Women and Song

The lights dim for the beginning of the April 19 Harvard-Radcliffe Dance Company recital. Three women walk barefoot into the performing area. The tall one on the right, Erin Ryan, has an acoustic guitar and cracks a few jokes. Then the group sings a few songs, which they describe as "jazz-influenced, blues-influenced, gospel-influenced, folk pop and pop folk."

Ryan drops her pick twice and makes some more jokes. The trio sings three more numbers, including a sappy Russian tribute to Ryan's roommate and a sharp, witty rap. While she plays guitar and sings, Ryan gazes slightly above the audience with a serene smile on her face. Throughout the performance, she maintains her equanimity and speaks her mind. The crowd loves both her and her group, Wild Women and Cinnamon. The wild women bow and exit, and two dancers in green body suits emerge.

A lot of people sing at Harvard, performing classical pieces, a capella songs, gospel numbers, and show tunes. Although few students decide to devote their lives to music, Ryan wants the challenge of professional singing and songwriting. After years of writing and performing, most recently with Wild Women and Cinnamon, Ryan has concluded that she will never end up "working in front of a computer screen." She accepts her musical "calling" with a conviction that reflects her childhood, her life at Harvard and her involvement in Wild Women and Cinnamon.

Ryan's future career took shape in ninth grade, "when I started playing guitar much against my will. I wrote my first song six weeks later." Although Ryan remained bashful about performing her songs and did not even like folk music ("I was a rock chick," she explains), she felt compelled to sing them--"it needed to be done."

After prolific high-school years, Ryan arrived at Harvard amid a folk music renaissance. She kept writing songs, lost her shyness about singing and encountered Harvard's a capella scene, a discovery which altered her focus to vocals and changed the course of her career.

As music director of the Harvard-Radcliffe Callbacks for two years, not only did Ryan gain much vocal experience, but she also worked with fellow altos Lane Addonizio and Nara Garber--the two other members of Wild Women and Cinnamon. The group has been, from the start, rooted in a capella. Addonizio describes the beginnings of the group: "We were all friends and sang together in [The Callbacks]. Erin was always writing songs and trying them out on us. And we liked it."

Ryan would typically write a song, "make up a harmony and teach it to Nara. But then we would miss Lane. I'd call Lane, and by the time it took her to get from Currier to Mather, I'd have a third harmony." Garber adds good-naturedly, "The only input we have is mistakes which accidently sound good."

Although the three altos lacked a name, they decided to perform Ryan's music in public. After pondering names such as "Hair Club for Women," Ryan christened the group Wild Women and Cinnamon, after a feminist peace group called "Wild Wimmin for Peace" and a song lyric which used the word "cinnamon." Says Ryan, "People don't get the "wild" because we're mellow--Wild Women and Cinnamon on Sedatives would be more appropriate. One of my roommates in protest only calls us Women and Cinnamon. We're like the [Grateful] Dead or the [Rolling] Stones, but our name goes both ways--Wild Women or Women and Cinnamon." She is quick to add, "There's not one person in the group who's 'Wild,' one who's 'Women' and one who's 'Cinnamon.' We're not 'So and So and the Somebodies.'"

According to Ryan, her songs are "an expression of day-to-day life--men, women, roommates, friends, hiking boots, the homeless...Songs just come out at the strangest times--walking to class, during all-nighters." Her musical influences still include Joni Mitchell ("you can't get away from her; she's the folk goddess"), Shawn Colvin and various jazz and gospel performers. But these influences play little more than a subconscious role in Ryan's song-writing process. "I don't try to imitate," she says. "The one time I tried to imitate Haydn for class, the T.F. said it sounded like an Irish folk song."

When two of the three group members graduate in June, Ryan will keep singing with a local a capella gospel septet, Goddess Gospel, and she plans to pursue a performing career in Boston and eventually New York. But Ryan hopes the group will stay together. "I love Wild Women and Cinnamon. I'm so happy to have these wonderful women to sing with." As Garber says, "It's neat that we can do so much because technically, we're all altos."

The group still wants to work together--all three will be in the Northeast next year. They are already making plans to include more musical input from Garber and Addonizio and to add more instrumentation. Garber, for one, swears that she will learn the saxophone within five years. And Ryan says, "I am very serious about a musical career, and if I get a recording contract, who knows? Maybe Wild Women and Cinnamon will be together.