The gorgeous and gifted international jazz singer, the late Doris Hines who shared the stage with the likes of Ellington, Fitzgerald, Washington, and Vaughn and was often called ‘The Satin Doll.’ She always left audiences spellbound, said Al McFarlane. “It seemed like everything changed when she entered the room,”. “When she spoke or performed, it was always a spiritual experience,” said her son, Gary Hines, founder and leader of Minnesota’s own Grammy award winning Sounds of Blackness. “Mom was indeed an unstoppable force of nature. I suppose it was those Jamaican roots mixed with a New York attitude that made her revered for her smooth vocals and as a fearless warrior fighting for justice for people of color.”
In the fifties and sixties, the Twin Cities was a jazz Mecca. Doris Hines was sometimes booked for weeks selling out every night or held over for months. She fell in love with the metropolis, and moved her six children from Yonkers, NY when Gary, her youngest, was 12.
Gary Hines describes moving from his multicultural Yonkers neighborhood where most whites had dark hair, and coming to Minnesota where everybody was blonde. It was like coming to another planet.|” he said.
“I was asking, where are the Italians, the Cubans, and Puerto Ricans? Where were all the Black folks? What we did find was a small, yet very dynamic and vital Black community, especially musically, with R&B groups rivaling any Motown stars. There were blues artists like Jimmy Jam’s dad, the great Cornbread Harris; gospel artists including Thelma Buckner and Willie Hale; and Prince’s dad who was a prolific writer and musician. I think the small numbers actually made people cleave to each other rather than just being absorbed by the majority culture. We had roots. We knew our history from our parents and our Black teachers. Earl Bowman and Bruce Williams and a few other Black teachers were teaching the true history in the Twin Cities,” Hines said.
“In those early years in Yonkers, I witnessed the protests and saw the picketers outside of Woolworths. They could take Black folks’ money, but not serve them equally. And then around four or five, I became involved in music because music was always attached to the movement. There was so much going on in Yonkers, in the churches and community centers, and in our homes and even safely on the streets. My brothers and I were the Black drum corps, paying tribute to the first Black man to die in World War I. He was from Yonkers. It was all part of our enrichment. We brought all those blessed memories with us to the Twin Cities,” he said.
Speaking recently on The Conversation with Al McFarlane, on KFAI FM 90.3, Hines said that the Sounds of Blackness genius is found in our African lineage and deeply rooted in the motherland some 6,000 miles away.
It is a connection to antiquity which emerges from within a powerful Africana way of knowing. It is where the musical leader lives and walks and writes and now gives to the next generation, some of whom are the offspring of the original members from 50 years ago. Guided by elders like educator Dr. Mahmoud El-Kati Sounds of Blackness beginnings at Macalester College in St. Paul, the group set out to be more thate just a singing group or just a band. El Kati’s instruction: “Be a cultural institution”!
And that they have indeed become.
“We all learned so much from the Professor that really influenced our music,” Hines said. “Africa is called The Motherland implying birth. It is Africa, not Europe, that gave birth to our music. Even in the diaspora, centuries removed from the continent, we find our roots in Africa. From the work songs, the field hollers, and the rain shouts, our ancestors were exceptionally creative. And as the great Quincy Jones reminds us, from Bebop to Hip hop, African prose to rhythm in the drums and the holy dance in churches, it all began in the Motherland eons ago.”
There is ancestral energy always flowing through the Sounds of Blackness. “We must acknowledge, embrace, and take pride in the astounding strength and foresight of our forebearers,’ Hines said. “We will continue the musical art form we have shaped and executed with what W.E. B. DuBois coined as ‘The Souls of Black Folk’. Sometimes our souls shake in rhythms and melodies and words. I look up and see and hear syncopation and poly-rhythms that are purely African.”
The affinity for Africa is also borne from personal experience for Hinds and the Sounds. “When we visited Ghana, the minute we reached the last step off the plane, we were greeted with voices saying, ‘Welcome Home.’ We all cried like babies. But aside from all the festivities, there was our visit to Elmina Slave Castle, the Dungeons, and the Door of No Return. The ancestors were there, and they spoke to us without a doubt,” he said
Hines said at Elmina, as they walked to their bus, God placed the master Nigerian drummer, Babatunde Olatunji right there walking towards them. Olatunji remembered Hines as Bryant Middle School student leader who defied school rules and came to Minneapolis’s Central High School to see Olatunji perform.
Now adult and band leader on tour in |Africa, Hines said it was amazing that Olatunji named the incident of their crossing paths earlier when Hines was a junior high school student in Minneapolis.
Hines said the 20 or more Sounds of Blackness members joined hands with others in a big circle on the Atlantic Ocean beach and Olatunji led them in a prayer of reconnection and restoration for the children ‘lost at sea’.
It was indeed a spirit-filled experience holding true to that old adage that we are not spiritual beings having human experiences as much as we are human beings having spiritual experiences, Hines said.
“Here’s another time when the Spirit took over in a manner so obvious that I will never forget,” Hines said. “George Floyd was murdered five blocks from where we rehearse at the Sabathani Community Center. He was murdered on a Monday and the next night was the first rally. Of course, I cancelled our normal Tuesday vocal rehearsal. Although the media downplayed the thousands of people who packed 38th and Chicago, it was so packed that no one could fall. Above the crowd, I heard this voice above the rest. A young white girl carrying a ‘Black Lives Matter’ sign recognized me and yelled out, “Hey, Mr. Sound of Blackness! You guys are one of my favorite groups. I bet you guys are going to do a song about all this. But do me a favor. Don’t make it a happy song!”
He promised her that wouldn’t happen. Just as soon as he spoke those words, he literally heard the words of Fannie Lou Hammer saying ‘Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired. Leaving the rally a little early, Hines immediately went home. For the next couple of nights, Fannie Lou talked to him as if she sat right beside him.
“For now, and for the future, we continue to create. We continue to sing. We continue to entertain. We continue to inspire. Our new release, “Hold Up Your Light” was written by Carrie Harrington, one of our veteran members, our choreographer, and a very talented writer. She’s the first voice you hear on the song ‘Optimistic’. We just finished an Afrobeat remix of the song. Brother Maurice Joshua out of Chicago did an amazing job. Jamecia Bennett and her daughter have a great song entitled ‘You’re Gonna Win’ and that will take us into next year. People are asking for our Christmas show that has been missing for the last couple years, so that’s a possibility, as well.”
“When Gary Hines has joined the ancestors and all the kind things have been said, the cultural institution will live on,” Gary Hines said. “We’ve contacted Fannie Lou Hamer’s estate and have acknowledged to her granddaughter, Cookie Hamer that we will be sharing a portion of the proceeds of the song with them and with the George Floyd Scholarship Foundation. We don’t just talk the talk. We want to walk the talk. Fannie Lou passed it on to me that night and I must pay it forward. She made that very clear.”
