INK NOTES
Song stylist Rhonda Benin is a better day!
February 23, 2008
By Jean Bartlett, Managing Editor
Rhonda Benin is right about a lot of things. She is right that among the great songwriters of the 20th century, in this case specifically focusing on composers from 1960 on up, there are African American songwriters whose names belong on the top of that list: Curtis Mayfield, Stevie Wonder, Nickolas Ashford and Valerie Simpson, Marvin Gaye, Bill Withers and Sly Stone – and that’s the short list. Included on the Benin Saturday night right set were: “People Get Ready” (Mayfield); “Higher Ground” (Wonder); “Reach Out And Touch” (Ashford and Simpson), “What’s Going On” (Benson, Cleveland and Gaye); “Lean On Me” (Withers); and “Stand” (Stone.)
She is right when she told her Pacifica Performances audience that: “In our society we need to come up and focus on things like love and humanity and helping each other. These songs, which everybody knows, have messages of love, peace and hope and a better tomorrow.” Not to mention some honeyed grooves.
Accompanied by extraordinary musicians – Terry Scott on piano/keyboard, Ron Belcher on standup bass, Joey Truso on drums and Cedricke Dennis on guitar; Benin pulled her audience out of their seats and onto the dance floor with her energy, her obvious sense of sharing fun and the purr and the fireworks of a stirring vocal that knows how to wrap itself around a word and a note and send it right to the listener’s heart.
The thing that is really right about Rhonda Benin is she is so right to be singing. She’s got a voice, a style and a presentation that is a better day.
Jean Bartlett - www.jeansmagazine.org (Feb 29, 2008)