Art and activism have long gone hand in hand — just consider the folksongs Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger sang to support union workers, bringing national attention to social issues and everyday injustices.
On Saturday in Easthampton, the galvanizing power of art will animate the latest installment of Millpond.Live, the free music festival series started last year at Millside Park. And Saturday’s show, the second of six weekly performances running through Sept. 23, will also honor the memory and work of Art Steele, the Valley blues guitarist and sound engineer who died in January in a car crash.
“Art & Activism,” which begins at 6 p.m., is a collaboration between Laudable Productions, an Easthampton sound and event production company, and the Rosenberg Fund for Children (RFC), also of Easthampton, which provides financial and other support to the children of progressive activists who are imprisoned or harassed by the government.
Among a number of performers at the show will be Sweet Honey in the Rock, the longstanding African-American a capella group whose live shows were engineered by Steele for nearly 40 years.
“Art was the first person who really gave us a cohesive sound,” said Carol Maillard, a longtime member of Sweet Honey, which formed in 1973. “He could make us sound good in any hall we played in.”
“He was friend, a fellow musician, a family member, too,” Maillard added during a recent phone call from her home in New York City. “We’re still grieving him… it’s an honor to play at this show for him.”
Saturday’s lineup also includes two New York-based acts. The Love Experiment is a “future-soul” collective, led by drummer, composer and producer Charles “Blvk Samurai” Burchell, which includes some 20 musicians, producers and songwriters committed to “finding the next sonic step in R&B, hip-hop, and soul,” according to the group’s Facebook page.
Climbing Poetree, meanwhile, is made up of the duo of Alixa Garcia and Naima Penniman, who mix spoken-word poetry, hip-hop, and multimedia theater to tell stories of liberation, injustice and women’s empowerment, among others.
In addition, New York visual artist Sophia Dawson, whose work exposes “the stories and experiences of individuals who are striving to overcome the injustices they face,” according to her website, sophia-dawson.com, will have some of her paintings on display at the concert grounds and will be available to talk about her art; images of her paintings will also be projected on a screen on stage.
“We’re really interested in bringing in artists who you might not otherwise see in the Valley,” said Kyle Homstead of Laudable Productions.
And Homstead, who worked with Art Steele on sound production for years, added that Saturday’s show would also “look at the legacy” of Steele’s career as a sound engineer and his deep connections in the music industry.
“He didn’t limit himself to turning knobs,” said Homstead. “He designed and built his own speakers… he was recognized as one of the best people in the business.” In fact, Homstead notes, Steele designed the sound system, staging and lighting for last year’s Millipond.Live shows.
Jenn Meeropol, executive director of the Rosenberg Fund for Children, notes that the RFC has a long connection to socially conscious art and artists: Performers like Pete Seeger and Harry Belafonte have supported the group in various ways, such as serving on its advisory board.
Her group was interested in collaborating with Laudable Productions on Saturday’s show, especially since they had already engaged Sophia Dawson to come up to Easthampton for a week-long residency that would include some workshops.
“Sophia’s work really appealed to me, and it was very much along the lines of what we do,” said Meeropol. Saturday’s show has been largely underwritten by a grant the RFC received from the Puffin Foundation, an arts foundation in New Jersey.
Meeropol notes that when her paternal grandparents, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, were accused in the early 1950s of giving secrets about the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union — and then executed — artists as diverse as Picasso and Paul Robeson came to their defense.
“We’re big believers in the healing power of art, and as art as a tool you can use to fight injustice,” said Meeropol.
She added that it was after her grandparents’ deaths that her father, RFC founder Robert Meeropol, and her uncle Michael Meeropol were adopted as young boys and raised by an artistic family. Both found solace in music, drama and other forms of art, she said.
Dawson, the New York artist, also sees art and activism as one and the same; her murals and large-scale paintings bring into focus the faces, both known and unknown, of mothers who have lost children to police violence; of political prisoners; and of members of the Black Panther and Black Liberation Movements.
She also produces videos on these themes, including the reading of letters between some of these prisoners and their children. She’ll be leading a workshop this evening (Thursday) at 6:30 p.m. at the RFC, in the Eastworks Building, to discuss that work.
“I’m trying to tell the stories of these people in a couple different ways,” she said in a phone call from her Brooklyn home.
It will be her first trip to the area. “I had to look at a map to see where it was,” she said with a laugh.
Homstead said he was also interested in pairing Sweet Honey in the Rock, a group that traces it roots to the civil rights and women’s rights movements, with Climbing Poetree as a way of showcasing the ongoing social issues both groups sing about. “We see it as a way of linking different generations of listeners,” he said.
He noted that Valley vocalist and music teacher Evelyn Harris, a former member of Sweet Honey in the Rock, will serve as the MC for Saturday’s show.
Cassandra Holden, a Northampton artist who also works with Laudable Productions, added that the Millpond.Live series, in which each each week’s concert offers a different theme, is built on the premise of bringing together people of all ages, including those who might not ordinarily go out to listen to music.
“The fact that the shows are free is a big part of what we’re doing,” she said. “It’s really about coming together as a community.”
Steve Pfarrer can be reached at spfarrer@gazettenet.com.
For more information on the “Art & Activism” show at Easthampton’s Millside Park, visit millpond.live. More information on the Rosenberg Fund for Children, which is bringing additional activist artists to the area in September, can be found at rfc.org.