To reflect changing times, a church turned to its music director to bring together singers of different races and religions.
June 22, 2008
By Jenna Johnson
Ayear or so ago, the pastor at Trinity Lutheran Church in Lexington Park cornered his music director after a service with a question: How can we "bring in some diversity?" The neighborhood had changed, and the church needed to change, too.
The music director was often the only black at services. Maybe he had an idea.
No need for conversions, the pastor continued, just camaraderie among Christians.
Well then, music is the answer, said the music director, Robert Jefferson. More specifically, a community gospel choir, something outside the church's regular choir.
Although changing churches would be too drastic a step for most, Jefferson explained, gathering once a week to sing would be doable.
A community gospel choir could sing in any church in Southern Maryland -- black, white, Hispanic. Its sound would not be anything like the traditional Trinity Lutheran choir, nor would it mimic the famous gospel groups. This choir would have its own sound and style, a glorious harmony of diverse voices.
And Jefferson could possibly pull it off: He was an opera singer and a concert pianist, but grew up in a roof-raising black Baptist choir.
Jefferson put a notice in the church bulletin and told everyone he could.
On the night of the first rehearsal last summer, Jefferson strode into the choir room, then took a step back.
Only a dozen people had shown up. And they were all white women.
"Uh oh," he thought. This is going to take awhile.
By January, Jefferson still had all whites singing before him, but at least there were two men standing with the women and some Catholics with the Lutherans.
They sang with precision, their eyebrows slightly raised and chins lowered to accommodate their perfectly oval-shaped mouths. " Faith! Full! -- Faith! Full! -- Faith! Full! Is! Our! God!"
Jefferson cut them off and strode to the marker board -- a tool he had never used when directing black choirs but something he had found indispensable since beginning this venture.
He scrawled "GAWD" in green marker. "I'm hearing too much of that," he said. The correct pronunciation is "GAHD."
"Whenever black people sing opera, they go like this," Jefferson said, and, with exaggerated seriousness, cupped his hands together at his chest, put on his best angelic face and let out a formal "OHHHH!" "When white people try to sing gospel, it's like . . . "
"It's like when you get here," offered Davis Thomas, 49, a divorced father who hoped a new kind of religious music could put him back in touch with God.
The choir erupted in laughter. "Exactly!" Jefferson said, laughing with them. "You're singing this like a black person would sing opera."
They tried it again.
" I'm reaping the harvest GAHD promised me. Take back what the devil stole from me. And I re-joice to-day. For I shall recover it all."
Better, Jefferson said, but still "too bland."
"Too white," Davis said.
Jefferson told the group to pretend the "r" in "rejoice" was actually three r's: rrrejoice. Same with the "p" in reaping: reappping.
Some choir members made notes on their music, adding the extra letters.
Just relax, Jefferson urged.
From Opera to Gospel
Jefferson constantly bounced between two styles of music when he was a kid, growing up in a tough black and Mexican neighborhood in Phoenix.
During the week, his babysitter sat him down at the grand piano that filled the living room of her tiny house and taught him to read notes, play scales and keep the beat in 4-4 time.
Then, on Sundays, his mother took him to their Missionary Baptist church, where he played gospel songs on the organ from memory. The congregation clapped along vigorously.
In his young mind, the two styles were too different to be related. But at band camp one year, he had an epiphany: Gospel songs could be easily translated to sheet music. Likewise, he could listen to Mozart, then play by remembering what he had heard.
"I realized I didn't have to do gospel just this way, and do classical just this way," he said. "I just did both."
Jefferson went on to earn a master's in vocal performance and studied opera. At an inner-city Houston elementary school, he taught students how to sing both by reading notes and by listening to them. He then joined the U.S. Air Force Pacific Air Command band and was based in Tokyo for four years, where he taught gospel hymns to a Japanese Protestant choir.
A few years ago, he accepted a job with the U.S. Army Field Band and Soldiers' Chorus, which tours but is based at Fort Meade, Md. He and his wife, Pensacola Helene Jefferson, moved to St. Mary's County and built a bed-and-breakfast on the Patuxent River to cater to preachers and Japanese tourists.
