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"My singing, trust and courage too - several huge strides that I'm thrilled about, but also I learned a whole lot about listening, needing to be heard and being heard which will be useful in meetings, in the classroom and at choir."
They entered skeptically...They entered passively...They entered uncertainly...The disparate group, mostly members of the Elderhostel at Savannah State College, came to learn, to absorb. But they didn't know Barnwell very well...Their lips once shy, so quiet, began to move. Eyes forward, feet tapping, the men and women...were finding their voice. -Fishman, Morning News
Thank you so much for sharing your music, your joy, and your spirit with us. You encouraged me to sing with all of my heart and all of my soul and for that I will be forever grateful.
I want to tell you how wonderful your "community voice" chorus is! Every time I participate, I feel inspired. It is "solidarity" in a real sense. If we can sing together, we can make a better world together!" - Ken Giles, Wash. DC
GLORIOUS
Every time I try to
find words for the Sweet Honey Community Chorus
experience the word GLORIOUS insists on center stage. Every Tuesday
I drive across
the city to a small auditorium with 159 sister and some fellow
singers and
spend two hours immersed in the sound and spirit of the legendary
Ysaye Barnwell
and her sisters in Sweet Honey. We are the lucky members of Ysaye’s
newest
experiment in vocal community, a semester long non-auditioned
course culminating
in a performance with Sweet Honey at the Clarice Smith Arts Center,
the
University of Maryland’s grand new performing arts facility.
On December 9 our class will sing selections from the large body
of
African American music Ysaye has taught and will perform the choral
parts in the
premiere of the Nativity, a work commissioned by the American
Bible Society that
Sweet Honey’s members composed and recorded on video. This
will be the first
live performance of the Nativity and the first to include the
choral parts. We
are learning all the music by ear, tape recording each class for
practice and
having a truly glorious time.
Is it glorious because we are led by such a brilliant, patient
teacher ?
Ysaye’s warmth and virtuosity certainly shines at the center
of this
experience she envisioned for us. And the privilege of learning
from all the generous,
talented women of Sweet Honey is almost stunning. We have the
chance to
witness their personal community in action, their sisterhood,
love and respect for
one another shines through the sometimes frustrating and difficult
work of
transferring their elegant compositions to our mostly untutored,
amateur voices.
As they help us find notes and harmonies they can hear in their
sleep, they are
to a woman unique, funny and kind. With each other they have the
familiar
ease of sisters who’ve long ago worked out the kinks in their
relationships and
to us they offer support and patience. So that’s definitely
part of the
gloriousness, the modeling and shaping of a loving community working
together for a
common purpose. But somehow it is more, teasingly more, that makes
that word
resound in my head and heart.
So I looked up glorious and found synonyms like “splendid,
gorgeous,
magnificent, proud, resplendent, splendiferous, splendorous, sublime,
superb” and
they fit. Sweet Honey has always portrayed magnificence, splendor
and pride in
their song and spirit. I sought the “related words”
and those were “eminent,
illustrious, grand, impressive, lavish, luxurious, royal, sumptuous,
divine,
exquisite, lovely, incomparable, matchless, peerless, superlative,
supreme,
unparalleled, surpassing, transcendent. ” They fit, too.
Then I looked at the
opposites offered by my thesaurus, “common, ordinary, run-of-the-mill,
dreary,
dull, humdrum, monotonous, tedious, inferior.” Funnily, I
here found a hint.
This class is glorious because it is all those lovely words and
not all those
dreary words but more because it is SO uncommon, SO nonordinary,
SO uniquely
the best of what it can be.
Ysaye’s dream is being realized every week, a dream she dreams
for all of
us, to come together, black, white, brown, female, male, gay,
straight, young
and old and to forge a beloved community in song. And we do, every
week. We
come in tired and hassled from work, traffic, children, parking,
some of us
feeling nonmusical and tin eared. And, somehow, she works a miracle
and we come
to life as our better selves, singing, laughing, waiting patiently,
containing
our many questions and needs for the good of all. Within minutes
we are
entranced with her, the music and the sound of our collective
voice. We are part of
every part, our energies focused on whatever section is struggling
to master a
tricky passage and listening hard for our own small contribution
to this
kaleidesope of sound. We sing “I am determined to walk in
freedom...” and I hear
echoes of the many courageous people who did indeed “walk
in freedom” to the
betterment of us all. I think of the tired, hopeful resolution
of oppressed
people singing “I feel like going on, though trials mount
on every hand, I feel
like going on” and I know this is sacred music I am singing,
music imbued with
heartbreak and bloodshed and pain but music filled with hope and
always a
hint of joy unseen, lurking amid the devastation. This is the
glory, the history
we celebrate, the love we hope for and the chance to be a part
of something
where deed matches creed, where we are led with gentleness to
be our most
joyful, loving selves.
It is a great honor to be a part of the Sweet Honey Community
Chorus for
many reasons. The music is infused with spirit as well as beauty
and the
Sweet Honeys are amazing in their talent and generosity. And Ysaye,
always Ysaye
at the center. She is such a Renaissance woman it is hard to list
all her
stunning qualities, her four octave range and incredible musicianship,
her
brilliant teaching and remarkably steady humor and patience and
most of all her unique
vision of the “vocal community,” a metaphor for all
community, in which each
voice is honored and respected and each person works to bring
the group’s
creation to life. So it is glorious because each week, through
magnificent
spirit-filled music, it reminds me of what human beings can be
and do together, of
what joy exists in community and of how spendid the world can
be when we
become, as Sweet Honey, a community of people with dreams.
