University Libraries

Ripples for Revolution: Reflections on Like a Ripple on a Pond (1973)

Article
April 13, 2026 | Maximiño Manzanares Shay
A silhouette of land with cloud-strewn skies above and water below. The water has a wave rippling out from the center.
“Ripples at sunrise,” by Stephen Bowler

In 1973, renowned Black queer writer Nikki Giovanni (1943–2024) and the New York City Community Choir (NYCC), under the direction of their co-founder Benny Diggs, released the album Like a Ripple on a Pond. Co-produced by Giovanni and Diggs, the album features ten recordings, each a conversation between one of Giovanni’s poems and one of NYCC’s renditions of Black American spirituals and gospel songs. All of Giovanni’s featured poems came from her 1972 book My House, and all of the NYCC’s musical renditions were arranged by Diggs. Giovanni and Diggs released Like a Ripple on a Pond through the record label Niktom Records, which Giovanni founded in 1970 and which focused on releasing gospel and spoken word recordings. Niktom’s “operations eventually formed a distribution deal through Atlantic Records,” including for Like a Ripple on a Pond, before closing in 1975.

Further, the album’s cover design and portrait of Giovanni was created by Don Miller, and the backliner photograph of Giovanni and Diggs was taken by Bill Whiting. On a technical note, due to copyright restrictions, I am unable to include photos of the front and back covers of the album, as well as additional photos of Giovanni, Diggs, and the New York Community Choir. So, I wholeheartedly encourage readers to search for more photographs online, and I respectfully offer the “Riding the Ripples: For Further Engagement” Section below for potential starting points. This way, readers can get a fuller picture of the album, the people who brought it forth, and the stories that weave them all together.

Portrait photograph of a 53-year-old smiling Black woman with short dark hair and wire-rimmed glasses.
The late Yolande Cornelia “Nikki” Giovanni (June 7, 1943 – December 9, 2024) on February 9, 1997, in Baltimore, Maryland, unceded Piscataway and Susquehannock Land.

Co-created in New York City, Like a Ripple on a Pond was recorded at Media Sound Studios by recording engineer Fred Christy and mixed at Atlantic Recording Studios by mixer Lew Hahn. In addition to Giovanni’s poems, the recordings comprise an incredible lineup of musical collaborators—from vocal soloists Arthur Freeman, Wilber Johnson, Elizabeth Gamble, and Edgar Kendricks to instrumentalists Robert Williams (electric guitar), Michael Powell (piano), Timothy Wright (organ), Bruce Carter (electric bass), Ricky Hurdle (drums), and Julian Hampton (percussion). Throughout the album, each collaborator helps shape the musical direction alongside Giovanni and her poetry, and, together, everyone on the album contributes to a collective vision of intergenerational ripples for revolution, namely Black Liberation.

One of the central messages from Like a Ripple on a Pond is found in the album’s titular track, “Like a Ripple on a Pond,” which dialogues with the NYCC’s rendition of “I’m Glad.” In this track, Giovanni declares, “One ounce of truth benefits like ripples on a pond.” Building on her declaration, Giovanni employs repetition of this and various other lines. At the same time, Arthur Freeman (1940–2020), another NYCC co-founder and the soloist on “I’m Glad”, employs lyrical and melodic repetition on the line “I’m glad,” thus figuratively harmonizing with Giovanni’s poetry.

Together, Giovanni and Freeman’s intentional repetitions make me think about when I have tossed pebbles into the river next to my family’s home in Los Silvestres, Abiquiú, New Mexico. I would never toss just one pebble into the Río Chama. I would toss multiple pebbles, and then, inevitably, I would start skipping stones, and every pebble and stone created its own unique ripple effect. In time, the small section of Río Chama that I was next to became full of ripples! In “Like a Ripple on a Pond” and “I’m Glad,” each of the poetic and musical actions by Giovanni, Diggs, Freeman, and the NYCC can be analogized to individual pebbles that are being tossed into the world’s collective pond. Together, these pebbles are filling this collective pond with reverberating ripples. Throughout this track and Like a Ripple on a Pond as a whole, Giovanni, Diggs, and the NYCC are inviting listeners to carry forward the ripples they receive, to reflect on the next ripples they can make, and to then actively make their own ripples throughout this world pond.

