Celebrate Brooklyn on Friday night has something that sounds very unususal: REwind: A Cantata For Voice, Tape & Testimony / Richie Havens. Here’s the blurb.

Cape Town composer Philip Miller’s extraordinary international collaboration is based on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings that led South Africa from apartheid to democracy. Opera superstar Sibongile Khumalo joins other South African soloists, a string octet, and a 100-voice chorus composed of Brooklyn’s Total Praise Choir of Emanuel Baptist Church, the Williams College Choir, and a South African ex-patriot choir led by Lion King choirmaster Ron Kunene. The music blends seamlessly with samples of recorded TRC testimony and stunning projected images. "The Cantata brought together the cry of our country—our pain and fears, our hopes and especially our triumphs and joys in the way we as South Africans can best express these emotions—in music and song. It was a deeply moving, most powerful and uplifting experience." (Archbishop Desmond Tutu)

The evening begins with an introduction by a very special surprise guest host and a performance by folk icon Richie Havens. Bedford-Stuyvesant born and raised, Havens has used his music to convey messages of brotherhood and personal freedom since emerging from the Greenwich Village folk scene in the early 1960s. His fiery, soulful singing and guitar style remains unique and ageless, and his willingness to lend his voice to numerous worthy causes through the decades has made him one of the most enduring musician-activists of his generation.