Hope Is in the Chorus (Or, Is Gospel Music Just for Christians?)

Hope Is in the Chorus (Or, Is Gospel Music Just for Christians?)
Text from a Sermon Delivered at Allen Avenue Unitarian Universalist Church, Portland, Maine, on August 8, 2010
© Dawn Boyer. All Rights Reserved.

During my 6 years as founder and leader of the Gospel Music Project, I have found that many people tend to assume I’m Christian, most likely the evangelical kind. When they read my writings on the web site or blog, or find out somehow that I embrace many different religious philosophies, they ask: “But how can you sing gospel music if you’re not a Christian?”

I’ve thought of a lot of different ways to answer that question, because it’s an important one. But perhaps the best answer is another question: “How can anyone who’s not a slave sing it?” That’s where gospel music comes from after all—slavery.

Like any good ex-Catholic, I’m going to make a confession. When I joined my first gospel choir, I wouldn’t sing the word “Jesus.” I’d simply replace it with “God.” Why? Well, here’s where my confession might get a little uncomfortable for some, so please listen and stick with me for a bit. My hope is that we’ll come out on the other side together in deeper understanding.

I’ll be honest. I have nothing against Christianity, and I know that practicing the rituals and ways of the different Christian denominations gives great comfort and solace to millions of people. A lot of good is done in this world by Christians. I’m not here to bash Christianity. I think the principles it’s founded on are beautiful and rich and true … and hard as hell to live out sometimes. And I do my utmost every day to abide by most of what Jesus said … because the truth of what he spoke while here on this earth, like all great truths, is profound. It’s just that personally speaking, I cannot reconcile that God would choose one man to be God. If needing to believe Jesus is the Messiah is a prerequisite to being Christian, I cannot subscribe. I wanted to get that out so you’d know where I stand. I do, however, believe deeply in how Christ taught us to behave with one another. I love how he talked in parables. It makes us think. It makes what he said as fresh today as it was almost 2000 years ago. Give me a good metaphor, and I’ll run with it every time. There’s a richness in metaphor that expresses deep truth more than any fact could. Life from death? Redemption from suffering? A belief in something bigger than ourselves? You bet. That I can get on board with.

Let me back up a bit to my childhood. My mother is a quiet, devout Yankee Irish Catholic, and each of her 5 daughters was baptized Catholic and brought up in that tradition. I’m no stranger to Christianity. My father was a storytelling, life-of-the-party Southern Baptist from North Carolina who loved music and sang old country and white gospel songs with us. Our family dynamics collided and divided and exploded with those two very different ways of being and believing. Life was never dull in our house.

Add one more element to that mix: Rachel, the African American woman who came on certain days to clean our house while we lived in the south. I was only 5 when she entered our lives, but even at that age, I knew something was very wrong with how she was treated differently from us. It had nothing to do with socioeconomics: we weren’t affluent; my father was a Tech Sargeant in the Air Force. This had to do with skin color and skin color only, and I knew it. The “N” word was used frequently on my father’s side of the family back then. I was guilty of using it as a child myself, before I learned what it meant and the hate and harm it inflicted. Yet I loved Rachel and her dignity and the light she held in her heart. I’d hear her sing, and the world became a flood of hope, and pure joy, and some startling kind of amazing grace. I began to sing her songs because they stirred something deep and good inside me. How could anyone look down on such beauty, especially when it was just because of skin color? Something didn’t make sense.

During the late 1800s, a group of people, black and white, all educated, felt a similar way and decided to transcribe the slave spirituals they heard on plantations so the songs wouldn’t be lost. Two of them—Col. Thomas W. Higginson (a friend of Harriet Tubman’s) and Henry George Spaulding—were Unitarian ministers. Transfixed and transformed by what they heard, not unlike the way I was as a child when I heard Rachel sing almost 100 years later, they compiled the music into a book entitled Slave Songs of the United States. It is to this day one of the most invaluable resources we have. Without it, we, all of us, black and white, may never have heard “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen,” or “Down in the Valley to Pray,” or “Rock My Soul,” or countless other songs that have become a part of who we are in this culture.

Not too long ago, I got an email from an AME Zion preacher friend. The subject line read, “Things That Really, Really, Really Make You Go Hmmm.” In the email was a link to a newspaper article about a Nigerian couple who gave birth to a white baby girl, along with his brief comment: “I got nothing on this one … your thoughts?”

Now, before you jump to any conclusions or make any assumptions, I want to let you know that mother was faithful to her husband. There was no white ancestry on either side that either knew of. In fact, interracial relationships in Nigeria are almost nonexistent. Yet this baby has blue eyes and a huge shock of blonde hair. We’re not talking albino. That baby is normal, healthy … and white! All the scientific experts said mixed-race ancestry would be necessary on both sides for the baby to be born the way it was, and even then, the blonde hair is an anomaly, because it should have been brown or black, but not blonde, and certainly not straight.

One scientist said he could come to no conclusion but gene mutation.

Think about that one for a minute.

Maybe all of us who are white are the result of a gene mutation. It kind of changes things, doesn’t it? Maybe, after all, we do all come from the same place in Africa. Maybe all those divides we set up for ourselves—skin color, how much money we make, where we live, what kind of religion we subscribe to—maybe that’s all just a bunch of hooey we come up with to distract ourselves into thinking we’re something we’re not. Maybe God is sending a message through that Nigerian couple, who love that little girl no matter what color she is. Maybe he’s telling us to wake up and start getting along. Because, as Christianity, and Buddhism, and Islam, and Judaism, and all of the major spiritual practices or religions in the world preach, love really does conquer all. And therefore, hope always prevails.

