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Growing up Carawan
Daughter's documentary examines life with
activist musician parents
By WAYNE
BLEDSOE, bledsoe@knews.com
May
20, 2005
The name Carawan is familiar in East Tennessee. For more than 30
years, social activists and folk musicians Guy and Candie Carawan
and the couple's son, Evan, have made music in the Knoxville area.
But there was another essential element in the Carawan clan. She
just wasn't so much in the public eye.
"I remember they released an album called 'Home Brew,' and my
brother and my parents are on the cover, and the cover says it's by
the 'Carawan Family.' I remember thinking, 'Wait a minute. I'm in
the family!"
Heather, Guy and Candie's daughter, simply had another path.
"Growing up, you felt a certain (oddness) to not be a musician,"
says Carawan in a call from her San Francisco home. "I knew I had
some ability, but I didn't choose to become a musician. I was more
into the visual."
Heather Carawan is a burgeoning filmmaker who recently won the
Best Personal Narrative award at the San Francisco Women's Festival
for her film "The Telling Takes Me Home," a documentary about
growing up in the Carawan family. In 28 minutes, the film touches on
her parents' roles in the civil-rights movement with the Student
Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the family's move to the Sea
Islands of South Carolina and then, with their work at the
Highlander Center in Strawberry Plains, fighting for the rights of
rural people. Combined with this is growing up in a household where
music was seen as both a unifying balm and real tool for change.
"It is a lot to cover," says Carawan, "but I think I was able to
reach a place where I was able to weave it all together."
The impetus for the film began when Heather accompanied her
parents to the 40th anniversary celebration of the formation of SNCC
and took along her new digital video camera.
SNCC had been at the forefront of the civil-rights activities
that had taken place all over the South. However, in the mid-1960s,
whites were asked to leave the organization. For many, including Guy
and Candie, the ouster was painful.
"You could tell there were tensions and divisions between people
there (at the reunion)," says Carawan. "I think there is still a lot
of mystery as to what happened."
She says the point of the film was never to try to tell the
complete story of any one aspect of her parents' involvements. The
story of SNCC is documented in many forms. There's already a
full-length documentary on the Highlander Center, and Guy and Candie
are working on their own projects. What was important, says Heather,
was to tell the story from a personal viewpoint.
"I remember going to a slumber party when I was in elementary
school and it came up that I lived at Highlander. One girl said,
'Aren't they communists up there?'
"And another little girl said, 'What is a communist?'
"And another one said, 'Oh, I think they worship the sun!' "
The communist suspicions have long subsided, and Carawan says she
enjoys returning home.
"I find a lot of warmth when I come back to East Tennessee," says
Carawan. "I moved to California right after high school and found
out it was no piece of cake either. San Francisco is pretty cynical.
They (look at this film) and think this was sort of a lost time and
a lost spirit. I hope it's not. It's not for me."
Copyright 2005, Knoxville News-Sentinel
Co. |
Photo by Jack
Parker
Candie and Guy Carawan look
back on a life in social activism and music in "The Telling Takes Me
Home," a film by their daughter, Heather Carawan.
Heather Carawan and her
brother, Evan, knew their lives were different from those of some of
their peers in Strawberry Plains.
"THE TELLING TAKES ME HOME"
What: Film screening with live
musical performances by Linda Parris Bailey, Nancy Brennan Strange,
Rebecca Bryant, George Reynolds, Evan Carawan and Danny Gammon
Where: East Tennessee History
Center Auditorium, 601 S. Gay St.
When: 7:30 p.m. Saturday, May
21, 2005
Admission: Free,
865-215-8729 |
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