiments from today,” Maillard explains. “When Sweet Honey In The Rock first started in 1973, many artists from Curtis Mayfield to Crosby Stills Nash &Young were including political content and social commentary in their music, stemming from the folk movement of Bob Dylan to the Soul music of James Brown. That’s always where our heads have been.” The group covers a second Gaye gem from What’s Going On, the prayerful “Wholy Holy” (once recorded by Aretha Franklin).

Lest one begin to think that all of Sweet Honey In The Rock’s music is heavy, #LoveInEvolution is also abounding in messages of optimism, faith, pride in self, and romantic love. The soulful blues bounce of Carol’s “Same Ol’ Same Ol’ Love” is a fantasy based on some sweet sticky reality about soul mates that rekindle an emotional connection that ended suddenly decades ago. The group shares its deliriously percussive 40th anniversary inspired theme “Sweet Sweet Honey” (from 2013’s “Forty & Fierce” shows) as well as the Latin groove “This Place Inside Where I Can Rest” about finding and celebrating one’s spiritual center.

Likely to become the group’s long elusive radio hit is the buoyant lead single and video “IDK But I‘m LOL,” a handclappin’ song of hope in the face of all that best encapsulates the essence of Sweet Honey In The Rock’s a cappella sound with a catchy hook and contemporary lyrical spin aimed at reaching the ears of young and old alike.

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Since its 1973 inception in Washington, DC founded by Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon as part of the D.C. Black Repertory Theater Company with Carol Maillard, Louise Robinson and Mie, Sweet Honey In The Rock has continuously evolved into international ambassadors of a cappella vocal and lyrical excellence and musical missionaries of equality, empowerment and education, peace, love, solidarity and nondenominational spirituality. Revered most for their live performances, the ladies have recorded 24 albums, several specifically for children. Their most recent double CD, SWEET HONEY IN THE ROCK: A Tribute...Live! Jazz at Lincoln Center (2012), paid homage to kindred female African American vocalists and activists Abbey Lincoln, Odetta, Miriam Makeba and Nina Simone, and found the quartet singing with a jazz trio of “Honey Men” (MD and pianist Stacey Wade; acoustic and electric bassist Parker McAllister; and drummer and percussionist Jovol Bell).

Sweet Honey In The Rock has performed in many of the world’s most prestigious venues on every continent for royal command concerts and festivals. In 2015 alone, they embarked upon their fifth U.S. Embassy Tour with performances and community outreach in Belize, Ethiopia, Peru and Jamaica, culminating in Swaziland where they played the internationally acclaimed 9th Annual Mountain Bushfire Music Festival (before 20,000 people), and were featured at the 11th Annual Festival of Voices in Hobart, Tasmania, as part of a tour that also included Launceston, Melbourne and Sydney. Their February 2016 appearance at New York’s historic Carnegie Hall holds the distinction of being their 32nd occasion to perform there.

Recent milestones and accomplishments include being commissioned by the Alvin Ailey Dance Company to compose a score for its 50th anniversary 2008 program “Go In Grace.” In 2012, they debuted their first-ever orchestral collaboration, writing original lyrics for composer William Banfield’s “Symphony 10: Affirmations for a New World,” a thirty minute work that was co-commissioned and presented by the National Symphony Orchestra (Christoph Eschenbach, Music Director), and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Washington, DC; the Minnesota Orchestra, (Osmo Vänskä, Music Director) at Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis; and the Harris Theater for Music and Dance, Millennium Park with the Sphinx Orchestra (conducted by Mark Russell Smith) in Chicago.
The group also had the honor of performing at the National Memorial Service for Nelson Mandela at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC. In acknowledgement of their efforts, Sweet Honey In The Rock was recently presented a distinguished award by the Search For Common Ground Organization and the Keeper of the Flame award by the National Delta Sigma Theta Sorority at its 100th anniversary celebration. Also, not surprisingly, they are a favorite group of President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama, having performed before them by request at the White House.

Sweet Honey In The Rock, which has been the subject of two PBS television specials, including American Masters, is a beloved performance ensemble that, in its 40 plus years history, has maintained a resilient spirit and found a way to successfully fuse the talents of the 24 women that have graced the Sweet Honey In The Rock stage into their patented sound without ever skipping a beat. Ever evolving, the soul survivors once even expanded to six vocalists before settling back to four, all in the name of retaining its adventurous spirit, keeping up with the times and reaching greater numbers of likeminded spirits. Last year they released the holiday single and video “Silent Night” in support of their annual Sweet Honey In The Rock “Celebrate the Holy Days” program of spiritual music from around the globe. Fans stay abreast of their travels on Facebook, Twitter and at www.sweethoneyintherock.org.