OK, let’s get back to that gospel choir I sang in, the one where I wouldn’t say the word “Jesus.” As much as I loved all those songs I heard as a child, which Rachel and my father had both instilled deeply in me in their different ways, as an adult, I came to gospel music armed to the hilt with my defense-stuffed baggage.

Christians weren’t cool. Too much had been done in the name of Christianity that, in my opinion, was evil. The Crusades, the Inquisition, clinic bombings, bilking people out of millions of dollars, well, those were a few of the things I had a problem with. Now, Eastern religions, those were cool. I immersed myself in Buddhism. I began to learn more about different religions and the truth that’s at the heart of them all. My husband to this day calls me a Buddhatarian. But something interesting happened when I joined that gospel choir. I “got it,” not just intellectually, but here, in my heart. With no judgment attached, with nothing but the music, pure and heartfelt and triumphant, the songs began to change me. I began to realize that gospel music is universal in its message.

And I saw what happened to other people who came to hear the songs. They were brought together in one spirit no matter how different their backgrounds, and it was a sight to behold. I saw that my baggage was much too small to encompass the big, bold and broad truth of gospel music, which is, above all else, a celebration of traveling on the rough gravel road of life, where no one escapes unscarred, and yet, through steadfast hope, we can all make it through to the other side. Gospel music is about the best part of being human, which, interestingly, is the part where we let ourselves feel God, however you define that. It’s about that fearsome trouble that can grab hold of any one of us at any time, but it’s also about the triumphant light each and every one of us holds in our soul … and it waits patiently for its chance to help us rise above if we only let it. Because of gospel music, I let my baggage go, and I said good riddance.

I began to realize something else, too. Being a Christian and being Christ-like are not necessarily one and the same.

The slaves in our country came from a place that knew nothing of Christianity. And the hypocrisy of their enslavers who tried to convert them to a religion that espouses freedom, peace, love of thy neighbor as thyself, was not lost on them. Yet when they heard the stories of Moses and his people, of Jesus and that stone being rolled away, they made the connection between their plight and the plight of those in the Biblical stories. They found hope and grabbed on. They sang about it. They shared it with others. They took whatever they related to in those stories and made them their own, based on their own fragmented understanding of the Scriptures. That’s why you so often hear gospel songs with both Old and New Testament stories mixed up. (O Mary don’t you weep, Martha don’t you mourn, Pharoah’s army, drowned in the red sea.) In the beginning, those songs had little to do with Christianity as a religion and everything to do with the underlying principles of freedom and justice and a better place to get to.

To illustrate how the slaves freely mixed religious metaphor with their own earthly life circumstances, Laura Towne, a teacher who lived with slaves on South Carolina’s Sea Islands, wrote about how one former slave tried in broken English to describe his grief after Lincoln’s death. ‘“Lincoln died for we,” he said. ‘Christ died for we, and me believe him de same mans.’” (Darden, 109)

As Robert Darden states in his very good book People Get Ready: A New History of Black Gospel Music, “African Americans resisted, to an extraordinary degree, the very human tendency to exact a well-deserved revenge on their former masters” (111). If that isn’t Christ-like, I don’t know what is.

Perhaps the right question isn’t, “Is gospel music just for Christians?” After all, one could easily argue that gospel music is so deeply embedded in our culture--blues, rock and roll, R&B, soul, pop and pretty much every form of popular American music comes from it, after all--and its themes are so universal, that it extends far beyond any one religion. Gospel is universal the same way all religions have universal principles at their core.

Perhaps the right question is, “Is gospel music for anyone who needs it?” That’s much more inclusive, Christ-like, and, in my opinion, much more relevant to the songs the slaves sang.

The beauty and power of gospel music lie in expressing and feeling the real suffering and pain of life, while also being able to transcend that suffering and turn it into something glorious. You’ll often hear the gritty realities in the verse. But in the chorus springs the spiritual, the hope, ever eternal, ever defiant, ever triumphant. “I ain’t gonna study war no more.” “I’m tired, my soul needs restin’, but I can’t stop now where the saints have trod.” “I know I’ve been changed and the angels in heaven done signed my name.”

Unmarried and pregnant at age 17, I went on welfare instead of going to college. I inherited the alcoholic gene of my Irish ancestors and did a downhill slide like nobody’s business. But, determined to be a success story instead of another statistic, and with some kind of divine grace to help me, I pulled myself up and worked my way through school, through recovery, and into a better life. I know what it’s like to suffer and to come out on the other side.

This is why I relate to gospel music, and why I can indeed sing it, Christian or not.

My story is of course nothing like what the slaves had to endure. But still, when one suffers, it’s real, and it’s hard. Who among us has not suffered? Who among us has not at one time or another clung to hope, no matter how tiny and fragile its thread, no matter how much "darkness", like Helen Keller said so beautifully in the reading today, "lay on the face of all things"? And who among us has not at some point in our lives needed to believe in transcendence, and then, because of that belief, were able to live it? That is what gospel music is about. It is about being human yet losing yourself to something greater. You don’t need to be Christian to celebrate that. But you do need, I think, to be connected to something bigger to “get it.”

Oh, and by the way, even though I’m not a Christian, I do sing “Jesus” now. Gospel music helped me get over myself on that one. I can transcend religious and all kinds of other boundaries and get to the heart of the matter when I sing gospel. So can you. And that is a beautiful gift indeed.

