Things were going poorly at Faith Celebration Choir's final rehearsal before its big national showdown in Detroit this weekend.
Choir director Michael Nickelson stood in front of the 85 members of his choir on Faith Baptist Church's stage on Wednesday night, trying to figure out which alto was responsible for the sloppy diction he heard.
"Someone in this area is screwing it up in a major way," Nickelson said, stopping the song, and pointing his finger at a group of women in jeans and T-shirts. "This time listen. Because I'm about to get fired up."
Faith Celebration's big night was only 72 hours away, and poor diction was only one of its problems. The entire group's timing was off as it swayed to the rhythm of the same black gospel classic that propelled this all-white choir to the top of the St. Louis gospel world in September. They were rushing through the song's second verse. Feedback marred the sound of the piano and organ.
By the end of the night, Nickelson blamed the mayhem on "jitters."
"The last rehearsal is always the worst," he told the group, hoping to buck up their spirits. "Then we come in at showtime and we knock it out of the park."
That's exactly what happened six weeks ago when 7,000 gospel fans rose to their feet as Faith Celebration members sang Andrae Crouch's "Soon and Very Soon" at the Scottrade Center.
St. Louis was the second of 11 regional competitions in the Verizon Wireless "How Sweet the Sound: The Search for the Best Church Choir in America." Eight choirs -- four small and four large -- competed in each city, for a chance to travel to Detroit for the national finals and $25,000.
The choirs are from Detroit, Houston, Washington, Newark, N.J., Philadelphia, Chicago, Atlanta, Memphis, Los Angeles and Oakland, Calif.
In St. Louis, Faith Celebration won awards for best large choir, and best overall choir. But what most moved the members of Faith Celebration: The "audience favorite" award, bestowed on them by the overwhelmingly African-American crowd.
It was a heartbreakingly brief moment of racial harmony, and as soon as it was over, the Festus choir knew that in Detroit, they'd again be long shots. Indeed, they are the only all-white choir in the finals, but the plan for the sold-out, 12,000-seat Joe Louis Arena in Detroit would be the same as it was in St. Louis:
Come to the stage in long, black evening gowns and tuxedoes. Stand very still through the first verse -- chests out and heads held high. Sing it straight and clear.
By verse three, fully assume the identity of a traditional black gospel choir, singing in the style the audience grew up with in church. Clap your hands. Move your bodies. Rock the house. And bank on the element of surprise.
After the Scottrade Center event in September, a Post-Dispatch reader wrote a blog comment about Faith Celebration's big win: "Festus? Seriously? Who knew people in Festus had soul?"
Gospel music, as it's heard in African-American churches today, was born in the 1930s, when Thomas Dorsey coupled the New Testament message of the Gospels -- the "good news" -- with the blues tradition.
"It was knocked at first by many church pastors, but it was so infectious, and it gave individual people an opportunity to sing together," said the Rev. Milton Biggham, pastor of Mount Vernon Baptist Church in Newark, N.J., a Grammy Award-winning gospel artist and producer and the executive director of Savoy Records. "It was the right thing for the church."
The church, Biggham said, is "the heart of the black community, and because it is, the choir becomes the heart of that heart every Sunday."
African-Americans are the most religiously committed racial or ethnic group in the nation, according to polls taken by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.
Pew found that eight in 10 African-Americans say religion is very important in their lives, compared with 56 percent of all U.S. adults. The poll found that while 39 percent of Americans report attending religious services at least once a week, 53 percent of African-Americans report the same.
"The church is the strongest institution within the black community," said Biggham. "So as long as church is alive and well -- and it is -- choirs will be alive and well -- and they are."
The secret behind the popularity of church choirs, Biggham said, is the collective force of its members.
"There are so many people who are gifted individually, but who cannot get their talent out as individuals," he said. "But they can come together as a choir, and where there's unity, there's strength."
The popularity of gospel music among African-Americans has only grown since Dorsey's time. Black Entertainment Television features a show called "Sunday Best," an "American Idol"-like take on gospel music. The Gospel Music Channel features a similar show called "Gospel Dream."
And, like Verizon Wireless, corporations have found gospel choir competitions an effective way of reaching African-Americans. There's the McDonald's Gospelfest, the Allstate Gospel Superfest and the Pathmark Gospel Choir Competition, from the East Coast grocery store chain.
Given the popularity of gospel music, it shouldn't be surprising that a genre that began among blacks is being appreciated, and appropriated, by whites. Both rock 'n' roll and hip-hop are examples of genres where that's already happened.
When Nickelson first received the invitation to submit a video audition for Faith Celebration, he threw it away, thinking "How Sweet the Sound" was directed only at black churches. But his pastor picked the invitation out of the trash and suggested that Nickelson enter the competition anyway.
He did, and Faith Celebration was chosen as one of eight in the area to compete at Scottrade. But after several rehearsals this summer, Nickelson felt the choir's rendition of "Soon and Very Soon" lacked something.
Nickelson found the spark he was seeking a few weeks before the competition, during coverage of Michael Jackson's memorial service. He noticed that as the singer's casket was brought into the Staples Center, a choir sang "Soon and Very Soon."
"They started slow and built the tempo up to the third verse, " Nickelson said. "I thought, 'We've got to try that.'"
That was the element of surprise that brought the house down at the Scottrade Center.
"When they went into the second verse, the crowd erupted," said the Rev. Marvin Sapp, a Michigan pastor and gospel superstar who is a "How Sweet the Sound" judge.
"Soon and Very Soon" was also the right emotional choice for the choir. Crouch's song represents the beginning, in the 1970s, of gospel music "breaking through the four walls of the black church and into secular radio," said Sapp.
"That song was a traditional mainstay of very local (black) churches, no matter what the denomination," he continued. "When (Faith Celebration) broke into that last verse, I started to cry. I remembered being 10 years old and hearing Andrae singing it for the first time."
The choir had something of a dress rehearsal at last month's Freedom Fund Awards banquet, thrown by the East St. Louis chapter of the NAACP at the Millennium Hotel in St. Louis.
The evening's theme was "Together We Rise, United For Change," and organizers said Faith Celebration was invited, in the wake of its win at Scottrade, precisely because its members are white.
"This is what the NAACP is all about," said the Rev. Johnny Scott, president of the East St. Louis chapter. "Our nation is a mess because of racial divisions. We believe in trying to bring people together. We have to be black and white together."
After President Barack Obama's election, some commentators spoke, hopefully, of a post-racial society. But much can happen in a year.
Numbers from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data show that African-American workers have lost jobs at a rate 50 percent higher than white employees over the last two years.
A crushing economy can further weaken already creaky racial bridges. Obama's reaction to the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. this summer made race national water-cooler conversation this summer. President Jimmy Carter suggested that racism was at the root of the virulent opposition to many of Obama's recent policy proposals.
Faith Celebration members know that for a moment, six weeks ago, they played a part in making a room of 7,000 people feel good about race in America. Of course, each of them gives the credit for that feeling to God, and they hoped, on Saturday night, they could bring that feeling back.
"There are 10 other choirs on the show," said Sapp. "But if they do what they did that night in St. Louis, they have a good chance of winning it all."
Source: St. Louis Post Dispatch | Tim Townsend
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