Stand Up Straight and Sing! (6 page)

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A Father’s Pride

“EV’RY TIME I FEEL THE SPIRIT”

Ev’ry time I feel the Spirit movin’ in my heart, I will pray.

Upon the mountain, my Lord spoke,

Out of His mouth came fire and smoke.

Down in the valley, on my knees,

I asked the Lord, Have mercy, please.

Jordan river, chilly and cold,

Chills the body, but not the soul,

I looked all round me, looked so fine,

I asked the Lord if all was mine.

Now, ev’ry time I feel the Spirit movin’ in my heart, I will pray.

I often joked to my father, uncle, and brothers that I would never forgive them for refusing, when I was a child, to allow me to go fishing with them at three thirty in the morning. It didn’t matter how many different ways they insisted that sitting at the edge of a lake, fishing poles cast, was solely a man’s domain. I wanted to be there. There was something so exciting about their getting up in the middle of the night, food packed, thermos bottles filled with coffee, fishing poles at the ready. It seemed as though I was missing something really wonderful. I mean, if there was something to be done at three thirty in the morning, it had to be fun. I wanted to be with them there in the mist before sunrise, in the cool of the morning breeze, floating in shadows, folded in the silence, and then emerging into the hot summer sun with a bucket of triumph. Or, as my mother called it: dinner.

Alas, it would be many years later before I would have my first fishing experience, as an adult, sans my brothers and father and uncles. This adventure was taken with a few friends of mine from New York who, while we visited with one another, talked of taking a break from a very busy year to go on a fishing trip in the mountains of Quebec, where brook trout, sturgeon, walleye, bass, and muskie are in abundance. “Ah, that sounds wonderful,” I said wistfully. “I should like to go fishing, too.” And I did. Right there in beautiful Quebec, in some of the most stunning land and water this earth has to offer, on a boat—nothing fancy—with one hearty fisherman in charge of steering and another responsible for getting the bait onto the hooks for my friends and me, trying our best to coax the fish onto our lines for our catch-and-release conquest. There were others charged with catching proper-sized fish that would adorn our dinner table later. It was a wonderful time. I felt inspired to sing one of the many songs about being on the water, because, well, this is what happens when nature and beauty and friendship fill my heart and my spirit.

I sang quietly to myself. And I noticed that with every note of Schubert’s “Auf dem Wasser zu singen” (“Singing on the Water”), the fish drew closer to the boat. Fairly soon, I was catching fish—a lot of fish. There is a scientific explanation that speaks to how water transports sound and why the fish would have therefore been attracted to our boat. But I remember my father and uncles saying that one had to be absolutely quiet and still while fishing so as not to scare the fish away. Had I found particularly musical fish?

My sudden fishing prowess and my singing did not go unnoticed by the captain, who had not the faintest idea of who I was, or what I did for a living. As I with a song on my tongue reeled in yet another fish for him to release back into the beautiful waters, he turned to me and said, “You should take that up! I’ll bet you would be asked to sing somewhere. I’ve heard lots of singing in my time and you’re pretty good.”

I laughed so hard, I was weeping, my makeup completely ruined. “Do not say a word,” I told my friends through tears of pure delight.

AS A HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT
I had made certain that I obtained the requisite credits for entering a liberal arts college from which I could move on to medical school. I loved singing, I loved music; all this gave me great pleasure. However, I saw no clear path to becoming a professional singer. My parents, being who they were, gave me space and time to come to my own decision. They focused, instead, on making sure that my siblings and I understood that whatever we chose—physician, singer, teacher, whatever—we should use every ounce of our ability to be the best at it. Their parenting skills and their sheer dedication to us were demonstrated in countless ways. My father was president of the PTA for over twenty years (he was still in this position at our elementary school when the youngest of my siblings was entering college). He drove us to school every morning not because it was too great a distance for us to walk, but because it gave him a moment to visit with us. He would check to see if we had finished our homework, and find out what afterschool activities we might have planned.

In addition to being an excellent provider and a God-fearing, curious man, he was attentive—something I could notice easily by the way my father did something as simple as help my mother descend steps. He was always there with his hand at her elbow, a kind gesture that I noticed even as a very young child. He opened car doors and made sure she was settled in the seat next to his— the driver’s seat—long before seat belts became the requirement of the day.

My siblings and I speak now about this parenting, which we took completely for granted at the time. As children, it is not altogether clear how one’s upbringing compares to others in one’s community. It is easy to see material differences, perhaps, and to say, “Well, this person has a new school bag and I want one like that,” but one cannot necessarily tell how that person with the new school bag is being nourished at home, as compared to what one is receiving in one’s own home. Janie and Silas Norman were incredible parents. They were present at every performance of mine and of my siblings; no matter if we were reciting the Twenty-Third Psalm at a church function or starring in a Greek play at college, our parents treated each performance with the same importance. They got us up and ready for Sunday school and church services, and for community and church-related duties during the week. They were each rooted in their faith and a determination that all five of us were going to “make something of ourselves,” and wanted us desperately to live a purposeful life with distinction. Bringing home report cards with anything less than an A merited the uncomfortable question: “Well, who received the A?”

When I brought home a report card for the first time in my life that was just shy of putting me on the dean’s list, there were many questions. “How did this happen?” my father asked. I countered by listing all of the extracurricular activities that were taking my attention. I was fascinated by a brand-new school, was participating in the math club, the Future Teachers of America club, and the chorus. Plus, I had a close friend in the band, and would find myself at his rehearsals, and the football games. I was busy. But in my father’s mind, certainly, I was not too busy to bring home better grades than this.

It was not a request; it was an expectation.