Sources:

Allen, William Francis, Ware, Charles Pickard & Garrison, Lucy McKim, eds. Slave Songs of the United States. New York, A. Simpson & Co., 1867.

Darden, Robert. People Get Ready: A New History of Black Gospel Music. New York: Continuum International Publishing Group, Inc., 2004.

Wheeler, Virginia. "Black Parents ... White Baby." London: The Sun, 20 July 2010.

The Roots and Branches of Gospel Music

While writing a sermon I've been asked to give at an upcoming UU service in Portland, ME, I came upon one I gave last year. A few people asked to have the text sent to them, and I thought it would be good to post as well on this blog. Here it is:


The Roots and Branches of Gospel Music
Text from a Sermon Delivered at Allen Avenue Unitarian Universalist Church, Portland, Maine, on August 16, 2009
© Dawn Boyer. All Rights Reserved.


Eunice Kennedy Shriver died this week. The media talked for days about how she started the Special Olympics, how, through her passion, the lives of millions were, and continue to be, enriched. The pain of her sister Rosemary’s tragic lobotomy had such great impact that Eunice vowed to change the way the mentally or physically challenged among us were treated. And so she did.

Aside from this powerful legacy, why am I talking about this very wealthy, white, privileged, well connected Irish Catholic woman when the topic of today’s sermon is the history of gospel music?

Because of how the footage of her funeral showed that a gospel song sung at her service brought her mourners together. I’m talking specifically about the closing song, “When the Saints Go Marching In.” It stood out because of how it lifted everyone in the church as they sang. You could see it; you could feel it; you could definitely hear it.

But hold on a minute. What does a song known for being played while African American mourners walk down a street in New Orleans behind a casket have to do with a rich white woman’s funeral in Cape Cod? Those are two totally different worlds. One doesn’t seem to belong with the other.

Ah. But that is the beauty of gospel music. As Gwendolin Sims Warren states in her wonderful book entitled Ev’ry Time I Feel the Spirit, gospel is universal:

“Growing up, I remember singing as many hymns by white composers such as Wesley, Watts, and Newton as I did black gospel music and spirituals. In fact, it was quite a while before I realized that such hymns were not exclusively [black] songs ….And yet, what a perfect example of the universal appeal of these sacred hymns and songs. The songs … are not exclusive to our race. These are songs that speak to the hearts of people from all cultures and races, of all ages, and from all eras of history. They are songs that heal, encourage, strengthen, reminisce, and excite. They are timeless, they are powerful—and they belong to everyone who will embrace them.”

We, the members of Rock My Soul, embrace them. Our mission is to celebrate them. And, even though (as you may have noticed already) we are mostly white, we do our darndest to make sure we get the word out about how important they are, for we’ve seen firsthand the way gospel music transforms people, and we honor and respect the great gift we’ve been given through the songs.

Let’s talk about that for a moment, this whole white versus black thing. I admit, there’s a tiny voice inside that sometimes whispers, “Who am I, a white, Irish-American woman like Eunice Kennedy (only ex-Catholic and definitely not rich!), to go around singing gospel and preaching about it?” An AME Zion preacher friend once put his arm around my shoulders and said, in a rather suggestive voice, “Do you ever get approached by any radical blacks who ask you what you think you’re doing singing their music?”

I was more than shocked, and I can happily say that has never happened. In fact, the opposite has been my experience: our work has been embraced by every African American audience we have sung to, and I am grateful for that. One wonderful woman in our community, who is responsible for making Black history known in Portsmouth, NH, put it in a way I think Gwendolin Sims Warren would have liked. She said, “Blacks can talk about how important gospel music is, and the white community is only going to listen to a point. But when the white community says it, too, then white people start listening and learning.” Then she chuckled and said, “When you think about it, most of us are pretty much a mix of white and black anyway, so why shouldn’t it belong to everyone?”

African American scholars—Horace Clarence Boyer being perhaps the most prominent—illustrate clearly how African-born slaves listened to and sang fervent hymns written by white composers during the Great Awakening in the mid-1700s, which started in New England and had a profound effect on the southern states, where slaves would attend services with slave owners. They in turn took their own understanding of rhythm and music and stories in the Bible and created the deeply personal Negro spirituals. From the spirituals to the Azusa Street Pentecostal revivals in California in the early 1800s, where whites and blacks shouted and sang and shook the walls together until social racism split them apart and white gospel and shape-note singing was born, to the jubilee quartet songs that started in the workplace after emancipation in 1865, to the birth of the black gospel choir in the 1930s, to the Civil Rights songs in the 1950s and 60s that were based on spirituals and hymns and sustained those who were committed to doing the right thing, and finally to 1969, when a black man named Edwin Hawkins reworked a Baptist hymn called O Happy Day, which was written by 2 white men from the 1800s, and that arrangement busted right out of the church and into the American Top 40 mainstream culture, gospel music has brought white and black people together to change our country for the better throughout history. And it is important for us all to embrace it and cherish it and keep telling the stories so they never get forgotten.

Last November, Rolling Stone magazine published a list of the 100 greatest singers of all time. The top 4 came from gospel roots. These were Aretha Franklin (#1), Ray Charles (#2), Elvis Presley (#3—yes, even Elvis started in gospel), and Sam Cooke (#4). These singers developed their style, their soul, their very musical essence in the church, then branched out into the secular world, and captivated millions with what had been instilled in them. Something’s going on with gospel music.

