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The Choir With No Name

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For those who accuse choral music of being a hobby of the leisure class, here’s a choir composed of homeless people:
 
 
Chris Cottam is the director.

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  1. Brother Tim,
    (have a habit of adressing males whom I know to be empathic humans as my brothers)
     
    That is SUCH GOOD NEWS!  I’m now excited to attend the Chicago convention and I am attending this year.  And I definitely accept your invite to meet at the back of that room to discuss heartfeltness, catharsis, “heart-healing,” and what I’ve laid on medical science folk with whom I’ve spoken about sung music’s benefits–neuropsychobiological homeostasis. [Their faces light up pert dang big on that one]
     
    From reading several of your writings, I’ve sensed that you are (and will continue) breathing wonderful LIFE into ACDA. For everybody’s sake, please keep up that GOOD WORK.
     
    See you at the back of the room. 
     
    Be well,
    Brother Leon
     
    PS. While I’m writing to you, anyway:  Since the late 70s, I’ve had surreptitious conversations with socially sensitive ACDA friends about the lilly-whiteness of ACDA and the tacet exclusion of African American Gospel Choirs and their conductors (and other ethnic choral genres) from convention programs and from the standing committees, in spite of the fact that the ACDA By-Laws assert that ACDA is an organization that is for all choral directors, choirs, and choral music.  I’ve had arguments with a few ACDA members who said they didn’t want to hear that kind of music at ACDA conventions.  On one occasion, I told the person that he was actually in agreement with the writers of the ACDA By-Laws, and then I produced a copy of said By-Laws and read the purpose clause out loud.  But when I came to the “all choral music” part, I inserted, with a straight face, “…except choirs that sing Black Gospel music and whose members include 50% or more of Black singers.”  [Silence]  “Let me see that.”  [Perspicacity strikes]  I bet you’re moving on that one, too, I suspect.
     
    PSS. There is a beautiful woman who lives in a suburb of Chicago, and her lovely home will be my free housing for the convention, and, oh yes, she is Pat Clancy who sings in her Unitarian-Universalist Church Choir, and is the woman I Love.  A few weeks before the Oklahoma City convention, we rediscovered each other on Facebook (dated in the late 60s, early 70s). On my way to OKC, I had a 2-hr layover at Midway and we met and talked for the first time in a couple of decades.  We rediscovered how much we just really liked each other, and we are both now in a wholly unexpected beautiful and ever more deeply loving relationship.  Not sure why, but thought you might find that a bit interesting.
     

  2. Hi Leon,
     
    Indeed, there will be such a choir at the upcoming ACDA Chicago National Conference. It was an intentional invitation on the part of the audition committee in consultation witht the program committee. Those attending this year’s National Conference will experience the joy of witnessing this aspect of our choral music making, and I feel confident that, as you say, “they will move people to feel deeply what it means to be human beings on this Earth.”  Let’s agree to meet at the back of the room after this session and see if we agree that this is what happened.

  3. This statement just needs to be in this thread!
     
    The Oakdale choir experience made me a changed man »
    Date: December 17, 2010
    Kenneth Bailey • Community Music • December 5, 2010

    When I considered writing this article, I was unsure what to write. Should I write about how the Oakdale Community Choir has brought about a change in me, a convicted felon? I easily could write a summary of the great opportunities I’ve had while with the choir, but would you believe me if I did? Is it even right for an incarcerated man to boast or show happiness? I’d like to think as a human I’m allowed a little happiness and a smile.

    Dr. Mary Cohen, assistant professor of music at the University of Iowa, and I have collaborated on three songs during my chorale experience with her as my director: “Crossroads,” “May the Stars Remember Your Name” and “Whispers from the Dawn” (which is being performed by the choir at our winter concert). From the small gymnasium at Oakdale where “May the Stars Remember Your Name” first debuted, it has made its way to China, where Cohen played a small excerpt before an audience at an international music conference. Through Meade Palidofsky, the song has journeyed to the Illinois Youth Center-Warrenville, and from there into the hands of Ricardo Muti and Yo-Yo Ma. The path from a prison into the hands of two world-renowned musicians truly is a blessing.

    The amount of creativity we are asked to explore is one of the greatest concepts of this choir. Original songs have blossomed with the compassion and musical knowledge of Cohen. She not only has allowed our voices to blend but our experiences as well. We are able to learn of life through one another’s words. I only have spoken of songs I helped create, but I will say in my opinion, fellow choir members have composed far greater works than I. To those authors I say thank you.

    Simply put, the Oakdale Community Choir has changed me inside and out. I’ve developed a sense of community and society that I’m sad to say I lacked before prison. It’s caused a return to values I was taught as a child. Values, which I feel are unavailable for partition to be bought and sold on the chopping block. I’ve opened my eyes to the scenes around me, and I have witnessed true generosity in the faces of those volunteers that choose to come inside these fences and sing with us. It’s with their encouragement that I continue to better myself, a process I seek to never end.

    More: http://www.press-citizen.com/article/20101205/NEWS…

  4. I just love the way you write, my brother Steven Szalaj!  In my next post on this thread, there will be a copy of a statement by a prisoner who sings in a prison-community choir that is led by Dr. Mary Cohen, mentioned in my earlier post, who also is a member of VoiceCare Network. 
     
    This gives me an opportunity to thank you, once again, for suggesting my favorite type of positive feedback at the late 90s VoiceCare Network Continuing Course where you handed it to me, written on a scrap piece of paper:  Emotional Tickles. 
     
    Don’t know if you know this, but it was included–with credit to you–in the 2000 revised edition of Bodymind and Voice.  It’s on page 227 of Volume 1.
     
    Keep up the undoubtedly fine work that you are doing, and be well.
    Leon

  5. Amen, Leon, Amen.
     
    How often do we in the arts act as if people exist to serve the art, rather than the art existing to express and facilitate our needs, desires, connections, spirit…life.

  6. This leaves me in deep-felt awe. 
     
    So do older adult choirs like Young @ Heart (Massachusetts, I think) and The GoldenTones, led by ChoralNet member Lana Mountford (Washington), and MANY other older adult choirs in the world.  Prison choirs leave me that way, too [contact Mary Cohen at U of Iowa and Bea Hasselmann in Minneapolis (youth prison choir in Red Wing MN–unbelievably good work, there)].  Our culture hugely needs to take in models of expressive, empathic relatedness between human beings, to counteract a widely growing ‘culture of disrespect.’
     
    Open note to Tim Sharp and the ACDA Board of Directors:  Would there ever be a chance that each National convention could issue special performance invitations to choirs that perform special expressive services for people who have deeper human needs for, as Tim said in his Choral Director interview, “…that emotional and cathartic expression that people need.”  Could one performance segment at the 2013 convention be devoted to performances by two or three such choirs.  Could funds be raised/supplied for their expenses?  They won’t present models of so-called ‘best choral performances,’ but they will move people to feel deeply what it means to be human beings on this Earth.

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