Sing!

Can you recall a facet of your being – maybe a precious one – that you have left behind as you grew into your adult life?

“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” ~ Howard Thurman

As I read a devotion earlier this month entitled “Sing Because You Have To,” I knew I needed to write about it. You see, I used to do that. Sing. From my first memories music has been an important part of who I am. My voice was my first instrument.

Molly Baskette, the devo writer, wrote that Bobby McFerrin had visited her church the week before. In 1992, I bought the album Hush that McFerrin had put together with Yo Yo Ma. “What will this be?” I wondered. Ma is a classical cellist; McFerrin is a… goofy vocalist. When the album arrived, I was blown away. McFerrin was still goofy but also amazingly versatile. (I recall reading on the album jacket that his father trained in and sang opera.)

In my childhood, I sang because I couldn’t not sing but I slowly lost it. Maybe it was when a couple of my parents’ friends came to play Bridge. I was sitting at the piano belting out whatever song when Daddy came in, rested a hand on my left shoulder and quietly said, “Why don’t you just sing?” Maybe it was H. Ray (what I heard the choir insiders calling the high school director) never affirming my voice. Or anyone, in college. Then, of course, there are all the other “not good enough” memories that I could never entirely let go of, even after EMDR left me accepting that I am indeed good just as I am.

In spring of my one year teaching exclusively vocal music, I was sitting at the choir room piano with a 15-year-old soprano, helping her learn “Think of Me” from Phantom of the Opera for competition. She was having trouble with the scale-wise passage just before the final note. Saying “It goes like this,” I sang it, then paused and played the final note. “I just sang a B flat” easily. I think that’s when I stopped being so shy about singing my piece.

But I still didn’t sing, except in church or on Fridays when I’d belt out pop or show tunes playing on a “Sabbath” playlist. Last summer, I auditioned for and was accepted into the Wausau Lyric Choir. Between Covid cautions and Lyme isolation, I’d barely sung in over a year – but I knew I could – so I spent the hours before the audition doing vocal warm-ups. (I read about auditions the day they began.) When I entered the classroom, the director asked a few questions about my experience singing in ensembles. She invited me to sing without the mask if I so chose (and I did). Then we began. I sang like singing was the best thing in the world. I grinned widely and swayed even through exercises. The audition results didn’t matter – I was singing because I sing, re-membering part of what makes me “me.”

I firmly believe she added me to the choir’s ranks more because of my presence in that audition than because of my pitch-sense (which is good). When sopranos and altos (vaccinated, socially distanced, and masked) gathered in September for our first rehearsal, I was excited. When we began singing I beamed inside my mask as the harmonies from 40 voices resonated within me.

Bobby McFerrin is now 71 and Parkinson’s is eating away at who he once was. He no longer has his vocal range but as Molly wrote, “he’s still got the chops: a wild range of syllables and tones that froth up from the leviathan depths of the ocean within him, each of them starting a conversation.”

At one point in the evening, there was a Q & A time. A youth, knowing about his illness, asked how he finds his fire. The virtuoso responded, “I get up every day, and I sing. I sing while I feed the dog. I sing while I get my wife breakfast, slowly. I sing because I have to. I still have so much music left inside of me.”

This, this is what I need to hold onto.

What is it that you need to re-member?

   

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