Pride, Preservation in the Spirituals Sense
Lord, what a morning!
It’s tough enough crafting a snappy opening sentence that will pass the scrutiny of hard-as-nails editors. But when the man you interview starts suggesting improvements . . .
“It’s not Lord, it’s not morning. It’s ‘My Lawd, what a moanin’--and that’s fine word painting,” said Francois Clemmons, director of the Harlem Spiritual Ensemble, which performs tonight at Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa. He also noted that it’s more beautiful to sing the long vowel in Lawd than to interrupt it with the r in Lord.
Likewise, he noted, to sing “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” authentically, “it’s not ‘coming to carry me home’--it’s ‘cummin’ for to carry me home.’
“Most singers try hard to show they’re conservatory graduates,” Clemmons explained by phone from the group’s headquarters in New York. “They have beautiful voices; they have wonderful teaching, but they forget to go another level and study the style and language. When it comes to the American Negro spiritual . . . it has to be true to the slave tradition. These were not Oxford-educated people.”
The musicians in Clemmons’ company--six vocalists, a pianist and a drummer--are well-educated, graduates of institutions including Carnegie-Mellon University and the Manhattan School of Music. They approach spirituals with the diligence of conservatory-trained singers tackling Italian opera.
But they don’t believe that modern pronunciations, or even “the king’s English,” improve upon authentic diction. They don’t believe that what Clemmons refers to as the “highfalutin’ interpretations and stylizations” of prominent singers in the ‘50s best served the genre. Still, he acknowledges a huge debt to the black artists of that era who included spirituals on otherwise classical programs.
And they don’t believe in the arrangements of spirituals often heard in concert today.
“When arrangements are too complex or intricate . . . it becomes the intellectual Europeanized experience,” Clemmons, 51, said. In slave times, “everything was sung a cappella and everything by memory. Nobody sat there with scores.
“If sung inside the plantation [home], a pianoforte might be used. A drum was possible, clapping, slapping your side.” Guitar and fiddle would have been considered the devil’s instruments according to early American theologies, not suitable for worship in any form. “And the idea of an orchestral performance . . . !”
Yet Clemmons’ company recently performed original orchestral arrangements with ensembles in Norfolk, Va., and Hanover, Germany.
Additionally, tenor Clemmons, sopranos Veronica Lewis, Stephanie Beadle and La’Shelle Allen, baritone Raymond Frith, bass Richard Bellazzin, pianist Jeffrey Marder and percussionist Paul Valdez also are slated for engagements with the Memphis Symphony in February and Pittsburgh Symphony in April.
In the group’s defense, Clemmons cited the precedent of the “Spirituals in Concert” album by Jessye Norman and Kathleen Battle, accompanied by an orchestra led by James Levine. Of paramount importance in such endeavors, Clemmons said, is “to have room for a great feeling of spontaneity and rhythm.
“Orchestras are trying to cultivate new audiences,” he pointed out. “People of Hispanic or black or [Eastern] European backgrounds are looking to hear their music in concert halls. To reach a new audience--that’s worth sacrificing some authenticity. You can’t just say, ‘I have a great product’ and not make it available to people.
“It’s a fine line. . . . We sit at night and pull our hair out to make sure we utilize the special colors and qualities of the orchestra without violating the essence, the spirit of the spirituals.”
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The Harlem Spiritual Ensemble, now in its 10th season, released albums on the Arcadia label in the early ‘90s but is trying to find a label with wider distribution. The group has toured Italy eight times and has sung throughout Germany, Austria, France, Finland, Japan and Korea. Clemmons believes its performances are often more appreciated overseas.
“Everybody is trying to imitate the music of black Americans,” he said. “You have rap music in German, in Finnish, in Korean. . . . It’s a major phenomenon, but it didn’t start with rap music, of course. There are more jazz festivals in Europe than in America. There’s a gospel revival going on in Europe as we speak. It all comes out of the American Negro spiritual. It’s not acknowledged enough.”
At least not in the United States. In January, Munich-based Strube Press will publish a book of spirituals that Clemmons has compiled. Lyrics will be in English, but the introduction and commentary are in German. “I had at least four European publishers interested in the songbook,” he said. “At the moment I don’t have one American publisher.
“I’m not saying Europeans always have more foresight than Americans,” Clemmons said. “But Europeans take a longer view of the arts--not only up front, financially [with] support to keep the arts alive, but also by keeping things available in terms of posterity. What we had to say [to these publishers] fell on friendly ears. Not this sort of tolerance you find in America, ‘It’s a good idea, but will it sell?’--often expressed as one sentence.
“In Europe they think, ‘This is our culture; this is the substance of a race; this is what makes us unique. . . . We need to have this in the best condition possible for the next generation.’ And they mean it when they say it.”
* Harlem Spiritual Ensemble performs a program of Negro spirituals tonight at Orange Coast College’s Robert B. Moore Theatre, 2701 Fairview Road, Costa Mesa. 8 p.m. $16-$22. [714] 432-5880.