HYDE PARK — When Mavis Staples was a young South Sider in the mid-’50s, she sat down with her father, sisters and brother to record “Uncloudy Day” — a track with vocals so powerful, some listeners were certain anyone but a young girl was on the mic, she said.
Staples shared a small fraction of the knowledge and experiences she’s gained in the 70 years since at a stirring University of Chicago performance Wednesday, aiming to inspire today’s young South Siders to join her in carrying forward the ideals of the Civil Rights Movement.
“We can’t save the world, but we help with some parts of it,” Staples told the audience after the concert. “I wonder sometimes, but I feel like I know that our music has done some good. It has changed some things.”
Staples performed at the Logan Center for the Arts, 915 E. 60th St., in her first concert on the Hyde Park campus since 1962. Audience members included university undergraduates and high school students from South Shore International College Prep and Hyde Park Academy.
Backed only by the vocals and handclaps of Kelly Hogan and Saundra Williams and the guitar of Rick Holmstrom, Staples performed tracks like “I’m Just Another Soldier,” “You Are Not Alone” and “I’ll Take You There” in her iconic, gravelly voice.
The spare accompaniment allowed the lyrics about resilience, love and unity all the space they needed to resonate with audience members, some of whom got up and danced through the performance as if the Logan Center weren’t a seated auditorium.
Following the performance, Staples sat down for a conversation with Greg Kot, the longtime Tribune music critic and author of the 2014 biography “I’ll Take You There: Mavis Staples, the Staple Singers and the Music That Shaped the Civil Rights Era.”
The 84-year-old Staples discussed her artistry and her life, which has been in the public eye as part of legendary family band The Staple Singers and as a solo act since 1948.
“Think about what she invited you [during the performance] to do: Pick up what she’s been doing for 70 years,” said Adam Green, a historian and associate professor at UChicago. “Every time somebody who’s done that much to enrich our society and our culture comes before us, in a sense, they’re inviting us to take up the baton.”
Staples’ performance was loaded with inspirational tunes like “Oh La De Da,” a song for those who “want discrimination to end,” and “When Will We Be Paid,” a call for justice in the form of reparations.
Her family’s music “provided a soundtrack for the Civil Rights Movement,” Kot said. Patriarch and bandleader Roebuck “Pops” Staples was a comrade of Martin Luther King Jr., and King named the group’s “Why (Am I Treated So Bad)” among his favorite songs, Mavis Staples said.
Staples also received the Rosenberger Medal, a university award given to artists and scholars whose work is “of great benefit to humanity.” Past recipients include writer Toni Morrison, architect Jeanne Gang and artist Jenny Holzer.
With such a track record, it was “long overdue” that Staples — a lifelong South Sider and longtime Hyde Parker — return to UChicago, Christopher Wild said. He’s the director of the university’s Parrhesia Program for Public Discourse, which hosted the performance.
“I feel very strongly about the importance of memory work,” Wild said. “This is a small contribution to make sure that the next generation here on the South Side, and students from the University of Chicago, get an understanding of how significant this place — and someone like Mavis Staples — is for who we are.”
Kot is set to co-teach a course on Staples and the role of music in civic discourse this fall, he told Block Club this week.
“Mavis is going to be the subject, and my biography will be part one,” Kot said. “It’s this whole idea that there’s a social activism component to a lot of great music, and the Staple Singers were a prime example of that in the late ’60s.”
Generations of artists have been influenced by Staples — including her eventual collaborator Prince, on whose alternately sweet, awkward and demanding personality Staples reminisced at length.
Staples’ legacy includes her impact on countless local artists. The immediacy and activism of Staples’ songs are reflected in the work of Jamila Woods, Lupe Fiasco and Chance the Rapper, Kot said.
avery r. young, Chicago’s first poet laureate, voiced his love and respect directly to Staples with energetic odes to close out the event.
“You see that desire among young artists — especially in that whole spoken word, open mic scene at the library,” Kot said. “They’re in that tradition of, it’s not just about getting rich, getting fame. It’s about, ‘What is your music saying?’
“Artists like Mavis laid the groundwork for that. When [young artists] hear that, they realize they’re standing on the shoulders of giants.”
Wednesday’s performance and conversation can inspire the youngest attendees to continue in that creative, activist tradition, organizers said.
Students were encouraged to write and submit poems, develop oral histories with family members or create other responses to the performance, the conversation and Staples’ work.
“We want students not to be a passive audience, but to leave and feel empowered that they can engage in what they heard and saw,” Wild said. “They can make it their own, and maybe think about how art can change the world and what their role can be in that change.”
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