Why does gospel reach down so deep and out so broadly? Pain. Pain is the root. Who among us has not felt it? Pain is universal. We listen to the words of people who were ripped from their homeland, forced to labor without reward, made to live lives of unendurable pain, and we respond with our own voice of pain deep down inside. “Yes. I know that feeling. I can relate.”

And yet, from those roots of pain come branches of hope and triumph. Gospel music’s true power comes from its nobility. Listen to any gospel song—“Go Down, Moses”; “Steal Away, Jesus”; “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”; “I’ll Fly Away”—and you can’t help but feel the dignity, the grace, the pure grandeur of the spirit laced through the words and music. Milan Kundera, the great writer and philosopher, said, “when the heart speaks, the mind finds it indecent to object.” These songs speak from the heart, a heart that has been battered but has gained wisdom from the light within, and says, “here, take the hope I have to offer, for it will sustain you.”

And sustain us it has, for more than 300 years. The songs are just as fresh today as when they were first sung.

Let’s go back to “When the Saints Go Marching In” to get an idea of what I mean.


• It began as a Negro spiritual sometime in the early 1800s.
• Louis Armstrong was one of the first to make it into a nationally known pop-tune in the 1930s.
• It was brought into early rock and roll by Fats Domino and by Bill Haley & His Comets.
• Other early rock artists to follow Domino's lead included Jerry Lee Lewis and The Beatles.
• It is nicknamed "The Monster" by some jazz musicians, as it seems to be the only song some people know to request when seeing a Dixieland band, and some musicians dread being asked to play it several times a night. The musicians at Preservation Hall in New Orleans get so tired of playing it that a sign is posted that stipulates it will cost $10 to request the song.
• It’s often used as a popular theme or rallying song for a number of sports teams.
• Judy Garland sang it in her own pop style.
• Elvis Presley performed it during the Million Dollar Quartet jam session and also recorded a version for his film, Frankie and Johnny.
• Dolly Parton included the song in a gospel medley.
• Bruce Springsteen performed it as an encore during his Seeger Sessions Band Tour a couple of years ago.
• It was sung at Eunice Kennedy Shriver’s funeral a few days ago.

Gospel music’s branches reach into every part of our society—past to present, poor to rich, young to old, black to white, and everywhere in between. And it is important for us all to embrace it and cherish it and keep telling the stories so they never get forgotten, so that all of our lives and our spirits continue to get richer, and wiser, and brighter. Can I hear an Amen, somebody?

Sources:
“100 Greatest Singers of All Time.” Rolling Stone. November 27, 2008, p. 103 (http://www.rollingstone.com/news/coverstory/24161972/page/103)
Boyer, Horace Clarence. The Golden Age of Gospel. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2000.
Brobston, Stanley Heard. Daddy Sang Lead: The History and Performance Practice of White Southern Gospel. New York: Vantage Press, 2006.
Johnson, James Weldon & J. Rosamond. The Books of American Negro Spirituals. New York: Da Capo Press, 1977.
Sims, Gwendolin Warren. Ev'ry Time I Feel the Spirit: 101 Best-Loved Psalms, Gospel Hymns & Spiritual Songs of the African-American Church. New York: Holt Paperbacks, 1999.
“When the Saints Go Marching In.” Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_the_Saints_Go_Marching_In

A white atheist avant garde pop music icon's take on gospel

Brian Eno, known to many as the brains and brilliance behind Roxy Music, and also the production muse on albums by David Bowie, The Talking Heads, U2, and Coldplay, was interviewed recently in The Guardian. He has a lot to say about music in general, but I was struck particularly by his take on gospel music:

"I belong to a gospel choir. They know I am an atheist but they are very tolerant. Ultimately, the message of gospel music is that everything's going to be all right. If you listen to millions of gospel records – and I have – and try to distill what they all have in common it's a sense that somehow we can triumph. There could be many thousands of things. But the message… well , there are two messages… one is a kind of optimism for the future rather than a pessimism. Gospel music is never pessimistic, it's never 'oh my god, its all going down the tubes', like the blues often is. Gospel music is always about the possibility of transcendence, of things getting better. It's also about the loss of ego, that you will win through or get over things by losing yourself, becoming part of something better. Both those messages are completely universal and are nothing to do with religion or a particular religion. They're to do with basic human attitudes and you can have that attitude and therefore sing gospel even if you are not religious."

I wanted to jump up and down and shout "Hallelujah!" when I read this. What do you think?

Music as a Lifeline

I just finished watching War Dance, a moving 2007 documentary about children from a village in civil-war-torn northern Uganda. The focus is on a national music competition that the children prepare for, and shows the power of music and dance to help lift the children out of the tragedy of their lives. Most are orphans whose parents were killed by rebels. Watching Rose, a pre-teen, tell her story of soldiers lifting her mother's and father's heads out of a cooking pot to identify them, is heartbreaking and almost too much to take. She says, "when I saw my mother's head, I felt like I was losing my mind."

She lives with an aunt who sees Rose mostly as a tool to bathe the children, cook meals, do laundry, clean the house, and a myriad of other chores; we see Rose being threatened with a beating if it's not all done right. One wonders how on earth this child has any spirit left, and it's easy to think there's no hope for her.

But then we see her singing with a choir and preparing her costume for the traditional dance part of the competition. Her aunt doesn't want her to go. But we hear her voice tell us, "my heart tells me I must go, so I am going."

