Archive

Outside the Lines: Toshi Reagon

The audience at a Toshi Reagon concert is a multi-culti melting pot, a fender-bender between Lollapalooza, the Michigan Women’s Music Festival and a deep South, old-time tent revival. On a recent Saturday evening in Brooklyn, one of those hot, still nights cooled by the sunset, lesbian couples with toddlers in tow picnicked on the grass next to older black folk swathed in African fabric from head to toe ring. A posse of giggling teens snapped off their iPods once the show got started and swayed to the beat alongside a group who could’ve been their parents.

Reagon can pull a crowd. Over 1,000 people packed into Prospect Park that evening, with little marketing and low-key fanfare. And this eclectic mish-mash of fans love her. They sing along, repeating her lyrics faithfully. Some follow her from gig to gig like Grateful Dead groupies. After her shows, long lines form to buy signed copies of her latest CD, Have You Heard, as well as her previous seven releases.

On the tenth anniversary year of her band, Big Lovely, and with over 20 years making music, Toshi Reagon is a long-term survivor in a harsh, unforgiving business. Performers are as disposable as Kleenex as a panicked music industry tries desperately to staunch a six-year decline in global sales. In this era of iTunes and MySpace, the market for old-fashioned CDs has plummeted 25 percent in the last 5 years. Concert ticket sales are also free-falling as fans click through music videos of their favorite performers rather than leave the couch.

Reagon has managed to carve out a niche and make a decent living, albeit in thousands and sometimes only hundreds of dollars and “units” rather than billions, by inhabiting a world outside of the mainstream music mess. She’s a real person who just happens to be a rock star. A parent to her 11-year-old niece, Tashawn, she lives in the ungentrified part of Brooklyn, not far from J Bob Alotta, a filmmaker and media activist, her lover of four years. Her CDs are released on Righteous Babe Records, Ani DiFranco’s label, without the luxury of starmaker machinery.

She carts her instruments from gig to gig in the back of her black Subaru wagon. She plays the music she loves–a funky-quirky mix of folk, rock, blues, R&B and gospel–rather than being pigeoned holed into a genre determined by corporate-owned radio stations. As fast as a fingersnap, her voice can rise from rough and bluesy to a sweet and almost girlish vibrato. She’s big and lovely and out and butch–no booty-shaking, blonde weave or raunchy lyrics. She can write what she wants, sing what she pleases and call out the Christian right from the stage if she feels like. And she often feels like it. She lives and works and thrives on her own terms.

“To be independent and functioning is a tremendous political statement,” says Reagon, tucked into a booth at Maggie Brown, her favorite breakfast spot not far from her home. “If I had millions of dollars to put out only one CD, God should slap me for using it that way. With that kind of money, I better be producing 20 albums, myself and others.”

Now 42, Reagon grew up in the business. Her mother, Bernice Johnson Reagon, is the founder of the world-renowned a capella group Sweet Honey in the Rock. Retired from Sweet Honey two years ago after 30 years, Johnson Reagon now often performs with her daughter.

At the concert in Brooklyn, the elder Reagon was both regal and relaxed, sitting next to Toshi, a floor-length scarf draped around her shoulders like a rainbow. Singing “I Be Your Water”, which Johnson Reagon wrote, the two raise their left hands above their heads in unison. They look like two old souls enjoying each other’s company, knees touching, on a screened porch.

“My mom and I have worked together for 20 years,” says Reagon. “We’re major collaborators, but it’s more than that. We understand each other. When she says something or I say something we always see the positive in each other.”

Reagon grew up in Washington, D.C., but moved to New York in the early 90s to find her way. After a semester at Fordham University, she dropped out to open for Lenny Kravitz on his first world tour.

“Lenny is very intuitive,” recalls Reagon, who released her first album, Justice, in 1990. “He never saw me perform. He just said ‘you want to open for me?’ The first time he heard me play was to open his show. That never happens anymore.”

Next, Reagon will perform at Michigan on August 11. Her first time “on the land” was in 1980, when at 16, she tagged along with her mother and Sweet Honey. “I’ve enjoyed seeing the evolution of this community of women,” says Reagon. “It’s always good to be in a lesbian setting. I like the whirlwind of energy and politics and the intense relationships that form between people. It’s rugged but with a sweetness.”

In honor of their 10th year, Reagon and her band will perform several fall concerts in spots around the country. Then she’ll go into the studio to work on her ninth and tenth albums, a live recording and a compilation of sacred music. “Sacred music is any music I find sacred,” says Reagon. “It’s music that touches my spirit and my soul. It could be traditional African-American spirituals, contemporary gospel, Bob Marley, my mother’s music or songs I’ve written.”

Reagon will write the music for her eleventh album, which she also hopes to release next year. She says her songwriting process is the same as it was when she wrote her first song, a love song, at 12 years old. “First, I tell myself that I don’t have to do anything,” she says. “Then I open up a window inside myself and see what comes.”

Get more info at ToshiReagon.com

Thank you to everyone who wrote in response to my last column on black lesbian books. I really appreciate the warm welcome to afterellen. Several of you mentioned the website sistahsontheshelf.com, which is dedicated to black lesbian literature. If you haven’t visited this wonderful, thoughtful, thorough site, check it out.

Lesbian Apparel and Accessories Gay All Day sweatshirt -- AE exclusive

Related Articles

Leave a Reply

Back to top button