T
Page 12
Daily Nebraskan
Thursday, February 18, 1982
Arts & Entertainment
Music demonstrates singer's hope for equality
By David Thompson
Tm a stranger here, just passing through your town,"
sang Bernice Johnson Reagon in a concert Tuesday even
ing in the Nebraska Union. Through her music she demon
strated her commitment to social change and her hope
for equality for black people, women and all people.
Reagon, from Washington, D.C., is the founder of
Sweet Honey in the Rock, an a cappella vocal group. She
by the Women's Resource Center, the Culture Center
and the Student Y, in recognition of Black History
Month.
Concert Review
Some people probably shunned the concert because of
the "women" and "black" labels, fearing an evening of
feminist and minority propaganda. That is unfortunate.
Reagon is a warm, wise person, and her music should be
experienced for its historical and social value as well as
for its beauty.
Reagon 's primary source of material is the rich history
of black music. When she came on stage, she began sing
ing a spiritual which comes from a poem by Langston
Hughes, "The Negro Speaks of Rivers."
has a Ph.D. in U.S. History and is an oral and black- "I've known rivers," she sang. "My soul has grown
culture historian. Her concert in Lincoln was sponsored deep like the river." Reagon's voice was rich, deep and full
(yH Jd j fix
' ft r "ijlrl
' w!T O
Photo by D. Eric Kircher
Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon
of feeling.
To truly appreciate Reagon's music is to understand
the feeling in which much of it was written. The spirituals
come from the days of slavery when slaves were "trying
to find a way to be free even when someone else says
you are their property," Reagon said. Music played a
strong role in this struggle for freedom because it was
one form of communication black people were not
denied. Spirituals "have to be seen as the hymn of the
people, the bible of the people," Reagon said.
To listen to the music is to become acquainted with
what Reagon calls "an amazing story of human survival
and adaptability." That story of oppression is more
universal than one might think. Change the name from
black to Jew, Indian or woman and the story is similar.
Reagon did an excellent job of illustrating that fact.
She demonstrated that music has something to say to
everyone. The familiar spiritual "Nobody Knows the
Troubles I've Seen" became in her hands not a song
of black people but a song of all people. Everyone has
experienced sorrow and troubles that they feel cannot
be communicated. Reagon's emotional, full-bodied voice
cried out against persecution:
I'd rather drink muddy water
And sleep in a hollow log
Than stay here in this city
Being treated like a dog.
The concert was relaxed and informal. Reagon sat
in a chair on the stage, alone with a microphone and the
few drums she used to accompany herself. Often she
stopped in the middle of a song, chatted for awhile and
then jumped right back into it. Her voice was kind and
without anger, even when she recalled the racism she
found in history books as a child. She did not jump up
and down screaming for equality. Instead, she asked the
audience to recognize that, "You cannot see the growth
of this nation clearly unless you see it as a slaveholding
nation."
Throughout the concert there was drumming. Reagon
tapped her fingers on drums and coaxed the audience to
slap hands on laps. The drumming became a rhythm of
life, a heartbeat that has lived for hundreds of years.
Equality has not been reached, but the rhythm goes on.
As Reagon said, "The power and dynamism and diver
sity of black culture says that we will still be drummers."
Shaw tells feminists his play is not chauvinistic
In its continuing effort to keep its reader informed of
the very latest in the world of criticism, this column is
privileged to publish for the first time a newly discovered
manuscript by the late comic dramatist, George Bernard
Shaw.
It seems the manuscript had fallen behind a radiator
and was found by a graduate student doing research in the
rare books section of the library at the University of Tex
as. It is believed to be the only extant copy of an essay
Chuck Jagoda
Shaw wrote in response to a series of articles by feminists
critizing his misogynic attitude toward women. The series
was called The Quintessence ofShawvinism.
In honor of Mr. Shaw, his reply will be printed
according to his rules for typesetting (no apostrophes in
cant, wont, its, no periods after Mr, Dr, and spacing of
letters instead of italics to shew emphasis. Show is spelled
"shew."