As I began learning more about the creation of Like a Ripple on a Pond, I crossed paths with one of the works of Mark Anthony Neal, Ph.D., the James B. Duke Distinguished Professor of African and African American Studies at Duke University. Through his Medium article “‘Truth is On Its Way’: Nikki Giovanni Takes the Revolution to Church,” Dr. Neal explains that Like a Ripple on a Pond was the second collaborative album by Giovanni, Diggs, and the NYCC. The first, as his title gives homage to, was Truth Is on Its Way (1971). Dr. Neal explains that Truth Is on Its Way “was an attempt to bridge an emerging generational gap within the Black community, particularly with regards to liberation politics” (Neal 2024, “Truth is On Its Way”). In substantiation of his explanation, Dr. Neal references two salient quotes by Giovanni:

“I believe that the church is a great archive of Black music,” which Giovanni told Charles Hobson and Sheila Smith for Tuesday Magazine in June 1969 (quoted in Hobson et al. 4). 

“I wanted people to take not just my poetry, but something I thought was a valid comment on my poetry which was gospel music,” which Giovanni said to M. Cordell Thomson for Jet Magazine in May 1972 (Thompson 21).

Giovanni’s reflections here reverberate with W.E.B. Du Bois’s reflections about Black American spirituals. In Chapter XIV, “Of the Sorrow Songs,” from his seminal work The Souls of Black Folk: Essays and Sketches, Du Bois asserts:

Through all the sorrow of the Sorrow Songs there breathes a hope—a faith in the ultimate justice of things. The minor cadences of despair change often to triumph and calm confidence. Sometimes it is faith in life, sometimes a faith in death, sometimes assurance of boundless justice in some fair world beyond. (Du Bois 261)

For Truth is on Its Way, Giovanni intentionally put her poetry in conversation with the “faith in the ultimate justice of things” that the NYCC cultivated, held, and stewarded through their spirituals and gospel music. Together, the analyses of Giovanni, Neal, and Du Bois underscore that the musico-poetic conversations of this album sought to co-cultivate a throughline to help bridge the aforementioned emerging generational gap within the Black community regarding liberation politics. Giovanni, Diggs, and the NYCC then continued these intentions, conversations, and ripples throughout their next collaboration in Like a Ripple on a Pond. 

In Like a Ripple on a Pond’s liner notes, Vernon Kitabu Turner, a Black author, martial arts master, ordained Christian minister, and spiritual teacher, reflects on the multidimensional gifts of Giovanni, the NYCC, and their collaboration. He emphasizes that:

[A] true poet is one who loves so deeply that she will risk losing the recipient of that love by indicating through the written word the painful, as well as the painless, realities of life. And that Nikki Giovanni truly is. The spiritually moving accompaniment of the New York Community Choir strongly underscores the power of her poetry.

Turner further encourages Black listeners across the generations to “think of [their] people—past and present… Nikki, the Princess of Black Poetry, is the voice and the messenger; [Black people’s lives and] experiences… are the message.”

A Black woman reads from a lectern in the center of an ornate church space.
Nikki Giovanni speaking at Memorial Church, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, unceded Muwekma Ohlone Land.

As a white, Nuevomexicane, queer, and gender-expansive musician born and raised in O’ga P’ogeh Owingeh (“Santa Fe, New Mexico”) and from Los Silvestres, Abiquiú, New Mexico, I encourage fellow white listeners, other fellow non-Black listeners, and myself to ever-deepeningly listen to—and to carry out with integrity—Giovanni, Diggs, and the NYCC’s calls to make revolutionary ripples. In the spirit and wisdom of Black American singer, songwriter, musician and composer Jon Batiste, “[H]ow do we listen? How do we listen deeper?… [Y]ou can listen to a piece and learn something about it every day of your life, and just, it’s infinite. So how do I listen better? How do I practice that? Well, it’s practicing it everywhere you are, all the time” (Batiste, 02:36–03:28).

