1972: I’ll Take You There - The Staples Singers
I know a place
As we come to the end of the year, this is a time for looking back at the last twelve months and for looking ahead at what's to come. With what has happened over the last twelve months, what's to come next year is looking increasingly bleak, worrying and frightening. The election of Donald Trump in America and the mobilisation of the far right across swathes of Europe and South America is a real threat to any hope we have left of ending the deepening inequalities raging all across our societies; turning the tide on the rising levels of violence against women, stopping the genocide and never ending horrors and mutilations unfolding in Palestine - and now also in Yemen, Beirut, Syria and beyond as well - and turning the tide on the ever worsening climate change situation.
For others, New Year’s is a time of celebration, instead, though many of us find these two positions of reflection and celebration hard to reconcile, and find it hard to parse the positivity amongst the waves of fresh terrors that turn up on our doors each day. For this final post of the year, I wanted to find a singer, and a song, who does manage to bring these two contrasting feelings - dread and celebration - together better than anyone else can.
Mavis Staples has been singing songs of freedom, songs of liberation and of Civil Rights, songs of unity and songs of faith since before my grandparents were even born. She should not still be having to sing such songs, but she is. She is still out there, bringing her message of love to crowds around the world who need it now as much as they did when she took her first steps on the road to freedom. She is still out there, making the world a better place than it was when she first stepped in.
For all that she has had to fight against and resist, she has never let her warm and radiant smile leave her face for long. She has never shied away, run from or turned her back on her battle or on all that stands in front of her, no matter how unconquerable the challenge has seemed, or how long the odds may have gotten. For all that she sings about the struggles in the far-from-perfect world she has found herself living in, just as much she sings in a joyous celebration of life. She celebrates the glorious and the good. She champions her sisters and brothers. She champions those who went before her, and she champions those who have picked up her mantle and continued to spread her hopeful message. She champions the triumphs of her fellow man and she has never stopped trying to build a better world. She came here to praise, and to raise, not to bury.
I've seen Mavis Staples in miraculous concert twice. She is an international treasure, and she is a true joy to witness and to experience. She warms your spirit and she lifts you off the ground with her exuberance, her energy and her presence. Her voice fills you up and satisfies your mind, and her mission becomes your mission. It’s impossible to be in her company and to not become another soldier in her army of love.
I first saw her and her band in support of Bob Dylan at the Forest Hills Tennis Stadium in New York in 2016, just a few months before Donald Trump somehow won the presidential election for the first time. I didn’t see Mavis Staples again for another eight years, until I saw her perform as part of Willie Nelson’s 4th of July picnic earlier this year in Camden, NJ, ahead of Trump’s devastating re-election and return to the White House. In both of these years, America has led the way as the world has dragged and lurched ever further rightward, become ever darker and ever more frightening for anyone who has Mavis Staples’ message of love in their hearts. But for all the braying hatred, anger, rage and darkness offered up by the growing right-wing, none of them have a voice as heartening or as warm, as honest or as righteous or as true as Mavis Staples does. None of them sing a song as sweet, or have a heart as pure, and a message as full of love. Her voice, and her message, will be enough to overcome and take us into the light, eventually.
She's been singing for over fifty years that she'll take us there. Thanks to her unbreakable faith, her resilience, her earthy voice and her mighty and spiritual power, we must keep faith that she really will.
This post was inspired by reading the excellent book How Women Made Music: A Revolutionary History from NPR Music, which was curated by Alison Fensterstock and Ann Powers, which I first became aware of thanks to a review right here on Substack.
Happy New Year everyone. Thanks for being here in 2024, I’m looking forward to reading, and being inspired by, all your amazing posts in 2025.
I love this song so much.
Happy New Year Matthew.