Lance Neita | Rejoicing over you with singing

I did not know that God sings until I came across a verse in the Bible, Zephaniah 3:17. which says that the Lord will “rejoice over you with singing”.

I did know that the gift of singing is one precious talent He gives that can light up your world. It’s a gift that didn’t come my way and has eluded me all my life. In my later years here I am singing on the church choir, elderly ladies leading from the front with the most beautiful and dulcet sopranos and contralto voices, while our equally elderly men on the baseline play second fiddle to the songbirds, and I struggle along to hold my own until choir leader Deaconess Green finds out where the noise is coming from.

Christian music, transformed into songs and hymns of praise, psalters, chants, and in modern times influenced by R&B, soul, and reggae, is a wonderful expression of the good news of man’s enduring relationship to God. It lifts up your heart, it promotes fellowship and harmony, it opens the windows of the soul, and it has the power to bring new dimensions and renewed purpose when you are at a crossroad in your life.

Ted Byfield, editor of an outstanding collection of studies and narratives on the history of Christianity, places the religion as the moral foundation of political, educational, and cultural thought and practice across the world. “Our cultural origins are almost wholly Christian”, he says, noting that “our best literature, our finest cultural masterpieces, and our most enduring music, are those of professed and dedicated Christians”.

Consider Handel’s Messiah, the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir’s rendition of Psalm 34, Schubert’s Ave Maria sung by Luciano Pavarotti, Mahalia Jackson singing Take My Hand Precious Lord, and the music of the great cathedral choirs and performers all over the world.

Our own Jamaican choirs from over 1,600 churches spread around the country have a significant influence on our religious, cultural, and spiritual development.

The University Singers annual Christmas Concert at the UWI Chapel is not to be missed, while the National Chorale of Jamaica makes a major and delightful contribution to our musical traditions with live concerts and anthems in every corner of Jamaica.Church music in Jamaica is valued and loved. Late author and historian Hartley Neita tells us in his book of Jamaican highlights, My Story and Other Stories republished recently on Amazon, how senior citizens who grew up in downtown Kingston told him that one of the joys of their parents and friends was to gather outside the churches in the now inner-city at nights to hear the choirs rehearse.

“ The late Sister Ignatius of Alpha also told me of the crowds, which gathered nearby the Alpha Boys Home to hear rehearsals by the Alpha Boys Choir, as well as the Alpha dance band”.

This would have been in the 1940s and 1950s when Neita himself came to Kingston as a young man fresh from the country and would see hundreds congregated on the sidewalks, outside the East Queen Street Baptist Church, Coke Methodist Church, and the Congregational and Moravian Churches on North Street to hear the hymns and anthems rehearsed by the choirs of these churches. They hummed and sang along.

“ The favourite choir in those days was the East Queen Street Baptist church, especially when it had guest-singers such as soprano Blanche Savage and tenor Granville Campbell, and the timeless legendary base JJ Williams. Then there were the Diocesan Festival Choir conducted by George Goode and the St Andrew Singers led by organist Lloyd Hall which also attracted crowds at their rehearsals.

“It was not only choirs which attracted these crowds. The same occurred when Olive Lewin started the Jamaica Folk Singers. I am told too, that there was dancing in the street near to the rehearsal home of the Frats Quintet”.

Many of our popular music stars in the secular rock and reggae and even dance hall genre were child stars in church choirs where they performed under the watchful eyes of grandmothers before achieving international and billboard success.

For example, Aretha Franklin caught the attention of church congregations far and wide when she first started singing as a little girl in her father’s church choir, in the New Bethel Baptist, Detroit.

Score one for Aretha, but surprise, surprise, the outlandish and extravagant rock and roll pioneer Little Richard was groomed by his upbringing in a strict Pentecostal Church.

To name a few others, the legendary soul singer Sam Cooke, who led a gospel group, the Soul Stirrers before moving over to the secular world with his Cupid, Wonderful World, and the fabulous “ Twisting the night away.”

FOUNDATIONAL TRAINING GROUND

Similar to American artistes like Cooke and Lavern Baker, the church served as a foundational training ground for several successful recording artistes in early Jamaican popular music.

Some of our greatest musicians who emerged in the 50’s and 60’s came out of the Catholic Alpha Boys Home where they were discovered and mothered by Sister Ignatius, or ‘Bones’ as she was lovingly called.

To name a few, Joe Harriott, Wilton and Bobby Gaynair, Bertie King, Owen Gray, Don Drummond, “Rico” Rodriguez, Joseph “Jo Jo” Bennett, Cedric “IM” Brooks, Tony Gregory, Winston “Yellowman” Foster, Leroy Smart, Desmond Dekker.

This bunch and others all testify to church singing forming the foundation of their love and affinity to music.

Last but not least, the late Jimmy Cliff, although not an Alpha graduate, his infancy church background in Somerton, Hanover, can be heard in his many songs, in his voice, inviting you to share in his hurts, his defiance, and in his faith.

He has left us with a voice that can inspire and motivate our nation to lift ourselves out of the depth of despair that must haunt many thousands whose lives have been turned upside down by the storm.

Despite the despair, he left us with a testament to the human determination to keep going in the face of displacement and loneliness, and the will to survive, even when feeling “licked” or “washed up” by the many rivers that have to be crossed.

As we fight to recover from Melissa, Jamaicans will continue to sing as only we can, sing through the rubble, sing through the darkness, sing of the safe stronghold that is our God, and amazingly, continue to sing songs of cheerfulness, joy, and hope.

Lance Neita is a public relations professional, author, and historian. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com or to lanceneita@hotmail.com