(On Richie Havens:)

Spirit-Work on Pennsylvania Avenue

I return sun-burned from a long afternoon out on Pennsylvania Avenue between the National Archives and Freedom Plaza, digging WorldFest. I arrived at Pennsylvania and 9th NW after 2 pm, after Richie Havens had already begun his performance, and then I got the spirit. Richie was balding and somewhat gray, but in great shape and energetic as ever. He played for an hour and a half, with two accompanists (at times), one fellow on electric piano and the other on lead guitar. Richie played mostly his old standards from the ’60s. He played sweet songs like “Tupelo Honey” and “Just Like a Woman,” interspersed with somber, urgent, high tension songs that came from the time of Vietnam and civil rights struggles (with lyrics like “Who are these men?” and “What are you going to do about me?”). I felt as if I had reconnected with life. Tears ran down my face under the hot sun during a good portion of the concert. The crowd went nuts. The people were mixed by race and even by age. The audience clapped, some danced in the street. I felt the spirit rising up.

I made a mental note of something that impressed me very much about Richie, about how he Africanizes Caucasian folk music. Though I have been away from what was called “folk music” for over two decades, I too had a guitar and I remember the stuff that was sung and played back then in the “folk” style. There are two things that impress me most about Havens. One is the spiritual, gospel feel of his voice. The other is the intense percussiveness of his strumming. The audience responded whenever he intensified the speed and the volume of his strumming, so he knows what he is doing. This sounds very African to me, though it is folk guitar, not so much because of the rhythm, though he does break up the regularity of the rhythm sometimes, but because of the intense, insistent percussiveness. I hear that same insistence, from the rock bottom all the way out into the atmosphere, that I hear in the playing of an African drummer, who creates an infinite presence in the beat of his drum because he has to get down, get down all the way and make his statement boom all the way out. Richie only got more intense as the concert went on. He told little stories in between his songs, about strange people, about the ’50’s, about women. About the world only beginning as a unified entity, whereupon he sang “Here comes the sun.” I remember towards the end of the concert he performed his song on the 12 signs of the zodiac.

Finally, he caught us by surprise, because instead of pausing after his penultimate song, he segued immediately into the chant he made famous at Woodstock: “freedom. . . freedom. . . freedom. . . freedom. . . . .” The crowd lost control. Richie Havens became spirit-possessed. So did the audience. I lost my usual public reserve. I was sweating and my feet were aching on the mercilessly hard pavement, but I got the spirit. I started hopping from one aching foot to the other, my hands were clapping in rhythm with the rest of the audience as if we were in a black church in Alabama. I almost folded myself in half like a West African dancer. “Sometimes I feel like a motherless child. . . .” What is there about that song that makes the soul explode? It was magic, spirit-work. We sanctified Pennsylvania Avenue.

Richie stood up, kicking his legs in the air. Even while finishing the song, he danced about the stage. Then his guitarist did a reprise of Jimi Hendrix’s electric rendition of “The Star Spangled Banner.” Richie was transported. He jumped about the stage. The crowd was beside itself. We, too sing America―we sing it our way, out of our own feeling, out of our own aspiration, out of our own desperation, out of our own infinite passion―we too sing America, for us, the people! And we clapped in time. Richie was back in front of his microphone, fist over his heart, bending his body, toward us. He called out to us over and over: “I know you’ve got it, deep down in your heart. Come on, give it to me! Give it to me! Give it to me! We still got it. Give it to me! Give it to me! Give it to me! Give it to me! Give it to me!” He couldn’t get enough, and neither could I. The audience was Africanized―call and response, call and response, call and response―wave upon wave of soul energy aching for infinity shaking spirit-possessed filling the space of grand boulevard between puniness of white house and puniness of capitol, coming under the sun coming and it’s all right.

Afterwards, I waited my turn in line by the fence surrounding the area behind the stage. I grabbed his hand and wrist and said “I had to thank you for giving me the spirit.” He said: “We still got it.” I said: “It’s bruised and pained, but it’s still there.”

— Ralph Dumain
 29 May 1994

NOTE: This was the first of my two encounters with Richie Havens, when he came back into the limelight for a time in the ’90s. The second time was on the day of the Adams Morgan Festival―if it wasn’t that year, it would have had to have been the year after. I had printed out something to give him―it could have been this text. I ran into him in the crowd on 18^th Street and handed my document to him. It was a very brief encounter, and that’s where the story ends. I do not recall him performing on that occasion: I don’t think I could have forgotten, but my memory is imperfect. He was still imbued with the spirit of the ’60s. The date of the computer file from which this text is taken is 22 April 2013—the day Richie died.

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Uploaded 2 August 2026