Women's Jazz Festival: The Bernice Johnson Reagon Songbook

Celebrate Women's History Month at the Schomburg's annual Women's Jazz Festival.

The Bernice Johnson Reagon Songbook

Featuring Bernice Johnson Reagon, Stephanie Battle, Marcelle Davies Lashley, Fred Cash, Sue Hadjopolous, and more...

"November, 1961, college students in Union Baptist Church after the first mass march in Albany, Georgia: It was where we could go after the first mass march in Albany GA. I was asked to lead a song; I began the spiritual which opens with the words, "Over my head I see trouble in the air," knowing that we were 'in trouble,' I instinctively inserted "freedom" renaming where we were and what we were doing. All in that space joined voices, charging the air with the new time. It was some years later that I began to not find the old or new songs holding me and I began to make my own songs and singing to name my position as a fighter, joined with others determined to be a sonic force shaping the world as I lived in it. Like then, tonight I am not alone, but joined by collaborators for whom music provides our first line..."