When Donald Du Laney first introduced the notion of a Gospel service at Grace, around 2007, it was presented as a workshop experience, an opportunity for the choir to learn a musical style that was new to some of us. Donald also extended an invitation to the congregation and the wider Grace community to join the choir for this event. How pleased we were to see the choir ranks swell even in those early days.
The amount of work was daunting; there were complex rhythms, polyrhythms, harmonies, and syncopations that had some of us—well, me at least—scratching our heads. Knowing how challenging some of the music would be, Donald recorded and distributed MIDI rehearsal files for all of the parts, then found performance recordings that would help us get a sense of how the music should sound. To this day, though, I still get that “deer in the headlights” sensation in the early days of rehearsing new pieces.
Other contributors to this issue will tell you about how joyful an experience it has been to participate in over a decade’s worth of Gospel Music Celebrations, and it has been for me as well. But the value of participating in this event goes beyond the joy and fun and satisfaction of having all the hard work of rehearsal come together on Gospel Sunday.
Gospel music is the product of a life experience that is different from the one in which I was raised and the one in which I still live. For the first few years of the Gospel Music Celebration, I harbored a sensation that what I was doing was cultural appropriation. I hadn’t earned the right to sing songs with these lyrics, and never would.
Then, in 2013, with the murder of Trayvon Martin, the Black Lives Matter era began to shine a light on the Black experience in the United States. I heard and read more than one person of color saying that I should educate myself, to the extent that I could, on that experience. Reading books like Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns and Jemar Tisby’s Reading While Black helped. But Gospel music adds layers of nuance to one’s understanding of that experience.
Gospel music celebrates the goodness, might, power, majesty, and praiseworthiness of our God. It calls those gathered to clap hands, raise hands, stomp feet, and shout to the glory and praise of God. Gospel music also highlights human vulnerability. It gives permission to say “How long?” Its creators have walked through valleys, storms, and deserts. They have endured calamity, trials, and temptations. In Gospel music, God is always there to see them through. God gives blessed assurance, and in response they say “Hallelujah,” knowing as they do that deliverance might not come in this lifetime, but it will come.
Praise God for Gospel music. Even though some of us will never inhabit the experiences it arises from, we know that some have, and some still do, yet we can all sing it in the knowledge that God’s Spirit will take those experiences and use them to strengthen, encourage, and uplift singers and listeners of all backgrounds.
© 2024 by Pat Walsh