Lift Every Voice

‘Hey, why don’t you come sing in our choir!’ the choir director
says to a likely-looking young man. ‘I’d love to,’ he answers
sadly, ‘but I can’t sing a note.’ Or maybe he says, ‘I’m completely
tone deaf.’ Or ‘I can’t carry a tune in a bucket!’

That exchange, in all its variations, is all too familiar to Shivon
Robinsong, Val Rogers, and Karen Mihalyi, pioneers of the budding
community choir movement. People everywhere want to sing–would
dearly love to sing–but they’re convinced they can’t.

Well, they’re just plain wrong, says Robinsong, co-director of the
250-voice Gettin’ Higher Choir in Victoria, British Columbia.
Everyone can sing. And everyone–the self-proclaimed nonsingers, the
physically and mentally handicapped, people of all races and sexual
persuasions–is welcome in her choir.

They’re also welcome in the Eugene Peace Chorus in Oregon, the
Seattle Labor Chorus, the Syracuse Community Choir in New York, the
Labor Heritage Rockin’ Solidarity Chorus of the Bay Area, and
countless other community choirs across the country. Inclusiveness
is part of what sets the community choirs apart from traditional
choirs. That, and a serious intention to change the world.

‘These choirs are creating a new paradigm for choral singing,’ says
Val Rogers, director of the Eugene Peace Chorus. ‘We’re motivated
by much more than aesthetics alone. We’re singing for liberation,
singing for a better society, to reinforce values that are vital to
us, and to reclaim some of our cultural commons.’

But if we’re so eager to sing, why are most of us so bashful about
it?

It’s only in the past few decades that we’ve started to believe we
can’t sing, Shivon Robinsong says–a belief that coincides with the
rise of commercial, studio-enhanced recorded music. Like the woman
who thinks her body is unacceptable because she doesn’t look like
an airbrushed supermodel, many of us assume that if we don’t sound
like Whitney Houston or Garth Brooks, we shouldn’t open our
mouths.

But if we leave singing to the professionals, if we acquiesce in
the silencing of our own song, we’ve surrendered an essential
source of what Robinsong calls ‘soul nutrient.’

Robinsong herself knows how painful that silence feels. Until just
a few years ago she had serious doubts about her own voice,
commonly describing herself as the only nonmusical member of a
musical family. Then one day the people in her small community on
Cortes Island, British Columbia, began to get excited about forming
a choir. There was just one problem–no one knew how to direct a
choir. Hesitantly, Robinsong agreed to try, though she couldn’t
even read music at the time.

Well, the choir thrived. So when Robinsong moved to Victoria a few
years later, she founded the Gettin’ Higher Choir based on a
philosophy quite different from that of the choirs most of us
remember from school. There are no auditions, no rejections, and no
required number of rehearsals. Members simply pay a fee to belong
to the choir for a 12-week session (which usually includes a
concert), and many scholarships are available. Most important,
anyone who wants to sing is welcome, including those who say
they’re tone deaf or can’t sing.

‘Especially them!’ Robinsong says with a proselytizing gleam in her
eye.

In many traditional societies, she points out, there’s no concept
of a non-singer. ‘Your voice is simply your voice,’ she tells choir
members and anyone else who will listen, ‘like your nose is your
nose. It’s nothing to worry over.’

Just as important as the joy of singing, community choristers seem
to agree, is the politics of it. The view of singing as empowering,
as building community, as carrying forth a vital social message has
deep, strong roots in the African American tradition and the labor
movement, Val Rogers points out. These movements have
cross-pollinated and spawned not only the thriving gay and lesbian
choruses of recent years, but also the larger community choir
movement as well.

The chance to be a part of that mission–and the magic of singing
with one voice–is what brings singers to rehearsals week after
week. ‘Our modern lives often feel sterile,’ says Rogers. ‘Creating
beauty in a group is a powerful antidote to that feeling.’

From Yes! A Journal of Positive Futures
(Fall 2001). Subscriptions: $24/yr. (4 issues) from Box 10818,
Bainbridge Island, WA 98110.