We Who Believe
November 9, 2018: Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill
November 11, 2018: First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia
Sonja Bontrager, Lucas DeJesus, Conrad Erb, Julie Frey, Joshua Glassman, Amy Hochstetler, Michael Johnson, Elissa Kranzler, Nathan Lofton, Cortlandt Matthews, Brian Middleton, Hank Miller, John Piccolini, Rebekah Reddi, Jordan Rock, Rebecca Roy, Lizzy Schwartz, Melinda Steffy, Emily Sung, Caroline Winschel, Michele Zuckman
Hope, Ysaÿe Maria Barnwell (b. 1946)
Spiritual, Ysaÿe Maria Barnwell
A ship with unfurled sails, Gabriel Jackson (b. 1962)
Advance Democracy, Benjamin Britten (1913–1976)
What do you think I fought for at Omaha Beach?, Melissa Dunphy (b. 1980)
Mu isamaa on minu arm, Gustav Ernesaks (1908–1993)
El pueblo unido, Sergio Ortega (1938–2003), arr. Gene Glickman
she took his hands, Nicholas Cline (b. 1985)
Te Quiero, Alberto Favero (b. 1944), arr. Liliana Cangiano
we cannot leave (from Privilege), Ted Hearne (b. 1982)
Ella’s Song, Bernice Johnson Reagon (b. 1942)
Hold On! traditional spiritual, arr. Moses Hogan (1957–2003)
If you were hoping that a choir concert might represent the last apolitical space in our public sphere, you might be disappointed today. But this program is only as topical as you need it to be: singing together about revolutions isn’t especially revolutionary, as evidenced by this music that spans continents and carries the voices of earlier generations. The history of societal progress echoes with song, drawing as much from our faith in deliverance as from our need to keep motivated during the struggle.
In this context, returning to this music of progress isn’t simply affirming: it’s crucial. Raising our voices together is both our birthright and our responsibility; it is among the most intimate of public acts and one of the strongest, simplest forms of community-building. And although we are presenting these works formally, we ask that you receive them viscerally, with your whole selves. Your voice––your belief, your power, your faith, your fear––is needed if we are to grow together in community. When the call comes, sing out.
Hope
Today’s program would not be feasible without the ongoing work of Black and African American artists and teachers whose wisdom and talents infuse our contemporary understanding of both music and progress. Chief among these is Dr. Ysaÿe Maria Barnwell, a founding member of the internationally renowned vocal ensemble Sweet Honey in the Rock and a celebrated composer, choral clinician, and master teacher in the African American musical tradition. She summed up much of her teaching and composing in 2016, addressing a workshop audience in Massachusetts: “I see songs as armor when you need it. And I see songs as a blessing. We’re back to the beginning. Songs have a function. That’s what I want people to understand. They come to you when you need them.”
Viewed then as a kind of mantra, Barnwell’s “Hope” builds out of complementary layers of influences, with her timeless text juxtaposed against polyrhythms that hearken to African drumming. The repeated structure makes it easy for any of us to call upon the song when it’s needed—or even to add new calls to action.
Spiritual
With its title defining both its genre and its cultural resonance, Barnwell’s anthem “Spiritual” explores the all-too-familiar uncertainty that comes to those living through unrest. Recorded by Sweet Honey in the Rock in 1993, Barnwell’s references here are to the headlines of the late twentieth century, like the global AIDS epidemic, South African schoolchildren protesting apartheid-fueled educational policies in Soweto, and the Los Angeles police force’s brutal beating of Rodney King. The repeated refrain takes us out of time, framing our shared vulnerability against this backdrop of systemic injustice.
A ship with unfurled sails
“A ship with unfurled sails” places us in similarly uncertain territory, but here the dividing line between possibility and hope seems more tenuous, with nightfall now presaging a new beginning. The text, by Estonian poet and translator Doris Kareva, is colored by the Soviet occupation of Estonia, which achieved modern independence only in 1991. That Kareva’s long-awaited ship comes sovereign, unclaimed by any nation, indicates how deeply the strife of occupation had cut—no flag at all would be better than the standard of a hated occupier.
Gabriel Jackson’s setting of this enigmatic text grounds the poet’s own experiences in striking text painting. The haunting wavelets in the alto line keep the melody off-center, unsure, and the recognition that something glorious may be to hand––Imperceptibly all is changed. All arrives so secretly.––comes in phases, allowing for a surprising expression of pure joy before the narrator can collect herself.
