ARTS

Toshi Reagon to wash 'Sco in cool vibe

by Elizabeth Weinstein

She has been compared to Neil Young, Tracy Chapman, Joan Osborne and Ani DiFranco. Yet the only word that comes to mind when trying to define Toshi Reagon, an up-and-coming singer and songwriter performing at the 'Sco Monday, is undefinable.

In one interview, Reagon discussed her frustration at being prematurely boxed into a specific style or genre. "People are very obsessed with trying to say what my music is because they're trying to sell records and think that's the best way to sell it. And that's why the live performance is so incredible; when people are immersed in a live experience, they're not concerned with trying to figure out what the music is. I want people to hear my albums that way too. Just be a part of the experience and enjoy it." At one point, Reagon was signed to Elektra, but she left the label without recording a full album, after disputes over artistic control.

Photo of singer Toshi Reagon

Reagon's growing base of loyal fans can attest to her powerful and inspiring onstage persona. Her musical talent is hardly surprising, since her mother is civil rights activist and musician Berniece Johnson Reagon, leader of the gospel group Sweet Honey in the Rock. In fact, the mother-daughter pair often appear onstage together, and Toshi produced a recent Sweet Honey album.

As a child, however, Toshi dreamed not of being a musician, but instead a professional football player. This dream ended with an injury during a softball game. When doctors told her she could no longer play sports, she took up the guitar, bass and drums.

While Reagon certainly inherited her mother's love of music and political activism, she has worked hard to create and refine her own unique image as an able and versatile musician. She has four albums to her name, including one with her band, Big Lovely, titled Justice. The Rejected Stone is a live album from 1994. 1997 delivered the spiritual Kindness, and most recently is The Righteous One, an eclectic, energetic mix of rhythm and blues, pop, folk, rock, and funk tunes.

Throughout her career, Reagon has had to battle stereotypes and prejudices as she defies the categories that dominate the pop music industry. Rock writer Bill Flanagan, of GQ magazine, lovingly described her as "a big black woman in dreadlocks slinging an acoustic guitar like an ax," upon seeing her at a New York charity event. However tough Toshi Reagon appears, with her tattoos and big-boned physique, her consoling voice and soul-infused songs carry inspiring messages of love, tolerance, social justice and peace.

While confident in her talents, Reagon manages to keep things in humorous perspective: She said in a 1994 interview with Out magazine, "I don't fool myself into thinking that if people experience love one night in a concert with me that that's going to change their lives. It would be great if I could just open my mouth and people would be like, 'Oh, Toshi, I'm converted - I love women, I love big, black, queer women.'" She may laugh, but many people, including music critics, have in fact been converted, and the buzz surrounding The Righteous Ones is only the beginning.

Toshi Reagon performs at the 'Sco Monday at 10 p.m. Tickets are $3 OCID, $5 others.


Photo:
A little bit of soul: Singer/songwriter Toshi Reagon performs her hybrid-folk this Monday at the 'Sco. (photo courtesy of Razor and Tie Records)

 

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Copyright © 1999, The Oberlin Review.
Volume 128, Number 8, November 5, 1999

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