Hold On

Thank you to Peter Bacon (tenor) for letting me reopost this from his excellent lockdown blog, Windmill Days.

Tuesday 21 April 2020 ~ I have spent some time this morning recording my part of a gospel song called Hold On. I sing in the Lichfield Gospel Choir, a community group with a hundred or so members. We celebrated our 10th birthday earlier this year. Since we cannot meet at our usual weekly rehearsals our choir director has asked us to each record our part at home and he will then compile our recordings into an online choir performance.

I can’t remember when I was first drawn to gospel music but I can remember exactly where I was when mere passing interest turned into full-blown love. It was on the 4th of July in maybe 2001 on a back street in Washington.

The big parade was starting on the main drag, complete with giant blow-up figures and marching bands, but in the side streets smaller groups and floats were getting themselves ready to join the throng.

It was an eclectic mix. I remember a collection of World War 2 army vehicles being driven by their proud owners all decked out in appropriate uniforms, and right behind them, in contrast, was a group of Vietnam vets, all long hair, beards and leather waistcoats, looking like a bunch of Hell’s Angels, except that they weren’t on Harleys but in wheelchairs, and carrying signs protesting their neglect at the hands of the non-existent health and support system.

I wandered into a side street off the side street as it were, and there was an articulated truck with a small electrified combo on the front, a full choir on tiered seats at the rear, and in the flat bed more choir members and the soloists sitting at the front with microphones. The banner said something like St Paul’s Gospel Church, Salt Lake City, Utah. As I stood on the sidewalk, their only audience, the drummer clicked the rhythm, bass, guitar and Hammond organ took it up, the horns added a brief riff and then, like an avalanche they struck – 70 or so voices in close harmony, pumping out their message with such force and passion that it took my breath away. The soloists soared with that mix of angelic tone and Aretha Franklin attitude, and with each chorus the choir ramped up the intensity and excitment further. If this was their warm up, heaven alone knows what they sounded like in the main parade.

Their truck moved off, and I walked away. I’ve never quite had that experience again. And I’ve probably built it up in my memory to an unasailable extent. But the sound of a good gospel choir in full voice can still have a magical effect.

For a while I had difficulty assimilating my love of gospel music with the fact that I am not “a believer”, but over the years I have become more relaxed about it. I might not believe the literal details of the Bible story or in an almighty God, but then in that regard I am probably in the company of many vicars in this land. What I have become a lot more comfortable with is the idea that there is some kind of spirit out there somewhere, a feeling that has inspired all that great art and music and writing, if nothing else. It might be of human creation rather than God’s, but that’s fine.

I certainly have some inkling of the possibility of its existence when a group of people come together to sing. It could be the extraordinary artistry of The Sixteen, the King’s College Choir or Take 6. Or it could be the ragged bunch of mainly elderlies like me who gather together on a Tuesday evening – in good times in a school hall; in hard times in our own homes – to sing our hearts out.

Pages read: almost none

Minutes spent online: not that many either

Hours slept: 7

Exercise taken: Gosh, is that the time? I must go for a walk.