THE SCORE 🎶

Most people in the United States and elsewhere grow up with music as a learning tool. We sing our ABC’s and learn the C Major scale singing Do-Re-Mi. Untold numbers of people recall vaguely how a bill gets to Congress or the function of a conjunction all because of Schoolhouse Rock, a musical education series (with some truly egregious earworms) first airing from 1976 to 1985 between Saturday morning cartoons on ABC. While learning things with a catchy song featured largely in our early lives, most adults abandon musical learning as they age – which is a shame because the tools that first taught us still work.

Dr. Daniel L. Bowling, Director of the Music, Brain, and Health Lab at Stanford School of Medicine, describes music as a time machine, allowing the parts of our brains that process sound to synchronize with the parts that process emotions and memory. Music goes from being the soundtrack of our external memories to being a way our internal stores meaningful, emotional connections. This is why doctors in Bangalore began working with music as post brain injury therapy, teaching stroke survivors to tap beats, speak in rhythm and then encouraging them to sing words into phrases and sentences. This isn’t just listening to music, though listening to songs does have its own well-researched and documented effects, especially for people living with dementia. No, this is singing – participating in a whole-brain way using rhythm and meter, lyrics and melody. The things that we sing, we remember.

If you want to remember a short grocery list without paper? Sing it. If you need to remember the directions somewhere? Set your freeway exits and turns to a simple tune like Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star. If you have a verse from Psalms or Isaiah which brings your heart comfort during the chaos and noise of a rough patch in your life, set it to the tune of a favorite and familiar hymn. The things that we sing, we remember. Music can move beyond merely being the soundtrack of our lives to being a vault – holding the song of our souls, and the meditations of our hearts.

More on this topic from Yale University.

(Was your elementary or middle school one of those that required “vacation reports” the first week of school? If so, welcome back, students! If not, you lucky, incredibly lucky ducks…)

What’s a summer without summer concerts? The Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir kicked off their annual visit to the far end of Alameda County at the Bankhead on the 27th. The mood was upbeat and the audience was clearly excited to be there before the concert even began, though we noted that four years in to their annual concerts at The Bankhead, the crowd was much smaller this year.

After an ebullient welcome by director Terrence Kelly, the concert started with “Clap Your Hands, All Ye People,” and segued into Richard Smallwood’s “Total Praise,” one of FPCL’s own favorites. Standout performances included Fred Hammond’s “When the Spirit of the Lord” and “We Shall Overcome,” which the crowd sang along to with gusto, joined hands raised. Much of the joy of the concert came from being invited to sing along, to dance in the aisles, and to generally make a joyful noise and add to the merry mayhem of the tumult of praise. It was definitely loud, but definitely fun.

As has been the case with many non-profit arts programs in this current political climate, OIGC has hemorrhaged support for their choir and the youth choir they sponsor, reflecting the cuts to the National Endowment for the Arts and other funding bodies. This, however, has not dimmed their joy nor slowed their steps, and they danced into – and out of – the theater, leaving our hearts lighter.

We saw many from FPCL, including some of you (Hi, Dr. Jennifer!), but for those who missed the show or want a second helping, Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir opens for Tower of Power at the Alameda County Fairgrounds July 2nd. If you need an injection of joy, theirs is a gift like none other.

Happy Summer! 🌻 Sing on!

(P.S. – You are cordially invited to share what concerts YOU’RE hearing this summer! Meanwhile, enjoy a tiny taste of OIGC from their first appearance at The Bankhead.)

“…in summer, the song sings itself.”

– William Carlos Willams

It’s not exactly a little night music, but now that you’ve got a that post-solstice light extending your later afternoon/early evenings, you could make time for the Golden Gate International Choral Festival, July 13-18. The theme of annual international festival, sponsored by the Piedmont East Bay Children’s Choir is “Sing the World.” The choral festival begins with a 4PM kick-off concert Monday in Walnut Creek, continues with a series of “spotlight concerts” from individual local and international choirs throughout the week in Oakland, Berkeley, and San Francisco, and then closes with another mass concert featuring singers, dancers, and international costume at the glitzy white LDS Interstake Center, aka “Temple Hill,” in Oakland.

Hearing children’s choirs is generally wildly entertaining to begin with, but dragging along kids and grandkids helps to ensure the future of choral music. After all, we have to get the next crop of singers from somewhere!

Meanwhile, if you’re missing your usual Thursday night music, here’s a little something with familiar voices to keep you company.

