Quick Q and A with Pat Humphries and Sandy O (emma's revolution)
 by Kathy S-B  ·  1 May 2008

The me&thee is absolutely thrilled to be presenting emma’s revolution in concert on May 2, 2008. The songs that Pat Humphries and Sandy O sing need to be sung and they need to be heard. You can do a search on the internet and find many fascinating video clips of emma’s revolution proudly singing out for justice as they are seen here at one of the largest peace rallies in recent history or this inspiring photo collage which shows a slightly different take on the national news — something that you don’t see on commercial TV stations.

Can you give us a brief history lesson as to why you named your musical duo emma’s revolution?

PAT: When Sandy and I first got together, we thought about taking a duo name, but in May 2002, my song, “Swimming to the Other Side” was featured on NPR’s “All Things Considered.” Suddenly, hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people knew my name. So, we tried a couple of iterations using my name or mine and Sandy’s names. In 2003, we were recording our first duo CD, “one x 1,000,000 = change” and decided it was time to choose a name that would reflect the music we were writing and performing together. We thought of Emma Goldman, who lived from 1869 to 1940. She was born in Lithuania, but the U.S. was her adopted home. Emma was an outspoken advocate for the rights of women, workers and the right of free speech. It was a volatile time, with violent repression of workers and progressives. As an eloquent and powerful speaker who could gather thousands of people wherever she spoke, Emma was considered a very dangerous woman in her day. (She’d probably be considered a dangerous woman by our current administration, today!) Emma demonstrated against U.S. entry into World War I and, along with 300 other US citizens, was deported from the U.S. for her opposition to conscription (the draft). But, the story she is best known for is this: Emma was at a party and, if you can imagine, she was . . . dancing. A young colleague thought this behavior unbecoming a woman of her stature in the movement and told her so. She said to him, “Everyone has the right to free expression, to beautiful, radiant things” and though we don’t know if she actually uttered these words, in essence, “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.” That’s our kind of revolution!

How long have you been singing together? How did that collaboration come about?

SANDY: Pat and I first met through music. A friend of mine was playing her song, “Swimming to the Other Side,” and the song, plus the cute little picture of her on the cassette cover (that’s how long ago it was!), really caught my attention. I sent Pat the music I was doing with my college friend in our duo, Petronella, and invited her to come with us on a tour of women folk singers that I was coordinating for Women’s History Month. She came on the tour, beginning the friendship and occasional performing that lasted for the first eight years. Now, we’ve been singing together full time for seven years — and, married for six and a half of those! We got married in New York in 2001, not with the sanctioning of the state, but with the cheering of our friends, families and community. We’re still waiting for NY and our current home state, Maryland, to follow Massachusetts’ lead on marriage equality!

You’ve made a name for yourselves as a couple of the most important dissenting voices in music. I saw you sing on the National Mall last year for one of the big peace marches against the war. Was that one of the biggest events you’ve participated in thus far?

SANDY: Great to hear that you were at that event. It was one of the largest demonstrations in DC that people never heard about in the corporate news: On January 27, 2007, a half million people marched, rallied, sang and demanded an end to the war in Iraq. We sang our songs, “Peace, Salaam, Shalom” and “Who Lies? Who Dies?” Speakers included Dennis Kucinich, John Conyers, Susan Sarandon, Sean Penn and Jane Fonda. I’m not sure if folks know it, but the DC Police and Parks Department have officially declared that they can no longer count the number of demonstrators at an event. Funny, since they seem to have no problem announcing the number of people who are attending a July 4th fireworks show that’s sponsored by Lockheed Martin. Hmm, I wonder.

That was probably the biggest event we’ve participated in so far, but we sing at lots of amazing events all across the country and, more and more, around the world. Folks will be heartened to know that there is progressive activism happening in every state in this country, from first-ever peace marches in Lewes, DE and first-ever queer arts festivals in Flint, MI to monthly demonstrations that have grown from 500 to 5,000 people in Minneapolis, MN — we’ve been there! One of our favorite events is the vigil and protest to close the School of the Americas at Fort Benning in Columbus, GA. (See the School of the Americas Watch website at: http://soaw.org for photos, video and more.) The vigil takes place the weekend before Thanksgiving every year and is a profoundly moving event with speakers, puppetry, music, film and community. Pete Seeger calls it “the singin’ est movement since the Civil Rights Movement” and we’ve been performing there for the past six years. The first year we went, the organizers said, “Be prepared to sing with 10,000 people,” so, we wrote the song, “One by One.” This past year, there were 25,000 people singing the phrase back to us on Sunday morning.

Tell us about your trip to South Korea. You sang in the Demilitarized Zone. Who was your audience? How were you received?

PAT: I had been to Cuba and Nicaragua as a soloist, but South Korea was our first trip outside of the US together. We were invited to sing at a conference in DC in early June 2003 because the organizers had found us by googling “peace songs.” When we found out they were working on Korean unification, we sent, a song I had written three years before, when the leaders of North and South Korea met for the first time in 50 years. When we arrived at the conference in DC, the name of the song was everywhere: the banners and the program declared, “We Are One.” The song had become the theme of the conference. After I sang the song that day (it was a solo song, then), the organizers invited us to come with them to Korea. The only hitch was, they were leaving in two weeks. We had just enough time in our schedule to fit the trip in and to get the song translated into Korean.

The Demilitarized Zone was the first place we sang in Korea, as part of an event to celebrate the ritual rejoining of railroad tracks between North and South Korea. Hundreds of people stood in the rain as we sang. A translator recited the lines in Korean after each phrase of the verse and chorus and Sandy and I sang “We Are One” in Korean, “Uhrinun Hana.” That’s how we sing the song today.

Since then we’ve traveled to Scotland to perform at the Scottish Parliament’s Festival of Politics (Imagine Congress having an arts festival and inviting us inside!), to Palestine & Israel in summer 2007 to teach at a music camp for girls in the West Bank, and, in December 2007, to Chile with Holly Near for a commemoration of the women who were disappeared during the Pinochet regime.

What’s next for emma’s revolution?

SANDY: We’ve really been enjoying all the touring we’ve been doing with Holly Near this past year. We make some great harmonies together and folks from both Holly’s audiences and ours have loved the collaboration. We’re looking forward to more shows with Holly, including the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival in August. In early September, we’ll be heading to Minnesota for events to protest the Republican National Convention and then on to our first trip to Lisbon, Portugal, for a weekend-long festival that draws in a quarter of a million people. Should be fantastico!

We’re also writing a book — a songbook, plus the stories of the songs — which will be published in 2009. As folks will hear at the concert this Friday, both we and Holly feel that the storytelling is part of the performance. In the book, we’ll have a chance to expand on those stories and to get people the sheet music they’ve been requesting for our songs. Folks can keep up with our travels and performances on our website, www.emmasrevolution.com.