For decades, the Glide Holiday Jam has featured a glittering array of R&B, jazz and pop stars, artists drawn by the congregation’s famously progressive ethos, extensive social services and vibrant in-house music program.
But the 40th edition of the annual fundraiser, which packed the Warfield on Thursday, Nov. 13, offered something new – even while hewing to the Jam’s familiar blueprint.
Harkening back to Glide Memorial Church’s founding ideals, Mary Glide presented folk singer Joan Baez with the inaugural Lizzie Glide Spirit Award for a lifetime of art and activism. The longtime Woodside resident, an icon since she came to personify the idealism of the early 1960s folk revival (a period captured in last year’s hit Bob Dylan biopic “A Complete Unknown“), said she’s been attending the Holiday Jams for 30 years.
“Whenever justice is at stake, Joan shows up,” said Glide, chair of the Glide Foundation’s board of directors and great-great granddaughter of the church’s founder, for whom the new award is named.
“Show up and show out!” was the evening’s official catchphrase, and Baez, who was introduced by a concise career-spanning slide show, did both.
Spontaneously leading the audience and the vocalists of the Glide Ensemble through a rendition of the spiritual “Wade In the Water,” Baez tailored the lyric to the occasion, singing “See those children dressed in white/Must be the children fed by Glide.”
She may have retired from touring in 2019, but the 84-year-old Baez seems to be everywhere these days, spurred to action by both her sense of fun (like her extended run under the Soiled Dove‘s steampunk big top at Alameda Point) and her dismay at the country’s direction.
Repurposing the Freedom Singers civil rights movement anthem “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me ‘Round” for another audience sing-along, Baez improvised “Ain’t gonna let the administration turn me ‘round.”
“We may not be able to turn back the tide,” she said while hailing Glide’s free meal program, “but we can sure save some fishes.”
The musical lineup certainly cast a wide net, from the expert jazz violin of Dominique Hammons to the passionate rapping of Ruby Ibarra, who delivered her NPR “Tiny Desk” Contest winning piece “Bakunawa” with fire and precision, backed by the Zoe Ellis-led Glide Ensemble and the Change Band.
Unfortunately, the music was often undermined by poor sound quality. The Glide Ensemble and Change Band’s opening gospel set was almost inaudible, between a lack of amplification and persistent audience conversation.
A beautiful arrangement of John Lennon and Paul McCartney‘s “Blackbird” by the Oakland Rising triumvirate of B. Deveaux, August Lee Stevens and Naima Nascimento with a combo led by drummer Miles Turk, son of the late Change Band leader John Turk, was similarly drowned out by dinner talk, despite Baez’s coaxing particularly loud tables to lower their voices.
By the time headlining R&B crooner El DeBarge took the stage, people seemed more inclined to listen, with many singing along to his 1983 hit “Love Me In a Special Way.”
But the evening’s most moving moment didn’t take place on stage.
Leave a Reply