I'm not talking about running out of breath; about being submerged. I'm talking about what happens when you get a roomful of people pushed towards the edge of their seats by an unparalleled force-a particularly profound inertia. What happens when that roomful of people is confronted by a narrative so endlessly consuming that it leaves them panting for an end more satisfying, more important than oxygen. Simply, there's not time for breath. There's not room to remember how.

Such was the scene in the packed Buckley Recital Hall this past Sunday. As six women floated onto the stage, dignified in both stature and style, adorned in colorful, flowing robes, we sat transfixed, eagerly awaiting to crash on the proverbial rocks of these sirens' island. They just felt safe. Wise. Perhaps that's because they are. They are Sweet Honey in the Rock-six women who have come together to do something. To tell us stories, to reach across boundaries, to affect us and charge us with our own history, no matter how painful it may be.

To sing.

They accomplished all of this and more during their concert this past weekend. Brought to the College by the Affirmative Action Office as part of their annual Martin Luther King, Jr. celebration, the Grammy Award-winning a cappella group far surpassed my already stratospheric expectations with what was quite possibly the most heartwarming performance I've ever experienced.

Though they maintain the air of professional performers, the women of Sweet Honey (founder Bernice Johnson Raegon, Carol Maillard, Nitanju Bolade Casel, Aisha Kahlil, Ysaye Maria Barnwell, and sign-language interpreter Shirley Childress Saxton) were anything but aloof Barnwell opened the performance by engaging the audience in a chant from an African rainforest, taking time between the verses to explain the importance of the complex harmonies and the interactive nature of the song, thus setting the tone for the majority of their first set. The group maintained a heavy level of contact with the audience, engaging us in song several times. Notable amongst the audience participation numbers was Harry Bellafonte's "Banana Boat Song" and the unbelievably uplifting "We Shall Overcome," for which the group instructed the audience to join hands right over left, explaining that to do so any other way would encourage moving farther apart from each other as they swayed and sang. The audience gladly obliged-and for a moment, I forgot about so much. That we might be going to war. That I'd had a bad day. The fights I've had, the things I've cried about, the weight of the world. That's the funny thing about these women-they can make you forget just as much as they can make you remember.

And they did.

The transitions between the spoken narrative interjections (this discourse was offered by various members of the group, though it was dominated by civil rights pioneer Raegon) and the messages present within the songs themselves were so seamless that the message managed to shine through every number despite the paramount musical beauty present in each song. The alternately lulling, pulsing and powerful melodies they wove with their voices underscored their words and vice versa.

The performance was practically flawless; the methods fantastic. The group was at the same time unbelievably calm and intensely passionate, and the audience ate up every moment of it. As Raegon reminded us of our responsibility to question, to exercise responsibility even when you "know that what you're dealing with is broken," you could see the nods of understanding. You could feel the positivity in every movement of the singers and the audience-as hundreds of hands raised triumphantly, joined in signing "heaven" during a song, as tears welled in our eyes as we were asked to contemplate harboring each other, loving each other, as we chanted along with them and closed our eyes, leaning ears-first into our past, our future, and finally our tumultuous present.

I don't know about you, but I felt prepared.