WEDNESDAY THOUGHTS: SING ALONG

I'm looking forward to celebrating with friends this Saturday. 

An historic, Congress Heights institution, Rehoboth Baptist Church will be celebrating its 150th anniversary.

I hear there's a band and singers who've been working diligently to join me, and I'm very humbled by it. 

Tracks are fine, but live music is wonderful.

There was a time when I would have cringed at the word “performance”. Gospel singers don’t perform, do they? They minister; offer up praise; sing to God. “Performance” held a kind of creepy connotation, but I learned that it is a way in which something functions; it is an act; a sacred use of very specific language, and often in a public setting. 

What can be more public than the assembly we call “church”?

I could be at home singing, “I love you Lord and I lift my voice….” When I’m in front of an audience I can still sing it, but the audience is merely a group of welcome eavesdroppers, who are encouraged to think about their own love, feelings, ideas, and emotions. 

As silly as it may seem, in a public place, my hope is that the audience completely forgets about me and focuses on God--and sings along if they want to.

I loved a song that a very young Valerie Simpson recorded. She was emphatic about a situation in which she didn’t want to hear anything—no horns, no string, no guitar, no voices accompanying her. She said she didn’t need help to express her profound love. Sometimes a bare bones situation is all one needs.

Although we had records to hear at home that were chock full of instrumentation, at church, for the longest time, there were no instruments--no guitar, no drums, no tambourine—none of the things that Psalm 150 informs us is perfectly okay to be on hand when praising the Lord and declaring the good news of the gospel 

Travels to Louisiana, introduced an entirely different feel.

Often, there was no piano at all---just claps of hands, stomping feet on wooden floors, and haunting harmonies as a deacon-leader would quickly and often, to my young ears—inarticulately present the words---to which the congregation would follow. “Guide me O thou great Jehovah, pilgrim through this barren land I am weak but thou art mighty; hold me with thy powerful hand”. 

What joy when I learned how to read, and what greater joy when I, in faith,  accepted the grace and love of God through his son Jesus…somehow, the songs took on new meaning. 

Dianne Reeves held a master class, and told young aspiring singers “You have to establish who you’re talking to and what you’re saying…You should sing just like you’re talking to somebody…” 

Nowhere is that more significant advice than when singing music that is inspired by the good news of the Gospel. 

Sure. One can sing about a lot of things, but having an intimate relation to the subject of a song, makes one’s offering resonate not only personally, but with others.