And there's the boy who carves and builds his own xylophone for the musical part of the competition. We watch him shave blocks of wood until the sound is right to his ear. If it doesn't sound the way he wants it to, he somehow knows how to shave off just the right amount for the correct tone.

I kept thinking about the parallel to what the slaves had to go through in our own country. It's not that far removed a story. The beatings, watching one's relatives killed or taken away by force, the fear they must have lived under. All of it is common. And, sadly, it still goes on.

But it is a wonder to behold the power of music and dance to lift these children out of horrible circumstance into a second, a moment, an hour of transformation, infusing them with the strength and the grace to carry on. These children have nothing to hope for but the possibility of winning the competition. We see how it drives them, how it gives them pride and hope for better things.

During the dance competition, Rose puts it all into perspective: "When I dance, my problems vanish. The camp is gone. I can feel the wind. I can feel the fresh air. I am free and can feel my home."

I'm struck by how so many us of have similar feelings when singing gospel music. And that's why it's important for us to keep on with our mission of bringing the songs and their history to as many people as possible. "We are free and we can feel our home." I'll bet the slaves felt that, which gives Rose's words even more poignancy. Our problems vanish, no matter what difficulties we struggle with. And that's what makes gospel music universal and everlasting. To see the African part of where it comes from in this film was powerful, to say the least.

Watch the movie if you can. It will change you.

Opening for Sweet Honey in the Rock! Rehearsal at the Merrill last night....

Wow, what a privilege. Ten of us from Rock My Soul, combined with 10 members each from the Brunswick Naval Air Station and Women in Harmony choirs, rehearsed last night at the Merrill Auditorium in Portland. On January 18, as an opening act for Sweet Honey in the Rock, we'll sing 3 songs: "I Don't Feel No Ways Tired" by Rev. James Cleveland, "Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Round," (a traditional spiritual turned Civil Rights song) and "Total Praise" (not sure who the author is). All are so inspiring! Everything came together last night--what a sound! Everyone is so excited; it is such an honor to be part of this concert, which will serve to raise money for the Portland chapter NAACP. Here are some photos of us rehearsing....

Kalli leading "I Don't Feel No Ways Tired"	Tracy and Brett, joking as always	Steve (left, on piano) and Kalli leading BNAS

I'm hoping we can get a grant to fund Steve and Kalli to come to some of our rehearsals and lead us in the near future. I love the way they teach everything by ear and feel. As Steve and I were saying last night, it helps us sing from the heart and not the head. Their approach reminds me of the one Sister Alice Martin used with our workshop in Omega a couple of years ago (see the July 2006 post on this blog). Very refreshing! I'm truly enjoying working with them--they're great guys.

Finally, time to write again!

I am embarrassed that I haven't written for more than a year, and more than a little stunned that so much time has passed so quickly! The good news is that Rock My Soul has been going full steam ahead, and things are getting more and more exciting. The not-so-good is that it's hard to keep up the pace, so I'm working on creating balance and letting go of things I don't need to hold on to (at least, that's what I've resolved for the new year). I hope our readers will bear with me as I make the transition!

A few of us are gearing up now for a mass choir performance with 2 esteemed choirs from the Portland, ME area: Women In Harmony and the Brunswick Naval Air Station choir (BNAS). We are especially excited, because, thanks to the support of Rachel Talbot Ross from the Portland NAACP, we'll be opening for Sweet Honey in the Rock at the Merrill Auditorium on January 18! We'll perform 3 songs together, and I for one feel privileged to learn from Steve and Kalli, co-directors for BNAS. I think members of RMS feel the same. What an honor this will be!

I brought my camera to last night's rehearsal, but due to the excitement of learning 2 songs and directing one, I totally forgot to take pictures. However, I promise to bring the camera AND take photos so I can upload them right after next week's rehearsal.

More later....
Dawn

More about our community ... and how does religion fit into it?

I really like what David had to say about Rock My Soul as a community. He calls our group "a great experiment." (Sometimes he calls it a radical experiment, but "radical" is a word some find scary, so we'll leave it at great. What he means by radical, or at least what I think he means, is that we're trying something different, going places where not many others have ventured, and he's right--it is great fun. And great work. We have a wonderful, respectful community full of inspiring and inspired souls, for which I am very grateful.)

This leads to the next topic, and that's how religion fits into our community, which is made up of (1) people of varying faiths, (2) people who are just being introduced to faith, and (3) people who for their own reasons prefer not to be involved with religion at all but feel the need to express their understanding of spirit through music alone. I'm often struck by how delicate the subject of religion can be in our community. On the one hand, we sing gospel music, so some would think the religious aspect is a given. But in our case, we feel it's of utmost importance to welcome anyone, regardless of their belief system, for we believe it's a good thing to learn from differences. It helps us clarify our own ways of understanding. And the really interesting thing is that it helps us to see that all those differences have a lot in common. What interests us is unity, not separation. And unity is what gospel music is all about. Let's all get to that great place together. You go your way, I'll go mine, but we'll see each other at the same destination. We're all pretty much searching for the same thing, and when we feel it while singing together, we know we've arrived.

