NPR

Celebrating The Life and Influence of Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon

Sonja D. Williams African Americans, Black Radio, Documentary, Education, History, Music, Nonfiction, NPR, Podcast, Podcasting, public radio, Radio, Smithsonian Institution

On July 16th, MacArthur “Genius” Fellow, Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon, joined the ancestors.

Dr. Reagon was a powerful singer/songwriter, a leading Smithsonian Institution curator and a trailblazing social activist/historian/author.

She founded and led – for 30 years – the Grammy nominated acapella singing group, Sweet Honey in the Rock. The group is now celebrating its 50th anniversary. Dr. Reagon’s richly distinctive alto voice was a powerful testament to the struggles and triumphs of the American civil rights movement and contemporary freedom movements worldwide.

Dr. Reagon also was an inspirational teacher and mentor. Her unofficial mentorship of me began when I became a writer/producer on NPR’s and the Smithsonian Institution’s Peabody Award-winning 1994 documentary series, Wade in the Water: African American Sacred Music Traditions. This series explored nearly 200 years of Black sacred music history and inventions – a groundbreaking research and production undertaking.

Songs and Singing as Church  was the first show in the Wade series, and with Dr. Reagon’s steadfast guidance, I was honored to produce it along with 12 other shows in this 26-part series.

During a 5-year period, the entire Wade production team was buoyed by Dr. Reagon’s conceptual leadership, impressive musical and historical knowledge, and her keen interest in the lives and influences of the men and women who created Black sacred music – from spirituals, lined hymns and jazz to traditional and contemporary gospel.

Through Dr. Reagon I learned to employ oral history interviewing techniques that encouraged people to share their experiences, and that validated the importance of their life stories. We Wade producers couldn’t wait to interview, record commissioned musical performances, or find archival tape of the artists, ministers, congregants, scholars, and listeners who might share their insights on Black sacred music’s multilayered and wide-reaching impact.

For the 26 hour-long programs in the Wade series, we set our sights on featuring artists like BeBe and CeCe Winans, Jessye Norman, the Fisk Jubilee Singers, John Coltrane, Mahalia Jackson, Edwin and Walter Hawkins, Aretha Franklin, Billie Preston, the Staple Singers, Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Take 6 – just to name a few.

All the while, Dr. Reagon was there to advise, to listen, to critique, and to work – sometimes in weekly studio recording sessions that lasted from 7:00pm to 3:00am. She was a serious trooper/general, and we followed her lead.

As a true musical and scholarly force of nature, I thank Dr. Reagon for positively influencing – and transforming – my professional life.

To read more about Dr. Reagon, please click on the link below.

Bernice Johnson Reagon – Obituary  https://wapo.st/3zN65KX

Affirmative Action & Higher Ed – An Aural Case Study

Sonja D. Williams Chicago culture, Documentary, Education, History, Journalism, Nonfiction, NPR

About 25 years ago, in March 1998 to be exact, NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday aired a documentary I produced that explored how affirmative action policies in higher education admissions and hiring practices affected students, faculty and staff at a specific university from the 1960s through the 1990s.

The piece, Affirmative Action and Higher Education: An Aural History, actually was an aural case study in which I captured the opinions and experiences of various members of the University of Chicago community – including prominent faculty like historian John Hope Franklin and sociologist William Julius Wilson, the university’s vice president for research (and former Morehouse College president) Walter Massey, and former students Christopher Kang and novelist A.J. Verdelle.

The insights of those interviewees along with many others at this elite university, continue to resonate in light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s current ruling against the affirmative action policies of Harvard University and the University of North Carolina – and its broader implications for higher ed.

To hear my piece, please click on the following link: Affirmative Action and Higher Education

Behind the Scenes: The Making of an Award Winning NPR & Smithsonian Series

Sonja D. Williams Music, NPR, Radio 0 Comment

During the mid-1990s, Wade in the Water: African American Sacred Music Traditions, a first-time collaboration between the Smithsonian Institution and National Public Radio, began airing on hundreds of NPR affiliate stations throughout America.

An ambitious series of 26 hour-long documentary programs, Wade explored 200 years of black sacred music, including spirituals, ring shouts, lined hymns, jazz, and gospel. The series also featured the insights of music creators, performers, listeners, and historians who could place African American sacred music traditions within the social, political, and cultural context of their times

Mahalia Jackson & Paul Robeson.  The Staple Singers & The Mississippi Mass Choir.  Mary Lou Williams & Kirk Franklin.  The Fisk Jubilee Singers & Marian Anderson.  Be Be & Ce Ce Winans & Take 6.

Those were just a few of the artists prominently featured in the series.

Conceived and hosted by Smithsonian Institution curator, artist, and MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Fellow, Bernice Johnson Reagon, Wade required an intensive, five-year-long fundraising, research, and production journey of commitment by a host of dedicated radio producers, researchers, engineers, historians and music collectors.

And the series eventually won a Peabody Award and other national awards of distinction.

As Wade’s associate producer, I was responsible for writing and producing 13 of the series’ programs.  So come behind the scenes with me.  In the just published, Wade in the Water: The Making of a Groundbreaking Radio Documentary Series (in Resonance: The Journal of Sound and Culture, University of California Press), I describe Wade’s production journey from the vantage point of an insider.

The article serves as a personal reflection on the making of a series that would set the standard for future long-form, NPR-based music documentary productions, such as Making the Music (hosted by Wynton Marsalis) and Jazz Profiles (hosted by Nancy Wilson) – series on which I also served as one of the producers.

Enjoy!

Master Pianist/International Influencer: McCoy Tyner

Sonja D. Williams Music, NPR, Radio

McCoy Tyner   December 11, 1938 – March 6, 2020

I first heard McCoy Tyner perform “live” in concert during the 1970s.  Some of my college friends and I had pooled our meager resources and tried to look (and act) older than we were so that we wouldn’t have any trouble getting into a Chicago nightclub to hear Tyner and his band perform.

Our little group of jazz lovers and Tyner enthusiasts were serious about sitting as close to the club’s bandstand as possible.  We wanted to see for ourselves exactly how Tyner produced the cascade of sound that was his trademark.

We weren’t disappointed.

Sitting near the piano and just behind Tyner, we could see his hands fly across the piano keyboard.  His powerful attack, invigorating energy and shifting harmonies were breathtaking.  And his ballads?  Tyner could make you cry with his sensitive, often spiritual interpretation of his own compositions or other standards.

From that point on, I bought every Tyner album I could.  And I made it my business to see him perform live whenever possible.  Many years later, I served as a writer/producer for NPR’s award-winning series, Jazz Profiles, hosted by Nancy Wilson.   As a result, I was able to interview Tyner, as well as musicians such as Bobby Hutcherson, Mulgrew Miller and Dianne Reeves who could talk about his outsized influence.

Excerpts from those interviews can be heard in the episode I produced for Jazz Profiles.  So to honor the life and contributions of this dynamic musician, I invite you to listen to McCoy Tyner: The Pianist.  

He will be missed.  But his musical legacy lives on.

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