The long-held myth goes that on June 19, 1865, Union gen­eral Gordon Granger stood on the balcony of Ashton Villa in Galveston, Texas, and read the order that announced the end of slavery. Though no contemporaneous evidence exists to specifically support the claim, the story of General Granger reading from the balcony embedded itself into local folklore. On this day each year, as part of Galveston’s Juneteenth program, a reenactor from the Sons of Union Veterans reads the proclamation at Ashton Villa while an audience looks on. It is an annual moment that has taken a myth and turned it into tradition.

– from the book, How the Word Is Passed, by Clint Smith (as printed in The Paris Review). Copyright © 2021, Little, Brown and Company, New York, NY.

Most Americans outside of Texas did not learn this history in school, and many more only first heard of it when became an official U.S. federal holiday on June 17, 2021, when Joe Biden signed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act into law. Some people don’t understand why this is a holiday at all, much less a federal one, but in the words of Fannie Lou Hamer, the Civil Rights figure who was fired from her job in 1962 after attempting to register to vote, “Nobody’s free until everybody’s free.” This holiday is a reminder not just in historical terms but in present terms as well – liberation for some is meaningless without “liberty and justice for all.” Restated in Christian terms, may Juneteenth be a reminder that every individual in all of humanity is made in the image of God, designed to flourish, and extended a holy welcome to life and joy in God.

It’s a tiny bit of irony that Loving Day falls during Pride Month.

In 1958 a white man named Richard Loving and a Black and Native woman named Mildred Jeter got married in Washington, D.C. On their wedding night in Virginia, they were awakened with the door kicked down, flashlights in their faces, and officers asking Richard who the woman was with whom he was sleeping. Mildred insisted, “I’m his wife!” To which the sheriff replied, “Not here, you’re not.” Cuffed, Richard and Mildred were dragged away, in pajamas. Interracial marriage was illegal in Virginia where they were from… which was why they’d gotten married in D.C. to begin with (The license plate state motto “Virginia is for Lovers” is kind of a head-shaker, in retrospect).

After a terrifying night and a humiliating trial, the Lovings were given the option of a year in jail for both, or face twenty-five years exile from the State. Of course, they took exile. It wasn’t any easier in D.C., unfortunately. Sure, marriage was “legal” in D.C. and in many American states, but legal is sometimes just a word on a piece of paper. Many white Americans weren’t eager to create community with, support or to help Black people in 1958, nor were they eager to mix socially or economically with a crazy white man who got involved with them. After several years, exhausted by a life separated from their families where they couldn’t find decent housing, good jobs, or to basically exist without racist interference, the Lovings decided to go back to Virginia – and to take the case to court. They contacted the ACLU and found a pair of Jewish lawyers willing to speak to them – another less than popular member of the American melting pot. The Lovings took their case all the way to the Supreme Court. The last anti-miscegenation law (the offensive 1864 word combines the Latin miscere (to mix) and genus (race or kind)) in America was struck down on June 12, 1967. The U.S. Supreme Court justices ruled that distinctions drawn based on race were not constitutional. The court’s decision made it clear that Virginia’s anti-miscegenation law violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

Many interracial couples and transracial adoptees celebrate Loving Day as a way to celebrate that they belong, and that their family, in whatever shades and shapes it arrives, is valid.

It’s a tiny bit of irony that Loving Day falls during Pride Month, a time where we celebrate fiercely the right of everyone to have love and create a family as they see fit, but it feels like it’s the right place to me. Here’s to the very human desire to love and to BE loved, and the gift of God who put love into our hearts before we even knew what hearts were for. 🥂Happy Loving Day. Make it a lovely one!🥂 !

If you can’t make it to New York this month, PBS’s Great Performances is sharing the full musical, “Suffs” on YouTube until July 31st! Celebrate midterms, reflect on the work of political protest that the suffragists did in the service of the 19th Amendment, and the work of equality which we still have before us, 250 years on, while enjoying this glorious historical musical by Tony award-winning singer, actress, and composer Shaina Taub.

“Keep Marching” is a wildly popular piece from the musical – and this video depicts its recording for the album in New York City. Listening to the lyrics (which are helpfully included in the full PBS performance), it’s clear how relevant they are to our current moment, and how carefully the composer worked to give both the singers and the audience the time and means to take in the meaning with repetition and building on the theme. The singers simply embody it and make it live. As the choir sings, watch how both they and the soloist create with their whole bodies – making unfortunate faces in the service of pronunciation, dropping their jaws and widening their mouths to increase their sound, shoulders dropping, bodies pulsing with their inhales and rhythmic pulses, and pencils in every hand, at the ready. They bring just so much energy to every note and phrase, opening themselves to unselfconsciously becoming the music. Their leaning into and understanding of the music is the gold standard for singers, and every composer’s goal – you can see Taub several times clutching her heart and tearing up, because it’s truly amazing.

Meanwhile, there’s much to do, friends. 🌻Keep marching.