This was the prevailing sentiment of many African American parents of the time. Despite the often desperate hand they’d been dealt, despite a government-sanctioned caste system that denied them basic rights, and despite the constant threat of danger, these parents dared to dream of and plan for brighter futures for their children—futures they held dear even if they had never experienced anything like this for themselves. I recall a conversation with my maternal grandfather on such a subject. We talked as we stood looking out over his land, a farm that he and my grandmother owned outright. They had worked it to sustain themselves and their hefty family of fourteen, some years after my grandfather’s first farm had been lost in the Depression, when he, like all too many black landowners, had fallen behind on his taxes. Unbowed by this setback, my grandparents did all that they could to save enough to purchase another farm—land they walked proudly, sometimes with me trailing not far behind. I was only seven or eight years old when, during one of these walks, I discovered that my voice could produce an echo if I stood looking out over the ridge down into the valley. This seemed very big to me at the time. I heard my voice rise high into the sky and then rain down over the treetops and back toward me. “God willing,” my grandfather said simply, as I stood in wonder, “I’ll be able to cut down some of these trees to send you to college one day.”

This was a wonderful thought at the time, though I couldn’t quite make the connection between those giant trees and college tuition payments. But even at that tender age, I knew that college was an expectation. It was not a matter of “if,” but “where.” This man had seen all twelve of his children graduate high school—a thirteenth, Samuel, had died in a tragic horse-riding accident—in a place and at a time when segregation assured inadequate teaching materials, inadequate facilities, and low teachers’ pay for black schools. Yet he saw nothing but better things for those who carried in their veins both his blood and that of the sainted ancestors. With him, the sky was blue, the well was full of water, birds flew merrily above, and all of his grandchildren were going to make a good life for themselves. Yes, expectations were high, but really, it was so very easy to make my elders happy, especially my parents. Nothing pleased them more than having their children make it all the way through a memorized rendition of a passage of Scripture or a poem without missing a word or two.

My siblings and I recognize this now as a true blessing, because the world is full of parents who offer a different level of attention to their children—mothers and fathers who are intent on choosing what their children will be and pronouncing them prodigies before they can barely walk. I have run into quite a few mothers who push their way backstage, children trailing in their wake, to pronounce their kids the ninth wonders of the world, possessing unparalleled talent and skill—at age eight. These children are pressed through a mill of voice coaches and vigorous singing schedules that do nothing more than make it impossible for them to thrive when they are adults and their bodies are finally ready for the rigors of singing professionally. Nothing is sadder for me than to meet a twenty-year-old who has been studying voice since the age of thirteen or so and to find that young voice now ruined. I have gone out of my way to frighten my very young colleagues intent on early training by saying, “Listen, the vocal cords must be protected. They can help you produce an extremely powerful sound, but they are themselves very delicate.” And the thing about this is, as is true of any ligaments in the body, once you have stretched them, once you have put them out of their natural expansion and retraction, they will seldom return to their natural state of flexibility and strength.

This is simply a matter of understanding human anatomy, how the body functions. With all athletic performances, whether running a marathon, playing a strenuous game of tennis, or singing on a stage in front of an auditorium full of people, one uses the body and muscles in ways that one would not do normally. The body must be trained to do these extra things and can do them very well with the proper tutelage. And whether or not a person has a wonderful wingspan perfect for tennis, or long legs perfect for running, or a voice perfect for the stage, those special abilities and the required control cannot reveal themselves fully until the physical body is ready and strong enough to withstand the demands of the discipline in question. It takes training and a certain respect for one’s body to be a professional singer whose voice can withstand the demands of preparation and rehearsal, and the travel, and everything else involved in a performance. One can train a voice to have greater projection, just as one can train to run a two-minute mile or perform a front pike somersault on a gym floor, but in each of these cases the correct technique is crucial. Children’s bodies are just not suited to the demands of serious vocal training. The torso muscles used for singing are still developing in youngsters. It is not until one is past puberty and well into the teenage years that serious voice training should begin. The entire vocal apparatus has to develop along with this growing body—and has to be left alone to speak and sing naturally while this amazing physical development is taking place. When it is ready, it can be trained to do more.

This is why I am so grateful that instead of being sent off to voice lessons when I was eight years old, my parents made it possible for me to study the piano. Rosa Sanders did not try to teach me to sing. Instead, she taught me songs. Vocal technique was far from our thoughts at the time; the focus was on encouraging me to enjoy my music, to excel in school, to honor my elders, to be comfortable in front of crowds, and to be sociable—all things that, at a young age, were important to the building of the solid foundation that ultimately shaped the musician I would become. By the time I entered Howard University and began vocal training, I was lucky indeed that I did not have to unlearn an incorrect way of singing. The sound that came from my mouth, from my body, was just what came out naturally.

It was Mrs. Sanders who came up with the idea of my participation in the Marian Anderson Vocal Competition in Philadelphia when I was but fifteen years old. My parents were eager for me to have this experience, but traveling all the way to Philadelphia in the middle of the school term was quite a different thing to consider. Of course, I was gung ho!

It was a heady time. The principal of our high school, the long-suffering Lloyd Reese, with whom I had had my frequent meetings as a middle-schooler, was now at Lucy C. Laney High School. It was he who came up with an idea that to this day warms my heart and brings happy tears to my eyes. At one of our weekly school assemblies, Mr. Reese announced that I would be attending the competition in Philadelphia and that he wanted the whole school, hundreds of students, to participate by choosing one day on which, rather than going to the cafeteria and paying twenty cents for a hot, well-balanced lunch, they would contribute that money toward travel expenses for me and Mrs. Sanders. To be certain no student went hungry, the PTA paid for all school lunches that day. It was a novel idea and a beautiful gesture. Wonderful.