University of Virginia Library

Havens — An Experience In Energy

"When I sing," says Richie
Havens, "my mind is busy looking
at the pictures the writer created.
My body has something to do,
which is play the guitar. And my
spirit is feeling the song's sensations
all over again. It's like this. I sing
from what I see. It goes out and
then it comes back to me."

What Havens sees is hope. What
goes out is a mystical gentleness
and a surging sense of affirmation.
What he gets is his own and his
audience's heightened level of
understanding. That is the core of
Richie Havens' power as a
performer: music less a means of
self-expression than a path to
self-awareness. It hardly matters if
he is swinging in a fast-paced blues
or rambling lyrically through a
reflective ballad. The rich sweet
melancholy, the throbbing
huskiness, the uncanny rhythmic
certainty aside, the effect is a
miraculous wholly empathetic
involvement with his audience.

"What I want to do," he
explains, "is communicate with
people on a basic level, to help
bring them together. Every man can
tell you about his story you know.
But I'm finding out the story is the
same, that everybody has gone
through practically the same
experiences that everyone else has
gone through at one time or
another in their life. Everybody I've
ever sung to has sort of picked it
up. If it's not the words, it's the
music they recognize. I call it
recognizing it again 'cause somehow
it's inside of you anyway. Music is
really just a symbol of something
larger."

Havens left home when he was
seventeen. It was just time. "See
my mother was groovy. She made
me move around, let me find out
about things. So when I left, it was
just that I had to find out what it
was like somewhere else." A driving
necessity is still the propelling force
in Havens' personality. At that
time, it led him to a peculiar
assortment of jobs: Western Union
messenger, counterman for a chain
of restaurants, yarn winder and doll
factory worker. "I loved it," he
says with joyful emphasis. "It was
all processes. I found out how to do
a lot of things. I met all sorts of
people. See I'm very interested in
process and form. I'd like to learn
how to lay bricks for instance," he
adds and means it. "I think with
each thing a man can do, he gets
closer to knowing now to do
something."

Later, Richie moved to
Greenwich Village where he
supported himself by doing
portraits of tourists in the daytime
and at night sat up talking with

friends in Village coffeehouses. "I
don't think I ever slept," he says, "I
was too busy doin' and seein'."

In 1962, at the height of the
folk music revival, Richie turned to
music. "It was at the Gaslight and
the Cafe Wha," he remembers. "I
began hearing Len Chandler and
Dino Valenti and Paul Stookey.
They inspired me to try singing."
Richie's often discussed
unorthodox open E-tuning which
enables him to manipulate chords
on the guitar not possible with
standard tuning, dates from those
days, "I just stumbled on it 'cause
nobody taught me how to play."

For the next few years, Richie
sang in the Village, gradually
gaining a fervent underground
following but paid, for the most
part, only by contributions to a
passed basket. A Ford Motor Tour
in 1963 on which he worked with
Nina Simone, Herbie Mann and
Mongo Santa Maria gave him a
slightly more professional status
but it wasn't until his first album
that Havens began to receive serious
attention from outside of his village
haunts.

Since then, in the fall of 1966,
when "Mixed Bag" was released
Havens' career has moved forward
with momentum. His second
album, "Something Else Again,"
and increasingly important
bookings throughout the country
have established him as one of a
handful of the truly significant
single performance on the
contemporary music scene.

Ecstatic he is, abounding in
warmth and infinite spiritual
resources. "I found out," says
Richie, "there are just two places to
be. Happy and unhappy.
Everything I do is looking at that
one big question — what are we
doing here, why and how? That's
part of what I have to say in my
music. I want everybody to
discover it 'cause this is the time for
finding out. And it's gonna be
great! It's gonna be beautiful!"

Presented by the PK German,
Havens along with his traveling
band will be in concert tonight at 8
in University Hall. Tickets are
$3.00 for students and $3.50 for
non-students.