Rock Solid

Bernice Reagon’s puts her sweet money back into her music.

Two years ago Bernice Johnson Reagon received the first $100,000 Laurel Award from the Philadelphia-based Leeway Foundation, which exists to aid female artists. The Laurel is a supreme honor, reserved for a woman whose art also profoundly effects her community. As the founder of the legendary a cappella group Sweet Honey in the Rock, as a civil rights activist, as an historian, radio producer, Smithsonian curator and mother, Reagon has dedicated herself to uplifting the African-American community.

How did the $100,000 change her life? No great shifts; rather, Reagon chose to invest in refining her art. "I always tell people, if you are interested in getting funded, you have to fund yourself. Plow it into your work so it can deepen and expand. That absolutely changes who you are in the world. The first five years of Sweet Honey I put it all back in." When Reagon won a MacArthur Foundation Genius grant she used it to make the radio series/book/record tribute to gospel music, Wade in the Water . She urges people to reinvest any windfall, "Because you might get things done that you’d otherwise have to leave in the dream state."

For example, "When you are making a record, $100,000 certainly gets the job done." The Laurel prize is realizing the family dream of a CD featuring Bernice with daughter Toshi, (mom calls her a "postmodernist rocker") and son Kwan.

At the same time Reagon is finishing her family recording, Sweet Honey in the Rock is beginning to conceptualize its 30th anniversary CD, planned for release next year, in conjunction with that anniversary. At their upcoming Kimmel Center gig, Sweet Honey may try some new material being considered for the recording, but expect many familiar songs as well. Reagon notes that they have dug up old favorites during the months since the terrorists attacks. Their first performances after that date remain clear to her. "People were still reaching for ways to wrap their minds around what was happening to the culture, the [sudden] vulnerability." In response to the audiences’ palpable needs, "We didn’t have to write a lot of new songs to address [these issues]." For example, "We deal with unsafety and unprotectedness. As girls we are taught that members of your own species will prey on you. People who love you try to get you to understand that you can still build a life, despite that fact." Sweet Honey has the songs and spirit to help you remember how to celebrate life for as long as you are blessed with it.

Sweet Honey in the Rock, Sun., March 24, The Kimmel Center, 260 S. Broad St., 215-790-5800, www.kimmelcenter.org.