Rachel Bagby: Press

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Most dramatically, the crisp and measured drumming on "How Do You Love?" highlights a question that, if asked repeatedly of ourselves, and answered honestly, might lead to the abolition of bigotry and violence worldwide

Vocalist/composer Rachel Bagby is surely in league with the angels. Her debut album, Full, combines chant, African tribal rhythms, and jazz to create hymns of extraordinary power and beauty. You'll want to sing and stomp along-and you're supposed to. The album is a joyful celebration of life-don't miss it

Thoreau wrote in his essay, "Civil Disobedience," Cast your whole vote not a
strip of paper merely, but your whole influence.

Prior to the war in Iraq, on March 8, thousands of women and children
gathered in Washington, D.C., for a Code Pink Rally in the name of peace. We
walked from the Martin Luther King Park through the streets of the nation’s
capital to Lafayette Park located directly in front of the White House.

When we arrived [at the White House] we were met by a wall of Washington, D.C., police dressed in black combat gear, bullet-proof vests and rifles. We were not allowed to proceed on to the public park. One of the organizers of Code Pink began to negotiate with the police. While these negotiations were underway, Rachel Bagby, an African-American poet and musician, stood directly across from a policeman
and focused her attention on one officer in particular, also African American.

She began singing with all the power of her God-given voice, “All we are saying is give peace a chance.” Over and over she kept singing, “All we are saying is give peace a chance.” Other women began to join her. She never took her eyes off that man, but just kept singing to him in her low, dignified voice. In that moment, it was clear neither one of them would be who they are, or where they are, without the voices of dissent uttered by their parents, without the literal acts of civil disobedience practiced by their parents’ parents and their parents’ parents’ before them. The African-American policeman quietly stepped aside creating the opening we walked through.

This is what the open space of democracy looks like.

One on one, in the name of love, we support each other in the vitality of the
struggle called Democracy. Liberty. Freedom. We can not only change the
world, we can transform it. Indeed, we are in this together.