Advance Democracy
In contrast to Jackson and Kareva’s uncertainty, Benjamin Britten’s “Advance Democracy” offers us pure bombast and a more direct call to action. Written in 1938, less than a year before the outbreak of World War II, “Advance Democracy” pleads for an alternative to war, with stirring text by the British poet Randall Swingler. Britten’s own pacifism is well known from his War Requiem, composed in 1962, and though “Advance Democracy” clearly reflects the composer and poet’s own pre-war anxieties, there’s a grim familiarity to the mechanisms of violence and fear as political ploys. Framed with that resonance, Britten’s darker moments carry great weight: listen for the contrast between the disjointed, staccato chant and the soaring, eerie obligato in the other voiceparts.
What do you think I fought for at Omaha Beach?
Of course, Britten and Swingler’s pleas didn’t account for the genocidal horrors being wrought elsewhere in Europe, and the world did go to war for the second time that century. That war included Philip Spooner, a Maine native who served as a medic and a chaplain between 1942 and 1945. Decades later, in 2009, Mr. Spooner shared a glimpse of his wartime experiences before the Maine Judiciary Committee while testifying in support of marriage equality. In reference to the atrocities of the war, he said, “I have seen with my own eyes the consequence of a caste system and of making some people less than others or second class. Never again. We must have equal rights for everyone.”
After a video and transcript of his remarks went viral, Philadelphia composer Melissa Dunphy crafted this intricate choral setting of Mr. Spooner’s address. Although the rhetoric is lofty, Dunphy’s speech-like rhythms hold us tightly to Mr. Spooner’s hesitant, sometimes-shaky delivery, with the sweetness of the setting inviting us to consider that a man who has “seen much” may still be nervous about addressing his state legislators.
A few months after Mr. Spooner’s speech, Maine voted in favor of marriage equality. It might be tempting to ascribe this achievement in part to his testimony—as Dunphy herself laughingly admitted recently, the words of an octagenarian Nazi-fighting veteran are “pretty unimpeachable,” and the extraordinary digital reach of his remarks reveals the impact of a single person’s voice. Still, Mr. Spooner’s insistence on the equality of all people would suggest that his particular contribution to the discussion might as easily have come from someone else. And indeed, that may have been what he intended to share that day with the committee: after Dunphy’s composition received international attention, she was contacted by the canvasser quoted in Mr. Spooner’s remarks. As Dunphy explained recently, the canvasser suggested that all the viral transcripts had captured Mr. Spooner’s central question inaccurately: though his delivery was halting, he had actually asked, “What do you think our boys fought for at Omaha Beach?” Viewed in this light, we must wonder anew about just what Mr. Spooner has seen in his many years: not only about the losses he may have suffered during the war but also about the fears and grief he may have confronted afterwards as a partner and a father. He doesn’t betray any evolution in his own views—he was “raised to believe that all men are created equal”—and so we are left to wonder about how much this man has seen, and about how much he himself has sacrificed in the name of his ideals.
Mu isamaa on minu arm
In the same era as Mr. Spooner’s service, freedom and equality were at risk in Estonia, which was newly under restored Soviet control after only 26 years of independence in the early twentieth century. The Soviet Union was intent on destroying the cultural identity the Estonians had begun forming, and part of their imposed censorship included banning Estonia’s national anthem from being sung in public.
During the 1947 Laulupidu (the once-annual national song festival), the first since the war’s end, composer Gustav Ernesaks debuted a new setting of the poem “Mu isamaa on minu arm,” an ode to the country written by the famous Estonian poet Lydia Koidula in the mid-nineteenth century. Taken up by the Estonian people as a new anthem of sorts, it too was soon banned, but it continued to be sung and was eventually allowed back on concert programs. In 1969, during the song festival celebrating the 100-year anniversary of Laulupidu, Ernesaks’s piece was performed by a choir, after which the audience—estimated at 100,000 people––and the choir on stage began singing it again in a burst of patriotic fervor. The choir stood firm when they were ordered to leave the stage, and a Soviet military band attempted to drown out the anthem, to no avail.
As referenced in Kareva’s poem, the power of Estonian singing was finally realized in the late 1980s, when it won its independence through the non-violent “Singing Revolution,” thanks to mass demonstrations at which people sang pro-independence songs by contemporary Estonian rock bands. Laulupidu still recurs every five years; in 2019, for the festival’s 150th anniversary, “Mu isamaa on minu arm” will return as the central theme.