"A Dramatic Realist To His Feminist Critics"
The recent controversy over my play Village Wooing
requires that I once again teach the critics their job. Con
trary to popular opinion, it is once again the critic who is
guilty of the charge of Gilbertian topsy-turvydom, while I
claim the title of clear-sighted observer. (Paul Newman
will one day echo this sentiment in a motion picture
called Butch Cassidy and and Sundance Kid. There will
be a scene in which the Kid tells Butch, "You keep on
thinking, Butch. Yah hah hah laughs with love and
patience, as at a charming yet impractical child) . That's
what you do best." Butch will answer, "Kid, I got 2020
vision and the rest of the world's wearing bifocals.")
Three conversations
The play is a series of three conversations between a
man and woman, in which she woos him and he even
tually agrees to marry. They meet on a pleasure cruise
where his recurring attempts to write his "five hundred
words before lunch" are met by her incessant questions
and conversation. They meet again in the village store
where she works and he has stopped to buy provisions
for his hike. She suggests that he buy the store and marry
her. In the third conversation, he has bought the store and
finally agrees to marry her. The play is a distillation of
an invention based upon numerous conversations to which
I have been subjected on board ships and in the small
stores that provide daily provisions as well as the postal
and telephonic needs of many of our English villages.
Play abuses women
The play has been criticized as a description of female
battering, presumably because of the sarcasm with which
the man vents his exasperation at the woman and which
she apparently fails to notice. For purposes of dramatic
conflict, I have portrayed the woman as determinedly
persistent and the man as persistently stubborn. Without
her attempts to engage him in conversation and his
attempts to get back to his work, there would be no con
flict. She cannot be one whit less dogged in her pursuit
than he can be in his intransigence or the drama stops.
It is as much a paradox of reality that a shy man will
endure annoying and intrusive conversation as that a
woman will endure his responding verbal abuse, but the
rituals of human courting follow no known prescription.
As I have devoted a quite detailed portrayal of the female-as-predator,
man-as-prey courting behavior in my play
Man and Superman, I shall not discuss it at length here.
Suffice it to say that my belief in the primacy of Free
Will demands my respect for the rich varieties of human
behavior.
As to the charge that his play is a description of
woman abuse, I claim topsy-turvydom. Could I not as
well interpret it as an instance of male rape? Is he not a
victim of her presistent invasion of his privacy? What
greater instance of abuse and battering can there be than
this pestering of a quiet soul who asks only for peace and
privacy to finish his work? He later wants to procure a
few foodstuffs for his hike and is again controlled, nay
dominated by the woman's presumption? Isn't
it in fact she who batters and beats down his de
fenses until he is forced at last to give in to her matrimon
ial importunings?
Can't legislate wooing
I would request that the feminist critic whose reactions
owe more to genual reflexion than genuine relfection to
examine whether she is making full allowance for the
rights of all people to carry on their wooing in whatever
way they find convenient. Indeed, any attempt to legislate
modes of courtship seems doomed to failure .
I do not view this play as the subjugation of either sex
but as a celebration of the fun of the contest. I must con
fess, however, to a perverse pleasure in the fact that
the less witty of the two gets her way with him in each act
of the contest. One could call it demeaning anti-homoistic
degradation and oppression of the weaker by the stronger.
However, to do so would be to miss the fun of the piece
and that is perhaps the greatest excess of all.
NETV focuses
on Jewish situation
Allen Katchen, the executive director of BTMai B'Rith's
Omaha-based Anti-Defamation League, will be interview
ed on Dateline Nebraska, tonight at 7 pjn. over the Ne
braska Educational Television Network.
Katchen will be questioned by journalists Nancy Hicks
of The Lincoln Star; Dick Herman of the Lincoln Journal
and Steve Stingley for the Omaha World-Herald, along
with moderator Alice Kaderlan. Topics discussed on the
30-minute program will likely include anti-Semitism in
Nebraska and the- United States; the situations of Jews
in other countries; and the United States foreign policy
regarding Israel.
Dateline Nebraska is a weekly program featuring na
tional and local newsmakers interviewed by a panel of
journalists, produced by the University of Nebraska
Television public affairs unit.