One way to approach such a delicate and personal topic as religion in a community like ours is to leave it be, allowing each person to his or her own understanding. Sometimes this is appropriate. But to avoid it altogether wouldn't be good, for we sing about celebrating spirit and faith. So when we have our opening "meditation" at rehearsals, we give everyone space to express themselves in a way that means something to them. Some of us are evangelistic COGIC, Baptist, or Apostolic members. Some are more conservative Episcopalian and Catholic. Some Unitarian or Bah'ai. And, as David mentioned already, some agnostic. One member might offer up a prayer where he asks Jesus to fill our hearts with light. One might focus on more Eastern philosophical sayings from the Buddha and ask us to do breathing exercises. And one might just keep it strictly nondenominational and ask us to leave the cares of the day behind so we can open ourselves to being present and singing with all our hearts. The point is, there's room for it all. And the more you allow everyone to speak from their own understanding, the more you see that religion doesn't have to be scary. It's the fear of the unknown that can be a problem, and that barrier is one we'd just as soon tear down. We've all seen in this country and in this world what fear can do. It's ugly.

We've been singing "Good Religion" lately at rehearsal. I think this is what's making me think about the topic so much. A few years ago, I listened to a minister talk about the difference between good and bad religion. Good religion, she said, opens hearts, broadens understanding and compassion, gives room for healing in different ways, and unites. Bad religion judges, controls, punishes, constricts, and divides. Like anything at the hands of human beings, there is beauty in religion, and there are flaws. One doesn't exist without the other. Unfortunately, too many of us in this world have experienced bad religion in one form or another, and it leaves deep scars. But does that mean that all religion is bad? No, of course not. There are many thriving religious communities of all denominations that do wonderful work to make the world a better place. Yet we have to respect that not all of us have experienced being part of one of those communities, or even want to become part of one. Everyone has his or her own journey. Our focus is on singing the music and celebrating the universal goodness of spirit through it. We're not church. But we sure are connected.

Can someone who's not a Christian sing gospel music? I say a hearty yes to that question. That's because the principles behind Christianity are universal. Who doesn't want peace, love, compassion, an ability to embrace that which is difficult and transcend it through faith, hope, and a belief in something higher, something better? All good religions have those principles at their core. All good people, even good people who don't go to church, hold them in their hearts. I've seen it work in our community. And it's a pretty powerful thing.

When we sing, "So glad I got good religion," it means different things to each of us. And when we sing that wonderful last line of the chorus, "my feet been taken out the miry clay," some of us might interpret it literally, straight from the Bible, and some may interpret it more metaphorically as meaning we've been lifted from the muck and mire of life into a higher way of being. Both are perfectly OK.

Let's not forget that the slaves, when they were forced to come to this country, weren't Christians. They saw immediately through the hypocrisy of their "owners," who preached the words but certainly didn't act according to them. But in an inspired turn, the slaves saw the stories of Moses and the Israelites as a metaphor for their own plight and began to embody the true principles behind Christianity, which eventually led to the forming of new Pentecostal and COGIC churches and camp revivals, and also began a new form of folk and spiritual music that to this day changes lives. The thing I find most fascinating as an illustration of how the slaves did adhere to true belief in peace and other Christian principles is that they didn't uprise and seek revenge against their enslavers when they were freed. There are a few exceptions, but as a rule, they used their community and their music to continue to sustain them as they began to make better lives for themselves. And then there was Dr. King. It wasn't easy, and still isn't. We still have so much to learn. That's what we try to do in our group--learn from the history and the music and unite in peace and understanding. In our own way. One song at a time.

Rock My Soul as community

As a member of Rock My Soul from the get-go, I want to pick up on one of the themes from Dawn's previous posts. It has to do with the sense of community. As someone who is just beginning to learn about the gospel tradition, it seems to me that a sense of community is vital to a successful gospel choir. I believe we have that in Rock My Soul. But the trick with community is that it can't be forced. And for authentic community to happen, people have to enter into it with a spirit of respect and compassion -- for one another, and in this case, for the music and the tradition.

What makes us interesting, I think, is that we are not part of any specific religious community. At the same time, many of our members belong to various religious traditions. And some would even describe themselves as agnostic. Yet we are a community. Our community is formed not around a specific religious tradition or doctrine, but around the music itself -- its history and meaning over the years -- and what it still can mean and will come to mean in the future. Our community is drawn together for the music. It is the uplifting power of the music that we seek to share with audiences.

This is a relatively revolutionary approach to forming a gospel choir. And it is working. Rehearsals are great. We're finding our own way, developing our own style. And we're bringing a particular choral tradition music - gospel music - to a part of the world - New England - that's not usually associated with gospel music. What fun!

If you haven't heard Rock My Soul sing yet, come hear us! If you have thoughts to share, please comment. If you can't hear us live (or if you can!), buy our CD. Go to www.dfgp.org You'll enjoy it, I do believe. Oh, and we're always looking for tenors.

Arts Week with Sister Alice Martin (Part One)

Wow! What an experience! Carolyn Morse-Finn and I got back late last night from our 5-day workshop with Sister Alice Martin at the Omega Institute. About 70 people also enrolled, so we had a big choir to sing with. There's so much to share that it might have to be split up into a few different "chapters"; here's the first.


On day one, Sister Alice quietly introduced herself and her brother "Fatty," who accompanies on keyboards (and who isn't fat at all, except in his immense talent). They have such a deep musical connection that he often guessed where she was going before she even had to say anything to him. That was very cool to watch. She asked us to seat ourselves according to what part we thought we sang. Sopranos sat to her right, tenors and basses in the middle, and altos to her left. I usually sing in the soprano section with Rock My Soul, but I decided I wanted to stretch myself and learn to sing alto parts, so I sat with Carolyn, who usually sings alto or tenor, and all the other altos.