No sooner had Jefferson, now 47, settled in than he got a call from the pastor at Trinity Lutheran, the Rev. Stephen W. Updegrave. The pastor was desperately searching for an organist and had heard that Jefferson could play and sing anything.
The church agreed to accommodate his touring schedule, and Jefferson took the job and quickly got to work breathing life into the congregation's formal services and rejuvenating its traditional Sunday choir.
"We tend to be Northern European and more formal," Updegrave said, "but the congregation has really accepted his lively style."
A Ministry of Song
The choir was singing one cold February night when Jefferson felt the call to pray.
"Thank you, Lord, for bringing everyone here today to sing your praises," he began. "Show us that this is a ministry, that each of us are ministers, Lord."
There were two new members that night -- black singers from St. Peter Claver Catholic Church. Another St. Peter's member, Ann Raley, the white wife of a county commissioner, had scouted out the community gospel choir and talked Shirley Dickerson and Jimmie Hill into joining her. They wanted to learn music theory from Jefferson.
"Isn't he great?" Raley asked the two after Jefferson gave directions on how to make the word "devil" not sound more precious than "Jesus" in "I Almost Let Go." "We need someone like him at St. Peter's."
"He's ours," a Trinity member said, quickly cutting her off.
More important than learning the notes of the song, Jefferson told them, is learning the meaning. "I Almost Let Go" is a modern gospel song about depression and about God holding a sufferer close during those times.
"I'm sure all of you have been through some stuff -- I know I have," Jefferson said, "and you want to sing it so that if someone sitting in the audience is going through something like that, they know that you understand what they are going through."
The choir began again. The beginning is slow, soft and emotional: " I almost let go. I felt like I just couldn't take life anymore. My problems had me bound. Depression weighed me down. But God held me close, so I wouldn't let go."
Davis cooed like a country singer. The Lutherans properly pronounced each syllable. And the newcomers, looking around skeptically, belted it out.
The song picked up at the end, with strong high notes: " So I'm here to-day because God kept me! I'm a-live today, only because of His grace!"
The white choir members grew quieter as Shirley and Jimmie overpowered the notes Jefferson struck on the piano. By the end, the two were singing an a cappella duet.
" Oh, He kept me! God kept me! He kept me! So I wouldn't let go."
The choir erupted in applause.
"That's what we needed," Davis said.
"Just singing the way I always do," said Shirley, 69, who said she keeps joining choirs, "getting ready for the Big Show upstairs."
Take out "Wade in the Water," Jefferson instructed. Everyone shuffled sheet music, switching from having just lyrics to arranged notes in treble and bass clefs, and began to sing.
Shirley and Jimmie shifted their gaze from the sheet music in front of them to the eager singers around them, then to each other. Shirley shook her head and chuckled. Neither had ever tried to sing from written music.
Jefferson cut off the choir, with a smile, halfway down the second page.
"Does anyone know what this song is about?" he asked, and without waiting for an answer, launched into the history of this spiritual that slaves sang to pass along plans for escape. "The slaves did not say: 'Come on. Let us wade in the water.' " Back to the marker board. "Water" is not pronounced "watur," but "wah-dr." He also broke down how to read sheet music for Shirley and Jimmie, drawing five lines and a host of ascending and descending dots. "Basically, follow along the line. If the notes go up, go up. If they go down, go down," he said.
Davis leaned over and pointed to Shirley's music, showing her the progression.
Jefferson closed the evening with another prayer: "Thank you, Father, for bringing us here today. . . . Help us, from all of our different backgrounds, sing together as the Southern Maryland Community Gospel Choir. . . . That's what's dynamic about Christianity. . . . It's a new movement. It doesn't matter our racial, ethnic makeup. We just need each other to survive."
Overcoming Challenges
As winter turned to spring, fewer people showed up at choir practice. Jefferson went on tour again. Shirley hurt her leg. Pat McEntee, a retired Realtor and the choir's cheerleader, took off for her Florida home. One singer decided that gospel's loud beats were not for her. Others just got too busy.
