By Laurie O’Neill – [email protected]
Concordians 2½ centuries ago could not have imagined the scope of the celebration underway in town to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution.
The list of events — from concerts and exhibits to plays and panel discussions — continues to grow.
Diane Taraz, a singer, songwriter, historian, and writer, is bringing her one-woman show to First Parish on March 23 with “Songs of the Revolution.” She says New England in the late 1700s was “full of music. Songs helped speed the work in kitchens and workshops, soldiers marched to lively tunes, and churches rang with hymns.”
The Concord Women’s Chorus is sponsoring the event.
In Colonial dress, Taraz will perform ballads, hymns, marches, and laments from both sides of the conflict. Many songs of the period were composed as propaganda, promoting either independence or loyalty to the Crown. “I am always aiming for authenticity,” she says, even in the instruments she plays, including a lap dulcimer.
A queen and her ‘saucy’ daughter
One piece in her program is “Young Ladies in Town,” written in 1769 to encourage fashionable women to boycott British goods, even going so far as to ask them to refuse marriage proposals from men who wore clothing made from English fabric, Taraz says. Another is “A Revolutionary Tea,” an allegory written after the Boston Tea Party about an island queen (Britain) and her saucy daughter (America).
Taraz says her programs “tell the stories of ordinary people caught up in momentous events, especially those who played important roles but who were often overlooked in favor of the rich and famous,” including women and people of color.
Women, servants, and enslaved people left few records behind, she notes, “but we can hear them in the songs they created and enjoyed.”
Taraz looks forward to presenting her program in First Parish, saying, “It’s a treat to perform in a room that has the right atmosphere and which offers great acoustics. I can be easily heard without microphones and speakers,” which she says makes the concert more authentic.
A CWC member, Taraz, who lives in Arlington, is on the Scholarly Advisory Board of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History in New York City. Having earned degrees in education and communications, she “honed her stagecraft,” she says, at folk venues in the Boston area while working as a freelance editor.
“Songs of the Revolution” will be presented at 3 p.m., Sunday, March 23, at First Parish on Lexington Road. Suggested donation is $20.
