Choir Practice

During training, which ended in August, I decided that I wanted to join the choir at whatever church I ended up at. I told a friend this and asked him to hold me accountable at our training to be held in December. I nearly completely forgot about this until he called me in November and I realized it was time to make good on the promise I had made to myself. My first choir practice ended up being last week. 

I have always sung in choirs (in and out of church), since before I can remember and before I was making decisions for myself. It’s something I understand and know how to do, at least in the States. But, as I am constantly reminded here, I’m not back in the States. I was kind of nervous! Could the world’s whitest Episcopalian (and that’s really saying something!) join an African Catholic choir? My community host talked to the choir mistress about me joining the choir and before I knew it, I was at the first practice. I was told it started at 5pm “sharp” and so I arrived about 5 minutes to 5pm. Around 5:10pm, the choir mistress showed up and most other members trickled in until about 5:45pm or so. The practice started after the routine arguing in languages I don’t understand that seems to precede any meeting or bus trip here. I sat in the front row with the other sopranos and shared sheet music with the nice woman next to me. The music for the song looked like this:

M, R: M., F M R D – - F; D D S – - -

I asked the woman I was sharing music with if she could explain the markings to me and she said, “I don’t read music.” I thought to myself, “I don’t think anyone here does.”

Turns out that D R M stands for doh ray mi like in the Sound of Music. I remember that my host father in France, who was a musician, used the same names for notes instead of A B C etc. The rest of the markings clearly indicated how long to hold out notes, so…ok, I can figure this out.

Still it was very difficult on the first song. Nearly everyone else knew the song by heart and I felt very lost. I started to very much regret my decision to join and started to feel very out of place. I am used to a more visual representation of music—a note lower on the staff means a note sung lower—and remembering if M is lower or higher than D (and by how much) is very difficult. I tried to pick up the song as we went along, but it was hard. Further complicating the problem is the fact that ‘doh’ is apparently relevant, not always, consistently, no matter what C as one might expect. So the mistress just picks ‘doh’ and then the choir adapts from there. All just served to make ‘M’ more arbitrary than ever. I was impressed by the ease with which choir members could sing any song in any key. On the typed music, the key is written–’doh is A flat’ or ‘doh is E flat’ or whatever. I very much longed for western sheet music. Where’s Maria von Trapp when you need her??

 Then something great happened. The next song was “I’ll Fly Away,” a song I’ve sung many, many times in my life. I had even performed it as a solo for my church when I was a child. Not only could I participate, but it helped to crack some of the markings code for the rest of the music. Halfway through the first verse, I remembered why I had wanted to join the choir—I love singing! It’s something I know how to do and I have done most of my life. It’s so hard to describe how the whole situation went from being so uncomfortable and strange to familiar and almost normal. Music is a really powerful thing, isn’t it?

We went through the rest of the music—preparing for an upcoming funeral—and then the choir mistress started to sing (in Pidgin) something like “the day that I die, St. Joseph’s choir will sing at my funeral.” (St. Joseph’s is the church I attend.) Those of you I know from the Anglican church, you can imagine what kind of dirge we would sing with that type of lyrics! However, in true African style, people joined in singing with a huge smile on their face. Before I knew it, everyone seemed to have pulled some sort of drum out of nowhere and was playing it, improvising on the song the mistress had started singing. I had my own African group singing and drumming for me! Unreal. I started to think about how happy they were about the lyrics they were singing and a thought occurred to me—death is inevitable. It’s hard to forget that, particularly here where people just die all the time. However, having friends who really care about you sing at your funeral is not inevitable, but rather a thing to be thankful for and happy about. (All the same, I didn’t sing. I hope to be very, very far from St. Joseph’s when I die.) People starting dancing and the woman next to me, probably in her late 50′s or early 60′s, swayed on the bench in time. Then, as if she suddenly couldn’t stand to stay seated any longer, she got up and started dancing with most of the choir (images of James Brown saying “I can’t help myself!” flashed through my head). The whole song went on for probably fifteen minutes and then choir practice was over.

So fast forward to my first time singing with the choir in church. I still had little idea of what I was doing, I at least had a good handle on the song we were to sing after communion. The church has 3 choirs and this time, we were all to sing together. The woman next to me introduced herself as Sister Joan—a nun. Then she handed me what looked like two pom-poms and told me she’d show me when to use them.  At least that reminds me of when I was a cheerleader, so I felt more at ease.  (That’s a joke.)  There’s a convent in Mamfe, so one meets a fair number of nuns here. Things went about as normal until the readings were to begin. Catholic services is basically the most western thing that most people will do all week here, but every so often they mix in rich African tradition. To bring the Bible up to the front of the church (this was the first time I had seen this), several people dressed traditionally were involved. They were singing in Ejaghom (a local dialect) as they processed up. Two men held African brooms (basically long, hard straw tied together) and acted as though they were rowing up the aisle with the brooms. A boat, draped in cloth to represent water, was around them and people dressed in clothing of the same cloth rocked the boat to and fro and they braved their way to the front. Though the men were obviously standing and walking (with the boat held up around their hips), fake legs (including shoes!) had been put in the boat to make it seem as though the men were seated and rowing. It took probably 20 minutes for them to get to the front of the church (seriously). (This is how church takes 3 to 3.5 hours most weeks.) Naturally, everyone else in the choir knew the song the people were singing. So I just did my best to clap in time to the music—hard to for me since I have no rhythm at all. I tried to sing along with the refrain—but it became obvious quickly that I had to choose between concentrating on clapping or concentrating on singing in dialect. So I clapped.

Then during the offertory, the choir started dancing more than usual. The nun standing next to me chided for not dancing more. (Just take a second to imagine a nun telling you to wiggle your body more in church (with pom-poms in my hand). Too bad her name wasn’t Sister Mary Clarence (like from Sister Act).) “I’m shy!” I protested since it was easier to try to explain that some (white) people simply can’t dance! “This is God’s house,” she replied, “no need to be shy. See, everyone else is dancing because they are happy.” I looked around and, indeed, I was the only one in the entire church (including the priest (great dancer!) and the 4 deacons) who looked terrified and uptight dancing rather than happy. You think that after 8 months in Africa, you’d get over the feeling of being very white, but every so often something happens to remind you of how white you truly are. Or at least, how white I am. Everyone was staring at me—more so than usual—and David Sedaris’ essay about his family being stared at in church darted through my mind. I tried desperately to ignore the stares and to dance without feeling too self-conscious. I also briefly wondered about the ethics of drinking before church. Maybe that would help?

In any case, I made it through and people came and talked to me after and they all were just tickled that I was singing and dancing. Someone even asked if I would sing a solo sometime. Uhhh…maybe after the first service when every muscle in my body isn’t taut! But, I made it through the first service…and I’m kind of looking forward to the next.