Webinar: Holly Near & Linda Tillery

They Who Sang

to End the War 2: A Black Music Response


Holly Near and Linda Tillery,

moderated by Crys Matthews

Originally presented December 5, 7 - 8:30 p.m. ET


Watch the video recording on youtube by clicking here

https://youtu.be/-A3RB0bQEEg   

Edited by Helene Rosenbluth

Please share with friends and colleagues. 

Tax deductible contributions to support this and future programs are indispensable and can be made here.     https://tinyurl.com/donateFRD


Holly Near has been singing for a more equitable world for well over 50 creative years. An insightful musical storyteller, she is committed to keeping her work rooted in contemporary activism. Near worked in film and television in her late teens and early twenties but the opportunity to join FTA (Free The Army tour) introduced her to soldiers resisting war and racism from within the military and local communities resisting the military industrial complex/occupation of their land.  Holly expanded her understanding of the world through feminism. Holly observes, “Music can influence choices for better or for worse. A lullaby can put a troubled child to sleep, but Muzak can put a nation to sleep.  A marching band can send our children off to war. It can also have people laughing, dancing and loving as the band leads a gay pride parade”. An artist and thinker, Holly Near’s voice elevates spirit and inspires activism. 



Linda Tillery is an American singer, percussionist, producer, songwriter, and music arranger. She began her professional singing career at age 19 with the Bay Area rock band The Loading Zone. Ms. Tillery is recognized as a pioneer and an elder in the development of feminist black music. She was nominated for a Grammy Award in 1997 for Best Musical Album for Children and has had a long career as a support vocalist for mainstream artists as diverse as Santana, Bobby McFerrin, Huey Lewis and the News and the Turtle Island String Quartet. In the early 1990s, she began exploring the roots music of enslaved Africans and the African diaspora, forming the group The Cultural Heritage Choir which has toured all over the world. This was the beginning of her career as a self-taught ethnomusicologist. Tillery gathered music from small churches, cotton fields and the "freedom music" of her ancestors. Tillery calls the music performed by the CHC "survival music". She says "it helped African-Americans endure Jim Crow, lynchings, rapes. The music carried them forward”.



Crys Matthews is among the brightest stars of the new generation of social justice music-makers. A powerful lyricist whose songs of compassionate dissent reflect her lived experience as what she lightheartedly calls "the poster-child for intersectionality," Justin Hiltner of Bluegrass Situation called Matthews’s gift "a reminder of what beauty can occur when we bridge those divides." She is made for these times ”Matthews began performing in 2010, but cemented her acclaim at Lincoln Center as the 2017 New Song Music and Performance Competition grand prize winner. Crys was born and raised in a small town in southeastern NorthCarolina by an A.M.E. preacher. She witnessed the power of music from an early age. A former drum major and classically-trained clarinetist turned folk singer, Matthews is using her voice to answer Dr. Martin Luther King's call to be "a drum major for justice




Second in a series of webinars with singers whose creative voices inspired and were shaped by the peace movement.   





Resources


They Who Sang 1:  Peter Yarrow, Reggie Davis, Sonny Ochs with Heather Booth
https://youtu.be/CbebUX9maDY


From the May 2, 2015 conference of the Vietnam Peace Commemoration Committee 

        Holly Near "Singing for our Lives"  https://youtu.be/tuVN52g22rU

       Holly Near and Emma's  Revolution  https://youtu.be/7uePgFy-jvI


Protest Music of the Vietnam War  by Anne Meisenzahl and Roger Peace
 United States Foreign Policy History and Resource Guide website, 2017, updated September 2021, http://peacehistory-usfp.org/protest-music-vietnam-war


Justin Brummer's playlist of 390+ protest songs 


"Why Movements Need To Start Singing Again"
December 7, 2022 by Paul Engler  
https://portside.org/2022-12-07/why-movements-need-start-singing-again?utm_source=portside-general&utm_medium=email



With thanks to AVK ARTS, The Antonia and Vladimer Kulaev Cultural Heritage Fund

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