Davis, left in charge, struggled mightily to keep things going. "Dear Lord," he began his prayer at the end of one April practice, "thank you for bringing us here tonight. We're not always sure what brings groups like this together. . . . Watch over Jefferson and bring him back to us. And those with scheduling problems, bring them back to us, too."
When Jefferson finally returned, only four choir members showed up -- too few to sing and not nearly enough for their first performance in May. The choir had to pull together soon or disband. Ann started e-mailing people, begging them to return. From Florida, Pat worked the phones.
The deciding night in late April became known as "head-count night," as Trinity Lutheran's Lenore Blevins stood by the choir room door and counted. First there was Rick, a quiet Trinity Lutheran elder. Then Bev, who also attends Trinity. Richard, a Latino from St. Peter's. Ann. Redmond and Dionne, a black Catholic couple from Leonardtown. Shirley. Jimmie. Davis came in late.
"I was just so nervous that no one would come," said Lenore, 52, a white mother of five who recently became a mail carrier. "But it looks like everyone's here."
With just two weeks until their first performance, Jefferson jumped into practicing the two songs the choir planned to sing at the concert. For the slow "Lord We Worship You," he told them, imagine a quiet candlelight dinner with God. For the upbeat "Blessed Be the Lord," use "your country voice," he said.
And learn to move, he told them. Clapping was not an option at this point, as past attempts had ended with the black members clapping on the second and fourth beats and white members clapping on the first and third.
"It's not in everybody's culture to do the moving, so be sensitive," Jefferson said. "We're a little, how do I say it, challenged in that area. It's going to take awhile. We're going to bridge it together. Bridge the cultures."
Start with baby steps, he instructed. Tap your foot. Or rock back and forth.
"Just try not to laugh at each other."
The Debut Performance
Originally, the choir planned to have its first performance in a black church, but the woman who was to arrange the performance dropped out, and no one wanted to make a cold call.
So they decided on the Southern Maryland Spring Festival at the county fairgrounds early in May. Instead of in a sacred church, they would be in an outdoor pavilion with a view of the backside of carnival rides.
The weather was beautiful, but the logistics were a nightmare. The band playing before them began 45 minutes late, pushing them back. And the loud sounds of a festival -- an announcer auctioning off wooden animals carved with a chain saw, for example -- competed for listeners.
When their time finally came, the choir members huddled behind the stage in their matching red polo shirts, just yards from the petting zoo's bleating baby goats and giant yellow-and-white snake. They walked onto the stage, stopping to help Pat with the steps, and formed a long line.
Ten people. Five whites, four blacks and one Latino. Seven Catholics and three Lutherans. A community gospel choir.
"Let's give them a hand," Jefferson said from his spot at a keyboard. "This is our debut performance."
"Yay, Davis! Whooo!" shouted Davis's sister. A handful of Shirley's grandchildren and great-grandchildren cheered.
The choir sang through the slow, soaring verses of "Worship," then prepared for "Blessed Be the Lord." Davis left his spot in the line to direct. At the keyboard, Jefferson played the snappy, jazzy, opening chords.
" Blessed be the Lord. Who reigns forever, reigns forever. Blessed be the Lord. Who reigns forevermore."
Pat sang loudly, rocking back and forth. Ann tapped her foot. Shirley swayed. Davis conducted energetically, throwing in a few dance moves and jumps.
With the lyric " Lift those hands!" all 10 shook their hands over their heads. " Clap those hands!" brought a round of claps, on and off the beat. Obviously, those moves need some work.
The second song ended, the small crowd applauded and, with a smile, Jefferson signaled for the choir to depart the stage. They scattered, some leaving for Sunday night family dinners and others sticking around to hear Jefferson sing a solo.
"That was nice, don't you think?" Lenore asked Pat, sitting at a wooden picnic table at the back of the pavilion.
"It was," she said. "We just need some more practice. And some more members. That's all."
Source: The Washington Post
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