Toshi Reagon

Singer Toshi Reagon was born on January 27, 1964, in Atlanta, Georgia to Bernice Johnson Reagon and Cordell Reagon. Reagon graduated from the Sandy Spring Friends School in Sandy Spring, Maryland.

Reagon began her career in 1978 performing as a singer and guitarist. In 1990, she then joined Lenny Kravitz as an opener for his first world tour. She also performed at numerous venues nationally and internationally including Carnegie Hall, Madison Square Garden, and the Paris Opera House. In 1990, Reagon launched her own band, BIGLovely, and, that same year, she released her debut album, Justice. Numerous albums would follow including Africans in America: America’s Journey Through Slavery with various artists including her mother, Sweet Honey in the Rock’s Bernice Johnson Reagon, in 2001, TOSHI in 2002, and SpiritLand in 2018. Reagon served as a producer for numerous albums from her mother’s a cappella ensemble, Sweet Honey in the Rock, and collaborated with her mother to create numerous operas including The Temptation of St. Anthony in 2003, Zinnias: The Life of Clementine Hunter in 2013, and a rock opera adaptation of Octavia Butler’s novel Parable of the Sower in 2017. Reagon founded the Word*Rock*& Sword Music Festival in New York City in 2011. That same year, Reagon joined the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture as a curator for the Women’s Jazz Festival, where she worked for four years. Reagon also served as the music director and designer for the Black Rock Coalition Orchestra’s “Deep Roots of Rock n’ Roll” in 2014 and as a co-director for “Celebrate the Great Women of Blues & Jazz” in 2016.

During her career, Reagon has held numerous artist fellowships and residencies including the Art of Change Fellowship at the Ford Foundation in 2015, the Andrew W. Mellon DisTIL Fellowship in 2017, the United States Artist Fellowship in 2018, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Creative Futures Artist Residency at Carolina Performing Arts in 2019, and the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art Artist Residency from 2020 to 2022.

Reagon has also received numerous awards and honors including the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) Award for Music Composition in 2004, the Black Lily Music and Film Festival Award for Outstanding Performance in 2007, the OutMusic Heritage Award in 2010, the Religion and the Arts Award from the American Academy of Religion in 2021, the Herb Alpert Award in Music in 2021, and the Association of Performing Arts Professionals (APAP) Award of Merit for Achievement in the Performing Arts in 2021.

Toshi Reagon was interviewed by The HistoryMakers on February 15, 2023.