Sister Alice then asked if anyone had certain things they wanted from the week. I raised my hand and said we were part of a gospel choir in New England and were looking forward to seeing how a "real" gospel choir did things. Others said they wanted to learn how to move when they sang, how to sing better, and some even said they just wanted to see what singing gospel was like in general. Sister Alice said there was one thing she was confident of, and that was that we'd leave much different than when we came. She was right.

She then went over the "rules." She stressed that we were a community, and that being a community would help us sing better. (That's our emphasis in Rock My Soul too.) She told us she moved a lot when she taught and sang, and she demonstrated what her hand gestures meant: there was one for singing in unison, one for splitting into our parts, one for stopping, one for swelling, and one for modulating (going up into a different key). Finally, she said that we were to look at her always as we sang. As the leader, she needed to have our complete attention if we were to learn all that she wanted us to. Her plan was to have us learn from 15 to 20 songs in 4 days, perform some of them on the 4th night for the entire Omega community of 400 who were there for Arts Week, and on the 5th day have our own talent show, where we could perform for others in our group if we wanted to share our gifts. That sounded like a lot, and some of us weren't so sure we could learn all that material, especially if we didn't have lyric sheets or sheet music! But she assured us that we would remember.

And off she went, right into the first song. She started by having us speak a line or two after her. Then she sang the soprano part, loudly and with such feeling we were left speechless with our mouths hanging open in awe. What a voice! She had the sopranos sing the lines after her--two, three, four, five, however many times it took to get it right so that the lines were sung with the same feeling and emphasis she modeled. Then she moved to the altos and sang that line, having us repeat the same way. Then to the tenors and basses, who most often had the same part. In some cases, she asked the "top tenors" to sing a different line, but that was more the exception than the rule. After we'd all sung our parts enough times that she was satisfied we'd gotten them down, we sang a section of a song together, over and over. When that was solid, she moved to the next section. And so it went until we'd gone through every section. Then it was time to put it all together and sing the whole song, with her coaching us by speaking or singing the lines right before we sang them. In 3 hours, we had 4 songs down. Whew! The interesting part was that it never felt like work. Because it was all in context and done with such feeling and gusto, it was downright fun, and we all bonded immediately through the experience.

We had a 2 1/2 hour break for lunch, and it was back to the workshop for 2 1/2 more hours of learning. We reviewed what we'd gone over that morning, polished up difficult spots, and learned some more new material. By the end of the day, we had 6 songs. She thanked everyone for their hard work, and with a big smile said that even though we might not believe it, we'd wake up in the morning with the words and music to the songs in our heads. She was right. I was astounded and very happy to see such an effective teaching method in action! I was also mesmerized that this way of teaching helped us learn so much more quickly than reading sheet music--it made us internalize the music and feeling behind the songs right away, and in that sense helped us sing in one day what might normally take weeks or months to accomplish through other methods.

But it wasn't just her teaching style that reached us so quickly and deeply. Sister Alice lives what she sings, and it shows. There is a peace about her, a calm and stillness that you know comes from many years of faith work. She embodies spirit in a way I've encountered very few times in my life, but each time I have, the impact is so strong it has changed me. I know the real thing when I see it, and Sister Alice is definitely the real thing. She and Brother Fatty are life changers. I watched their gifts of music and spirit profoundly touch those in our singing community, and it was something to behold.

From her peace springs a joy so big, so bold that it can't help but bust out and uplift everyone around her when she sings. That's how it was when she sang to us to help us learn our lines. Much different from the quiet reserve that so many of us in New England are used to, and it was reassuring to me as a gospel singer! (I have never been able to stand still or hold back vocally while singing gospel solos, and after watching Sister Alice, I realized that is definitely OK. She kept telling us to move with it, walk with it, and I was more than happy to oblige.) Carolyn and I sang so loudly that I wondered if my voice would hold out. I was worried that we'd offend those around us, because when you're in a choir you want to focus on blending with other voices around you. I guess in gospel it doesn't work that way so much. Sure, you want to blend, but you want to blend by having EVERYONE sing as loudly as the emotion of a song is meant to convey. Carolyn said she tried to blend, but she just got so excited she could't help herself. All that mattered was singing out all the joy and light in our hearts and souls. THAT'S gospel.

It was fun to watch some of the altos cluster around Carolyn when they heard her. Carolyn has a big voice, and they looked to her as a leader in our section so they could make sure they had their notes right. Way to go, Carolyn! Sister Alice noticed, too. She kept looking over in our direction with a huge smile, and she said more than once, "Altos, when you're on, you're ON!" (Of course, that also meant sometimes we could really go south, but oh well! That'll happen when you learn a lot of songs in such a short time, and some of them were pretty complicated.) That was another thing I was struck by--how positive Sister Alice was about what we did. Every time each section got a part down, she'd have the rest of us give them a big hand. It makes all the difference. And when we veered off course, she'd shake her head and joke with us in a way that let us know how to do it better without feeling bad about making mistakes. I realized how important a good sense of humor is in a director. There's a lightness in her approach that I learned a lot from. I can still hear her saying, "Altos, I don't know what y'all were just singing, but it wasn't what I taught you," and then busting into laughter before singing the correct line loudly to us over and over until we got it right. She's a gifted teacher.

Since this post is getting really long, I'll write more later. I feel I've barely touched the surface of all I learned and want to share. I guess for now I'll end with the same way I started: Wow!

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...

Rock My Soul CD Is Now Available Online!

Today, I read 5 comments about Rock My Soul's new CD, and I'm thrilled to say they're really positive! (Check out the comments section following our May 27 post if you want to read them firsthand.) A big and heartfelt thanks to all who took the time to write and say such nice things.