El Pueblo Unido
From Chile comes another twentieth-century anthem, here by the storied Leftist composer Sergio Ortega. Ortega worked closely with President Salvador Allende, composing both his electoral theme song (“Venceramos,” or “We Shall Triumph”) and “¡El pueblo unido, jamás será vencido!” in the same period of Allende’s brief tenure before being assassinated during a coup. Ortega was exiled from Chile in the early 1970s, but “El Pueblo Unido” remained part of the Latin America vernacular, known and sung by progressive forces throughout the region. This arrangement by the New York-based arranger Gene Glickman centers the piece’s title as if proclaimed by demonstrators.
she took his hands
“she took his hands” is a setting of an excerpt from a 2007 Washington Post article about the arrest of Elvira Arellano, an immigrant from Mexico who worked for seven years in the United States and took sanctuary in a Chicago church to remain near her U.S.-born son, before ultimately being arrested and deported by U.S. immigration officials for her illegal status. Chicago-based composer Nicholas Cline sets the text in sparse, haunting repetitions that carry the strength, fear, and faith of Elvira’s words to her son.
Te Quiero
Another vision of activism and faith comes to us from “Te Quiero,” a bone-deep love song by the Argentinian composer Alberto Favero setting a much-beloved poem by Uruguayan poet Mario Benedetti. Favero is known in Latin America primarily for his compositions of popular music; this choral version, by the Argentinian arranger Liliana Cangiano, captures Favero’s inherent expressiveness as he treats the lyrical text. Benedetti’s refrain—“Somos mucho más que dos”––can be a lover’s caress or a revolutionary’s cry; we like that it also speaks to the power of intertwined voices.
we cannot leave
Ted Hearne’s music blends rock-inspired minimalism with social consciousness. Although educated on the East coast and based for much of his career in Brooklyn, Hearne now lives in Los Angeles and teaches composition at the University of Southern California. Hearne is best known to Philadelphia audiences through his association with the new music choir The Crossing, with whom he has collaborated on numerous occasions. Among these collaborations was Sounds from the Bench, premiered by The Crossing in 2014, which was a finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize in Music.
Privilege, composed in 2009 for the San Francisco choir Volti, was one of the composer’s first major successes and has been performed by dozens of ensembles throughout the United States. Privilege is a collection of five short pieces for a cappella chorus: the first and third movements are settings of “little texts” by the composer that question a contemporary privileged life (his own). The second and fourth movements are settings of excerpts from an interview with TV producer and journalist David Simon, creator of the television series The Wire. Simon’s words are answers to questions about economic and educational inequality. The final movement, “we cannot leave,” which we share here today as a standalone piece, is a setting of As’ Kwaz’ uKuhamba, a Xhosa anti-apartheid song from South Africa.
The composer writes: “The first four movements are of course most closely related to contemporary America. Because the fifth takes a text from an outside culture (black South African) and is more removed historically (because the era of Apartheid is over we are able to process it as a chapter that has been closed), it can provide relief from texts that are more ‘close to home.’ But also […] there are common themes running between the movements, and in a way the distanced perspective makes the last movement the saddest or most tragic of all. One thing that should not be overlooked is the parallels between social and economic injustices in Apartheid South Africa and America.”
Ella’s Song
In addition to her role as the founder of Sweet Honey in the Rock, Bernice Johnson Reagon is a celebrated composer, arranger, teacher, and theater artist. In 1981, she was commissioned to compose the title song for Fundi: The Story of Ella Baker: the result was “Ella’s Song.” Although the lyrics seem shockingly familiar today, they are drawn from Baker’s decades of writings and activism against exploitation, racism, and injustice. As Reagon writes, “The first verse is from a statement Baker made about the murder of three Civil Rights Movement workers, Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman during the Mississippi Campaign in the summer of 1964. A search was mounted after their disappearance that involved dragging the rivers of Mississippi. As they searched the muddy waters, they turned up bodies of Black men who had never been looked for because they were Black.” Although the call-and-response pattern means that only a few singers give voice to Baker’s words, Reagon’s score cautions that “all harmony lines must carry the emotional responsibility of the song.”
Hold On!
“Hold On!,” sometimes known as “Gospel Plow,” is a traditional American spiritual recorded by such artists as Mahalia Jackson, Duke Ellington, and Bob Dylan. The text implores us to live life to the fullest, committing ourselves to work for meaning and justice in this world. Hogan's arrangement features small groups of voices sharing each verse while the rest of the ensemble emphatically supports them.