Twenty members of the South Bend Symphonic Choir will sing along with four local gospel soloists. A string quintet from the South Bend Symphony Orchestra will play alongside a gospel keyboardist, bass player and drummer. And two drummers will pound out a beat as the choir sings and a local African troupe dances.<\/p>\n
\u201cLifting Our Voices: A Celebration of African American Music and Dance\u201d starts at 7 p.m. Aug. 13 as one of the free weekly outdoor performances on summer Saturdays at Potawatomi\u2019s Chris Wilson Pavilion. The Community Foundation of St. Joseph County arranges the Saturday series.<\/p>\n
“Lifting Our Voices\u201d springs from the orchestra\u2019s annual concert to mark the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday that Marvin Curtis, dean emeritus of IU South Bend\u2019s Raclin School of the Arts, had co-founded and led since 2010.<\/p>\n
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This winter, instead of performing in a large music hall, Curtis split the event into three concerts in Black churches in South Bend where church choirs sang to a woodwind quintet\u2019s instrumentals. He wanted to bring the music to its real home.<\/p>\n
Laura Moran Walton dropped in on the concert at Faith Alive Ministries and found, \u201cIt was nothing short of amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n
So moved, she invited Curtis to replicate the \u201cjoyful, uplifting experience\u201d in the Potawatomi series that she helps to organize in her role as the Community Foundation\u2019s vice president of communication and public relations.<\/p>\n
Curtis replied: Why not add dance?<\/p>\n
\u201cBlack people do more than gospels,\u201d he explains. \u201cI wanted people to understand how music got there and how dance got there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stories in the songs
\nBetween conducting most of the music, Curtis will also narrate, adding context and African history to language in the spirituals.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s important to me to give context not only to the songs but to the place of African Americans,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
When he was growing up, he recalls, he was ashamed to hear old songs with words like \u201cdese\u201d and \u201cdose\u201d rather than \u201cthese\u201d and \u201cthose.\u201d He didn\u2019t talk like that. White culture told him that was because Black people had big lips and tongues. Wrong. He explains that songs came about from slaves who, because of their native languages, had a phonetic problem with the \u201cth\u201d sound. Also, slaves learned English from slave masters who often were illiterate themselves, Curtis says.<\/p>\n
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The songwriters were, in fact, clever, often using coded language, he says, with lyrics about following a \u201cdrinking gourd\u201d as code for the Big Dipper to navigate routes to freedom.<\/p>\n
By breaking down fallacies, he says, \u201cPeople get to understand the differences are not what they thought they were.\u201d<\/p>\n
The park setting, Walton says, makes the music and culture more accessible, as it does for other parts of the series. It\u2019s free. It\u2019s ADA accessible. It\u2019s on two bus lines. And it has a nearby playground in case kids get fidgety.<\/p>\n
The concerts draw anywhere from 300 to 500 people in the audience for many performances and up to nearly 1,300 for the full South Bend Symphony Orchestra\u2019s concert.<\/p>\n
And to make the concert even more accessible, radio station WUBS-FM (89.7) will broadcast part of \u201cLifting Our Voices\u201d live from the park.<\/p>\n
Music to move you
\nKelly Burg\u00e9t and her local African dance troupe, UZIMA, will dance to two songs as two drummers pound out the beat: \u201cKuku,\u201d a West African piece that celebrates harvesting food for the community, and \u201cYesu Azali Awa,\u201d or \u201cJesus is Here,\u201d which is from the Democratic Republic of Congo.<\/p>\n
The orchestra\u2019s string quartet will do selections from two Black composers: Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and William Grant Still, who\u2019s often called the \u201cdean of African American composers.\u201d<\/p>\n
Curtis will conduct the choir in singing the traditional spirituals “I\u2019ve been \u2018Buked,\u201d (\u2018buked is short for rebuked) and \u201cAin\u2019t Got Time to Die.\u201d The late, noted Black composer Francis Hall Johnson had done choral arrangements for both songs<\/p>\n
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Music and youth pastor Turrell O\u2019Neal, who led his choir from Sweet Home Ministries in the winter concerts, has helped to select gospel songs and train the choir, and he\u2019ll conduct one or two pieces on stage.<\/p>\n
One of those songs, \u201cLook and Live,\u201d is one that his Sweet Home choir had performed for the King holiday concerts. He says the piece by Detroit area chorale director Michael Fletcher is known to both those who know classic hymns and those who know gospel music.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wanted to do something recognizable,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s an upbeat, happy-feeling song. You can clap your hands, tap your feet, nod your head.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another piece is \u201cJesus, You\u2019re the Center of My Joy,\u201d a slow ballad that has become a traditional worship song. It’s written by Richard Smallwood, whom O\u2019Neal describes as a \u201cstaple in gospel music.\u201d<\/p>\n
Curtis also credits choir member CreAnne Mwale for conducting a piece and pitching in as a soloist.<\/p>\n
Learning experience
\nThe King holiday concerts filled more than half of the church seats. O\u2019Neal saw diverse audiences, including people such as SBSO Music Director Alastair Willis and other people from the community that he doesn\u2019t normally see in church. Likewise, he recalls, it marked the first time his pastor heard the orchestra.<\/p>\n
There are plans to repeat the church concerts for next year\u2019s King holiday.<\/p>\n
Like those events, the Potawatomi concert is exposing all of the performers to diverse and different ways of doing music. Classical orchestras and choirs work from sheet music. By contrast, gospel choirs tend to learn songs orally and commit them to memory.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been a learning experience for all of those involved,\u201d O\u2019Neil says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In a 70-minute musical mash-up under the towering trees at South Bend\u2019s Potawatomi Park, Black roots will meet the strings of a classical concert hall.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12963,"featured_media":14430,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,31],"tags":[7,14,32],"class_list":{"0":"post-14433","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"category-music","9":"tag-apie-project","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-music"},"yoast_head":"\n