Carolyn and I Are Off to a Gospel Workshop

On Sunday, July 16, Carolyn Morse-Finn and I get into the car and drive for four hours to the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, NY for a 5-day Gospel Community workshop. We're trying not to have too many expectations, but we're excited. We get to spend almost an entire week with Sister Alice Martin, who is billed as "an electrifying gospel singer, songwriter, and choir leader. Sister Alice Martin was the group musical instructor for the late 'Queen of Gospel,' Marion Williams and her Marion Williams Singers. Sister Alice is also the music instructor of the acclaimed Bryn Mawr Haverford Gospel Choir, and is on the music faculty of the B.M. Oakley Memorial Temple in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania." Much of the workshop is devoted to singing different types of gospel--Southern gospels, spirituals, hymns, jubilee quartets, Civil Rights songs and more--and learning the vocal technique inherent to each style. This fits right in with the Gospel Music Project's mission, and to be able to learn from a nationally known expert is a privilege.

I hope we'll be able to sit and talk with Sister Alice about her experience leading gospel choirs and quartets. Does she rely on sheet music? Or teach by ear? If she does teach by ear, how does she remember from week to week what she does? How do her students retain what they learn? Part of the struggle we have here in New England is a lack of rich gospel musical heritage, and because of that, we someimes lean on the western European classical tradition to teach harmonies. It's OK, but it lacks the depth of true gospel harmonies, especially the ones sung in the old spirituals and jubilee quartets. (I'm thinking of groups like The Dixie Hummingbirds or The Clara Ward Singers here.) There's not a lot out there as far as gospel music theory goes (recommendations welcome, if anyone has them!), and what has become all too apparent is that we've inadvertently created an interesting tension in our group. We are made up of many different kinds of people, most of whom grew up with little or no background in singing, not just gospel, but any kind of music, on a regular basis. Gospel music was originally an oral tradition learned and sung by ear. How do we teach that to those who never had a chance to develop these skills?

My southern friends and I talk about our fond memories of singing on the front porch with our families. It was there, as children, that we began to intuitively pick up the ability to hear and sing harmonies, and we learned most of our music that way. I drove my sisters crazy with my obsession about harmony. I'd sit them down and sing different parts I heard and have them sing back to me, then we'd all sing our parts together, and it was the best feeling in the world. In our case, it was our father we learned most of our music from. He'd take out his guitar on summer weekends, sit out on a big boulder in our yard, and begin playing. Kids in the neighborhood would be drawn to the sound--one by one, they'd stop playing whatever game it was they were involved in, and slowly walk over. They'd sit on the grass and listen, transfixed. He'd begin singing old country songs, kids' songs (a favorite was "She's Got Freckles on Her But She's Pretty"), hymns, anything that came to mind. And we absorbed every bit of it, taking it all in, singing along, having no idea how much our lives were enriched because of it. We just knew it felt good to sing. We knew it made us happy, and that was enough.

Later, that translated to my playing the same guitar, which my father gave me when I turned 15. I wasn't very good, but I didn't know that, and it's good that no one told me, or I'd have given up. I just knew time got erased when I listened to albums over and over again and tried to imitate what I heard. I didn't know a lick of theory and didn't want to. All I wanted was to create that feeling I got when music comes from the rough-edged, deep-down place that folk and gospel and blues come from. There's a beauty in those rough edges. When they get wiped clean and polished down through too much training and striving for perfection, the songs become empty. It's a different tradition from the classical one and needs to be treated as such, I think. I played and played, and sang and sang, and eventually got good enough so that one time, one of my sisters walked into my room to ask who was singing on the radio. You'd have thought I'd just been given the world.

So how do we keep the rough-edged, deep down place intact, yet still sound good? And what constitutes "good"? There has to be a happy medium somewhere. I guess it just comes from singing and singing and listening and singing some more, and having someone with more experience give us nudges here and there to help us do a little better, the way the adults did when we were kids and everyone sang together. I don't think it comes from reading music, not in gospel anyway. But these are the kinds of things I want to find out from Sister Alice Martin. How does a "real" gospel choir learn and sing together? Is there one way or many? And how in the world do you teach those elusive harmonies that not even musicologists could begin to notate when they transcribed the songs they heard slaves singing?

I was talking about this with Deacon Randy Green last fall. He's been singing with different configurations of Boston's Silverleaf Gospel Singers for 60 years now. I think he knows a little something about gospel music. I asked if he and his colleagues would be interested in coming up to Maine to teach us some of what they knew. The rich harmonies they use are mesmerizing, and our group really wants to learn how to sing like that. He looked at me apologetically and said, "But we don't know any musical theory." I almost fell over. His group won the New England Conservatory's Lifetime Achievement Award. And yet he still feels inadequate. Where in the world was he given that message? I told him that in my experience, there was no better way to learn than to just listen and sing what you hear. He said he'd done that all his life, so he guessed he could teach that. I said Amen.

This coming week, Carolyn and I will be part of another singing family. We'll listen and sing what we hear and ask lots of questions and see what Sister Alice Martin has to say. Stay tuned...