For a while now, I have been going to the Toshi
Reagon and BIG Lovely Annual Birthday Celebration in January at Joe's Pub
in New York. Toshi Reagon is an artist whose music cannot be easily
categorized, because she flows through so many genres--I will just say that her
music follows a Black tradition of social protest in music. The song I have uploaded,
"(I'm Gonna) Land on the Shore," is one that she originally recorded
in 1997, on her album titled Kindness. She sometimes sings it at
the annual celebration--it is one of my favorites. Her mother, the legendary
Bernice Johnson Reagon, also recorded this song back in 1971 (reissued in 1986)
on River of Life: Harmony One. One of our greatest civil rights
heroes, the late Fannie Lou Hamer, also recorded the song, which is on the
album Songs My Mother Taught Me, originally recorded in 1963 and
re-released by Smithsonian Folkways African American Legacy Series. I think
that you will be moved by all three renditions.
Bernice Reagon Johnson
Fannie Lou Hamer
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