This reminds me that I need to notify fans that they can now order the CDs online. Just go to the Gospel Music Project web site (link is above and in the sidebar section to the right). All instructions are there. CD Baby also has CDs, and they're currently processing them for ordering. Stay tuned for a notice about when they're ready. We're also working on getting them into stores for distribution and will let you know about that too.

Again, thanks to those of you who took the time to comment. It really means a lot to know all the hard work was worth it! I can't think of a much better feeling than the one I get when I read that the music brings our listeners so much joy.

In good faith,
Dawn

The Secret Codes of Spirituals

When I ask the question, "How many know the song 'Swing Low, Sweet Chariot?'" at gospel music workshops, all hands usually raise. Most of us are familiar with the song because we sang it in church or school or have heard it sung in movies; most of us love it. But when I follow that question with, "'How many know that the song is a message to slaves about the Underground Railroad?'" I'm lucky if one or two hands go up. That tells me everything I need to know about how important it is not to let the history of gospel music get lost.

For me, much of the beauty and power behind spirituals is in their underlying, coded messages. Slaves not only used their music to endure excruciating hardship, they created a beautiful form of art that helped them triumph over it. It was the glue of their community, a bond that couldn't be broken. From it, they gained strength and sustenance. Through their cleverness, they also managed to give one another tips about escape routes, and in turn, they changed our entire country for the better, not just once, but twice. The beauty of their music astonished and captivated abolitionists. It made emancipation possible and, finally, real. And then, 100 years later, it helped win the struggle for Civil Rights. Make no mistake; like any great art, the music of the slaves is a powerful force for change and enlightenment. I say "is," because it still helps anyone who sings it or listens to it. We owe a great debt to African Americans for giving us such a rich cultural gift.

Let's talk about "Swing Low" for a moment as an example. In particular, let's talk about Harriet Tubman's connection to the song. As many know, Tubman was the spearheader for and backbone of the Underground Railroad, that network of people and place who made escape from slavery possible. Her own back was scarred from many whippings from many masters. Uneducated, partially deaf from a beating, missing her front teeth, and narcoleptic, this amazing woman had the strength and cunning to shepherd thousands of slaves to freedom. And not one of them under her watch was ever caught. Her guile earned her the respected titles of "General Tubman" and "Moses." Her friends called her "Old Chariot." A chariot, to slaves, was any means of transportation that could take them North to freedom. As Robert Darden states in his very good book People Get Ready, when slaves sang:
I looked over Jordan and what did I see,
Coming for to carry me home,
A band of angels coming after me,
Coming for to carry me home
"the 'band of angels' was Tubman or another conductor, leading them to freedom." (95)

The Jordan was also a name for the Ohio River, which slaves crossed to freedom. And the swinging low was a way to describe the rocking motion of a train, the metaphor for escape.

Darden also states that Tubman expressed victories and every major experience through the songs we now know of as spirituals. In addition to "Swing Low," her other "signature" song was "Go Down, Moses," which has the distinction of being the first spiritual pusblished with music in the United States. If you don't know the song, do look up the lyrics or try to get a copy to listen to. (Louis Armstrong does a great version.) It encapsulates the slaves' way of interpreting biblical stories to illuminate their own struggles and determination to be free.

On her deathbed, with two ministers and a friend present, Tubman reportedly conducted her own funeral service and closed it by singing "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot." She died on March 10, 1913, but the profound ramifications of her work in this world still reverberate. About 7 years ago, I lived near Auburn NY, where Tubman spent her last years. I used to drive by her simple home and imagine her sitting on the porch or serving dinner inside to others who so desperately needed sustenance and hope to hang onto. It inspired me. Not everyone can drive by Tubman's home every day the way I used to, but when we next sing "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot," we can think of her and how much she gave to so many. It makes the song that much richer.

Rock My Soul Gospel Choir CD Coming!

A lot of our fans are saying we need a blog to let people know what's happening on the gospel music front in New England (here it is, fans!). And the biggest, best, most exciting news we have today is that we shipped off the CD master and graphics files for Rock My Soul's eponymous first album. Yes! It should arrive by June 7, in time to make its debut on June 10 at our CD Release Concert. The CD contains 11 songs, all done in Rock My Soul's unique, raise-the-rafters old-time style. The album has a rootsy feel. What we're after is old school--bringing back the songs many have forgotten or don't know about, and recording them with as authentic a sound as possible (and telling the stories behind some of them so people can appreciate them more). We want our listeners to feel how gospel used to feel in what scholar Horace Clarence Boyer calls its "golden age," because there's nothing in the world like it.

For those who don't know Rock My Soul, definitely check us out if you're in the Seacoast NH / southern Maine / Boston and North Shore MA areas. We're a 25-member, nondenominational choir with members of all different faiths and belief systems, but with a common belief in and respect for gospel music and its heritage. We're also part of a nonprofit organization called the Gospel Music Project.

The CD release concert takes place on June 10 at 7 pm in Dover NH at the First Parish Church on 218 Central Avenue (it's the big brick church with the black clock in the steeple, right on the corner of Central Avenue and Silver Street). For ticket prices and details, visit www.gospelmusicproject.org.

On this blog, we'll be posting musings and info on what we've learned about gospel music's rich history and importance to our culture, as well as recommended CDs, DVDs, and books on gospel music. Readers will of course also learn a lot about what's going on behind the scenes of the GMP and Rock My Soul. We hope you'll post comments and give us feedback.