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 Charsie Randolph Sawyer’s DVD teaches gospel singers to maintain and improve their voices. |
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Training Gospel Choirs: Caring for your voice and talent
A temporary voice problem led Charsie Randolph Sawyer to create a DVD to help gospel choirs protect and improve their voices for more effective ministry. Her colleagues in African American churches say that learning to read music helps congregations deepen worship.
At a recent Calvin Symposium on Worship, Charsie Randolph Sawyer noticed that none of the vendors had anything about gospel music or leading worship in the black gospel tradition. Sawyer is a professor, vocalist, and scholar who also conducts the Calvin College Gospel Choir.
During that symposium, Sawyer—despite taking good care of her classically-trained voice—was “having throat issues. I’d had to cancel performances. I was asking myself, ‘What good can come out of this?’ And Divine Providence gave me a spiritual revelation.
“Running out of voice happens to gospel singers, because some sing so hard. And as I travel to give concerts and workshops, I see church choirs that don’t properly warm up,” she says.
So Sawyer decided to create her Instructional DVD for Gospel Choirs, the first in a vocal master series.
Sawyer and other African Americans with music degrees say that many choir directors, choirs, and worshipers want relevant training. They want to stay in good voice and expand their repertoires to minister more effectively.
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Why excellence matters
If you were brought up in a congregation that values reverence above all, you might find a rollicking gospel music interlude enormously freeing. In fact, do exuberance and sincerity trump any need for excellence?
Charsie Sawyer would tell you no. “Excellence matters. Excellence is singing with anointing, expressing the text, knowing what you’re singing about. I’m not talking about perfection. That’s a different thing.”
For example, she explains on her DVD why gospel choirs need vowel and style uniformity to sing with excellence. “We all come from different places and have different ways of saying a sound as simple as ah. It’s hard to minister when your diction is all over the place,” she says.
Explaining that jazz, black gospel, southern gospel, country western, and classical each have their own sounds, she notes that each style requires excellent breath support. Singers who breathe improperly feel sore when done singing. They damage their vocal cords and their voices sound airy instead of powerful.
Sawyer’s Instructional DVD for Gospel Choirs covers breathing, posture, warming up, technical skills, resonance, and other vocal basics for excellent singing. Choir directors and singers on the DVD describe excellence as “stewarding the instrument God gives you, your voice.”
One explains, “If you want to give true glory to God, then study, train, and practice. Otherwise people won’t listen to the message that you, as a singer, are trying to deliver. Instead, they’ll listen to your faults.”
When gospel choirs and music leaders take care of their voices and bodies, they teach the congregation something beyond the words that they sing. They model a way of life that others can apply to their own gifts.
 Even more people are singing gospel in churches and on college campuses. |
Staying down to earth
People singing anthems, hymns, and European classical styles easily accept the need for training. Sawyer says it’s relatively new for “the body of Christ to see the need for pedagogy in the gospel tradition.”
That’s partly because many music leaders and choir directors in African American churches learn and teach by rote, rather than by reading music. It’s also because church choirs across the theological spectrum and student-led ensembles at public universities “want to be more versatile and sing gospel,” Sawyer explains.
Coming across as stuffy or arrogant wouldn’t help her deliver her message of training and excellence. That’s why Sawyer keeps things clear and simple. While demonstrating warm up ideas, she says, “Stand with your arms up like you’re praising God. Stretch for your daddy. Go up on tiptoes, like you’re trying to get something on that shelf. Pull down that gift that God has given you.”
To help singers feel proper and improper posture in their bones, she has them walk as if pulled by the forehead…or jaw…or chest. They giggle while circling her as if led by their knees. “We are in church. We really dressed up. We want everyone to see what we got on,” she jokes. Everyone chuckles.
“We laugh, but it’s what really happens. Humor lets us engage the community, so as not to seem above them. If you’re teaching a choir or congregation, relate in a human way. Don’t use technical terms that people without degrees can’t understand,” Sawyer advises.
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Eager to pass on new ideas
Many gospel singers in churches with multiple services ask Sawyer, “Why am I constantly clearing my throat?” She explains that our bodies naturally produce phlegm to coat our vocal chords when we don’t warm up our voices.
Singers ask, “Why can I sing only one service and then go out of voice?” She explains lifestyle choices, physical techniques, and soundboard skills that help or hurt singers’ voices.
