The Power of Music (2)

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Billie Holiday

My description of the boy who sang the “Star Spangled Banner,” as loudly as he could in the auditorium was written from an adults retrospective point of view. Looking back on it I now understand it as an artistic, cultural experience. But it happened when I was thirteen and at the time I was only fired with a desire to do something similar. I looked for an opportunity to do what I was told, to obey the rules to such an extent and in such a way that it would become a disruptive event and gain everyone’s attention. Soon fate provided me with an opportunity.

Our good natured and long suffering music teacher who had been instructing us twice a week for seven long years got it into her head that we should learn to sing Negro Spirituals. She divided our class up into sopranos, altos, tenors and basses, and gave us all parts to memorize. There were no real basses, just three boys including myself whose voices were adult enough to manage a simple bass line. It was very naive on the music teachers part to expect us to sing Negro Spirituals in part harmony. She had never succeeded in simply getting us to sing in unison in all the years we had been taking instruction from her. In the entire first session with the spirituals we didn’t produce enough sound to drown out the ceiling fan.

I had one and only one friend at that time, a black boy named Clarence. Clarence, like myself, was always in trouble and constantly being punished. On the way home that afternoon I asked him,”Clarence, can you sing a bass part.”
“Yes,” he replied. I actually didn’t believe him and I asked, “How do you know?”
“I sing the bass line in the hymns in church every Sunday.” he explained.
“Ok,” I said, “I can sing a bass line too, because my father taught me. Next week during music lets sing the s---- out of these spirituals.”

The next music session began with the song “Over Jordan.” We didn’t begin to really sing at first, a mixture of timidity and fear held us back, but as the song moved along the sound of each others voices gave us encouragement, and very soon we were singing as powerfully as it is humanly possible for thirteen year old boys to sing. The rest of the room fell completely silent listening to our bass duet and when we got to the end I was so elated that I felt like I was in a drunken stupor. I had never experienced anything like this in my life. The deepest meaning and the darkest side of the music had dawned on me. We were singing with all our might, about suffering and about death.

Dimensions: 7” x 6”
Materials: Charcoal pencil on painted watercolor paper
Signature: Along the bottom border: Richard Britell, January 5, 2002