Celebrating the centennial of 1920’s giving women the right to vote, suffragette singer Karrin Allyson brings together an all star cast of Harry Belafonte, Rosanne Cash, Denise Donatelli, Kurt Elling Lalah Hathaway, Madeleine Peyroux, Regina Carter among others in a wide ranging musical and historical mix of song and sermon.
While many of the songs are reflective of the ragtime era of the social change, the team of Kingrid Jensen/tp, Mindi Abair/as, Helen Sung/p, Endea Owens/b, Allison Miller/dr and guests like Kait Dunton/org are able to mix strings to hip jaz as on the thriving “Columbia’s Daughters” with Allyson in rich tone and delivery. Vaudevillian pre-jazz supports Veronica Swift on “Anti Suffrage Rose” while modal and free spirited modern grooves pulsate across on “I’ll Be No Submissive Wife.” Readings of anti-voting petitions by Kurt Elling or pro-suffrage Frederick Douglas by Belafonte put the movement in perspective, while Lalah Hathaway’s “Sojourner Truth” speech and Rosanne Cash’s reflections by Susan B. Anthony being quite poignant.
The only caveat in this rich historical treatise is the erasure of any spiritual content of the movement, as Anthony and Truth were both evangelical and Pro-Life Christians, maybe something that doesn’t jibe with the present world view. A rich historical and musical journey otherwise.