THE WAYBACK: The Time For Peace Is (Still) Now

Savoring lessons of spirit from the 1970s

Savoring lessons of spirit from the 1970s

VARIOUS ARTISTS

The Time For Peace is Now

Luaka Bop

Try this little experiment: Cue up The Floyd Family Singers’ “That’s a Sign of the Times” from the ’70s rarities compilation The Time For Peace is Now. While it’s playing, find video of 16-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg’s recent speech to the United Nations.

Toggle the audio between the Floyd Family and Thunberg. Go back and forth. Pretty much anywhere you land, it’s a sobering experience, a decades-delayed call-and-response expressing deep, fundamental concern about the future. The Floyds urge humanity to act in concord, out of common empathy. Thunberg wants the same, but she’s got no illusions — she’s had it with politicians issuing platitudes while the clock is running out.

This happened to me by accident, on my fourth or fifth trip through Luaka Bop’s extraordinary collection of small-label 45-rpm singles recorded mostly in the South, and mostly in the 1970s. It was dismay-making to hear such calm, grounded and even optimistic calls for brotherhood and compassion juxtaposed against the terror in Thunberg’s voice. Then, those involved in the struggle for equality believed it was right and reasonable to sing in ways that appealed to mankind’s better nature. Now, a young girl looks at a darkening horizon and concludes that the only rational, reasonable response is to shout “What are you doing?”

The Time For Peace is plenty compelling on its own, of course, without YouTube detours into modern-day existential threats. It chronicles the ways groups across the South responded to the blazing inspiration of the Staples Singers, and shows how artists with origins in the church endeavored to stretch beyond the God-centered message of most mainstream gospel. Following the Staples’ example, the artists working in this realm strove for — and attained — accessibility; moments like “Keep Your Faith To the Sky,” by Willie Scott & the Birmingham Spirituals, are lit up with infectious melody, and anchored by thick, assured, club-going grooves.

One inescapable trait shared by many of these performances — apart from the significant variations in pitch and other audio problems that plague archive projects like this — is the sense of urgency. The artists here are doing the wake-up work, not gunning for hits. When Willie Dale sings “Let Your Light Shine,” he’s luring listeners into action, and advocating, in stirring tones, for connection. You never doubt his sincerity for a minute: He’s going to ad-lib as long and as fiercely as necessary to jolt listeners out of complacency.

You can look at these fairly obscure artists as footnotes, well-intentioned souls who didn’t break through and whose message didn’t reach its intended target. These people would tell you that’s the wrong measure of success in the battle for hearts and minds. It’s door-to-door work. You don’t stop when you run into deaf ears. And sometimes, as happened with these artists, the effort doesn’t bear fruit for decades. Greta Thunberg, whose transformative quest began solo, would agree.