Sweet Honey in the Rock formed as an all-female a cappella ensemble whose sound draws from African choral traditions, blues, gospel, and jazz, delivering dynamic and virtuosic performances. Since their founding in 1973 the members have cultivated a global audience while using only body percussion or handheld instruments, if any accompaniment is employed at all. Bernice Johnson Reagon launched the group in Washington, D.C., during her tenure as vocal director of the D.C. Black Repertory Theater. Over the decades more than twenty women have passed through the lineup, which has most often comprised four to six voices. The ensemble both arranges existing popular and traditional material and writes much of its own repertoire, frequently addressing women’s issues and social injustice alongside themes of family, community, and personal growth that include music created specifically for children.
The self-titled debut appeared in 1976, followed by B’lieve I’ll Run On in 1978, Good News in 1981, We All…Every One of Us in 1983, The Other Side and Feel Something Drawing Me On in 1985, and the live album Breaths in 1988; later that year Live at Carnegie Hall reached stores. On the Grammy-winning anthology Folkways: A Vision Shared – A Tribute to Woody Guthrie & Leadbelly the group contributed its version of Lead Belly’s “Grey Goose.” All for Freedom, “a celebration of the roots, history and future of African-American culture,” surfaced in 1989. Throughout the 1990s the members continued touring and recording, issuing In This Land, Still on the Journey, I Got the Shoes, Sacred Ground, and the retrospective Selections 1976–1988. Still the Same Me, aimed at young listeners, and the James Horner soundtrack for the television film Freedom Song both arrived in 2000. The Women Gather and Alive in Australia followed in 2003, with another concert recording, Endings & Beginnings, appearing in 2004. Raise Your Voice came out in 2005, Experience…101 in 2007, the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater collaboration Go in Grace in 2008, and Are We a Nation? in 2010. Tribute: Live! Jazz at Lincoln Center was released in 2013, the year the ensemble also performed at Nelson Mandela’s national memorial service in Washington, D.C.’s National Cathedral. More than forty years after its inception the group remained active, releasing the social-media-inspired #LoveInEvolution, which includes the single “IDK But I’m LOL,” in early 2016.
