Sunday Sessions: Drinking Gourd
Stars.
Stars can be sources of science, signposts by which to navigate, ways to appreciate beauty, sources of inspiration.
No doubt you you have your own stories and connections to do with stars.
That is true with musicians also.
Richie Havens grew up in New York City. His family is Native American and British West Indian. During his long career the singer, and guitarist worked in and drew songs from folk, blues, soul, and sometimes other strands of music.
Among other things, Richie Havens was the opening act at the Woodstock Festival in 1969, stepping up the originally scheduled opening act and several others were delayed. It proved a performance that moved his career from Greenwich Village folk clubs to national and international stages.
Follow the Drinking Gourd is a spiritual, whose verses and description of sight and sound were often used during slavery times as people made their way north along the Underground Railroad.
Details of the song could be changed to suit different routes and seasons.
There was one constant, though: the name of the song, Follow the Drinking Gourd.
That drinking gourd is one you know, too: it is the Big Dipper, in the stars. Pointing the the way north.
The convergence of a day celebrating the life and work of civil rights leader Doctor Martin Luther King and the inauguration of president whose administration seems set, among otehr things, on undoing Doctor King’s legacy had me thinking of this performance of this song.
So did Kamala Harris’s remarks from Howard University after the election. She said, in part
“There's an adage a historian once called a law of history, true of every society across the ages. The adage is, only when it is dark enough can you see the stars.
“ I know many people feel like we are entering a dark time, but for the benefit of us all, I hope that is not the case. But here's the thing... if it is, let us fill the sky with the light of a brilliant, brilliant billion of stars.
“The light, the light of optimism, of faith, of truth and service.”
Richie Havens passed away in 2013 at the age of 72. In 1993 he had been one of the musicians who played at the inauguration of President Bill Clinton.
US presidential inaugurations take place on January 20. Richie Havens’s birthday is January 21st.
There are other fine songs of stars, gentler ones for, perhaps, gentler connections. We will get to several of those as time unfolds.
You may also wish to explore
Ideas of places to see the stars
Two more songs that work for the day, in differing ways. One of them references stars, too
Music for Making It through Changes, from the Music for Shifting Times series at Wandering Educators
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