Sawyer offers tips gleaned from her own experiences of getting her voice “100 percent back” and learned from other music leaders.
“Gospel choir directors don’t want to damage their singers. They’re always curious for new ideas to help a choir member who can’t get a certain breath technique.
“I did a workshop at the Hampton conference (for pastors and music leaders) before the DVD was edited. People swarmed to sign up for advance orders. It’s something the body of Christ is really looking for,” she says.
The story continues... Expanding Repertoires in the Gospel Tradition
Text by Joan Huyser-Honig
Photography by Steve Huyser-Honig
 Charsie Randolph Sawyer teaches, directs, and sings in many settings—opera, oratorio, churches, classrooms, and conferences. |
Listen to audio interview excerpts with African American choral directors:
- Charsie Sawyer on why musicians and preachers should keep learning (9:21)
- Tony McNeill on musical excellence and hospitality (6:49)
- Tony McNeill on preparing a “meet and greet” congregation for worship (8:20)
- Sheneice Smith on teaching music to people who’ve had scant opportunity to learn (4:20)
Buy Instructional DVD for Gospel Choirs with Dr. Charsie Randolph Sawyer from Calvin College or from http://www.charsie.com/ (site goes live in fall 2007).
Read Charsie Sawyer’s Reformed Worship story on four African American religious songs. Listen to Calvin College Gospel Choir sound clips, buy a CD, or hear them in concert or on tour.
Long interested in black composers, especially females, Charsie Randolph Sawyer recorded all the tracks on The Unknown Flower, which features classical female composers. She is working on a book of classical music by African American women composers. “The book will be a teaching tool for classical music. It’s a justice issue. Women writing music. You don’t hear about it much, but there’s so much out there. Hopefully, we can put more of it out there on the shelves,” she says.
Attend a conference to improve your skills in leading choirs, singing gospel music, or leading worship:
- Calvin Symposium on Worship, every January at Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan
- Hampton Ministers Conference, every June at Hampton University, Hampton, Virginia
- Gospel Music Workshop of America, every August, location varies by year
- Church Music Summit, November in even years, Friendship Missionary Baptist Church, Charlotte, North Carolina
Sign up for Tony McNeill’s email list, The Call 2 Worship Newsletter. Read books that have helped McNeill and Church Music Summit attendees teach their congregations about worship:
- How to Think Theologically by Howard W. Stone and James O. Duke
- Worship in the Shape of Scripture by F. Russell Mitman
- Worship is a Verb and The Divine Embrace, both by Robert E. Webber
Check out a long-ago Mystery Worshiper account of Friendship Missionary Baptist Church.
Watch video clips of live gospel music at Progressive Church of Our Lord Jesus annual Holy Convocation.
Order African American Heritage Hymnal and a companion CD set, 49 Hidden Treasures from the African American Heritage Hymnal.
Give yourself an online crash course in gospel music roots, including the branches of black gospel and southern gospel.
Browse related stories about African American church music, equipping worship leaders, mentoring musicians, multistaff ministry, and the late Robert E. Webber.
Feel free to print and distribute these stories at your staff, worship, or music committee meeting. These questions will get members talking about training gospel choirs:
- Read Exodus 15:1-21. Psalm 33:1-5; Ephesians 5:1-20; and 2 Timothy 2:1-15. Discuss their relevance to your choral and congregational singing practices.
- In what ways does gospel music bless your congregation? Do your music ministers and choirs have the training and habits to protect and maintain their voices?
- What roles does music play in your church worship? Which music dynamics (entertaining, not worshiping; limited repertoire; tension between excellence and perfection or hospitality) would you like to discuss?
- How do people in your church choose appropriate music for worship? Who decides what’s appropriate?
What is the best way you’ve found to train gospel choirs or teach new music? Please write to us so we can identify trends and share your great ideas. Whether you do these or any other things, we’d love to learn what works for you:
- Did you create or discover a music teaching method that’s especially good either to teach people to read scores or learn by ear?
- If you worked with other churches on teaching your congregations about music and worship, which were your most and least successful projects? Which aspect of leading music or worship did you have the hardest time finding resources for? How did you overcome that lack?
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This story was originally posted on October 4, 2007. External links were operative at the time the story was posted, but may have expired since then.
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This article was first published by the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship, http://www.calvin.edu/worship/stories/.