What are the next pebbles we can toss into the world’s pond, the next ripples we can make? How can we earnestly honor the ripples and wisdom that Giovanni, Diggs and the NYCC have created? How do we (re)compose, (re)develop, and (re)member our relationships with our communities, our ancestors, our future generations, and all of our relations on and with the Earth? How might we constellate Du Bois’s, Neal’s, and Batiste’s ripples and wisdom within our lives? And, from the groundings of each of our unique positionalities, how will we ongoingly cultivate the care, humility, integrity, truthfulness, and love with which we make our ripples? May we caringly, critically, and collectively practice everyday actions of truth to generate revolutionary ripples in genuine solidarity with Black people and movements for Black Liberation.

In Like a Ripple on a Pond, Giovanni, Diggs, and the New York Community Choir weave together their multidimensional artistic gifts, personal experiences, and ancestral knowings to create intergenerational ripples for revolution, namely Black Liberation. Together, they ask of their listeners: what will (y)our next ripples be?

Listen to Like a Ripple on a Pond (reissued version by Modern Harmonic in 2021 via Spotify).

A heavily-shaded pond shows multiple ripples caused by raindrops.
In the spirit of Nikki Giovanni: multiple truths benefitting like ripples on a pond.

Acknowledgments

  • Thank you to Professor Ioanida Costache, Ph.D. and to John Fath from our class CSRE 147U: Identity, Difference, Sound! I so appreciate your incredible feedback, guidance, and support throughout our class.
  • Thank you to my classmate Michael Murakami for reviewing my blog post draft and for sharing your caring feedback and encouragement! It was a joy to be in class with you.
  • Thank you to Nathan Coy for welcoming our class to the Archive of Recorded Sound and for your informative and thoughtful presentation!
  • Thank you to Benjamin Bates from the Archive of Recorded Sound for setting up the record player during my visits so I could listen to Like a Ripple on a Pond! Thank you as well for sending me scans of the front and back covers of Like a Ripple on a Pond for my reference throughout this assignment. Finally, thank you for sharing your knowledge about how the vertical and horizontal balance of the turntable is super sensitive to the needle’s weight.
  • Thank you to Ray Heigemeir from the Music Library for all your guidance and support with creating our class blog posts!
  • Thank you so much to everyone who reads and engages with this blog post! Thank you for sharing your time and presence with these reflections! May you continue to share the truthful and loveful ripples on our shared pond of life that only you can!
  • Sincerely and wholeheartedly, thank you so much to Nikki Giovanni, Benny Diggs, the New York Community Choir, and all the other co-collaborators who helped bring forth Like a Ripple on a Pond. May Nikki Giovanni, Arthur Freeman, and all the other co-collaborators who have passed away rest in peace, music, poetry, and love. May everyone—across time, space, and generation—who feels your revolutionary ripples be moved to make their own, to honor those that came before, and to reverberate with those that will come after.

Riding the Ripples: For Further Engagement

Maximiño Manzanares Shay (‘27) is majoring in Comparative Studies in Race & Ethnicity (CSRE) with a concentration in Identity, Diversity, & Aesthetics (IDA) and minoring in Music and Theater & Performance Studies (TAPS).

This article is part of a series highlighting albums in Stanford’s Dijkstra Black Music Collection. The series was written by students in Music 147U: Identity, Difference, Sound, under the supervision of Ioanida Costache and John Fath. We are grateful to Nathan Coy, the entire ARS staff, Ray Heigemeir, Tamar Barzel, and Rochelle Lundy for their support of this work!

Last updated April 14, 2026