No One's Coming

“No one’s coming,” Anita said, somewhat disappointed, as she entered the music room. “I’ve talked to a bunch of them, but they say they’re busy and can’t make the rehearsal.”

What did I do wrong? I thought to myself. Was it the way I looked, the way I spoke, the way I dressed? Last year, the Richard Montgomery High School Gospel Choir had been a huge, enthusiastic group of over fifty students. Now, it was me, Anita, and seven of my closest friends who had come to the rehearsal out of sympathy. Why was it that as soon as I became the director, the choir began to die?

Originally I wasn’t even a choir member. This was three years back, when I was a singer in the predominantly white Madrigal choir. I watched the Gospel Choir in awe, always wanting to hear them sing, but never intending to join them. It took four separate invitations from the director, a parent volunteer, for me to finally accept and attend a rehearsal. When the director passed away the next summer, the star soloist, Nicole, decided to direct the choir herself, and she asked me to play the piano for the group.

I had always wanted to be a leader, but I never believed I would be leading a Gospel Choir. Jewish white guys just didn’t do that sort of thing. But within the first few weeks of the school year, Nicole and I witnessed the choir grow from being a group of twenty Black students to having a room full of Blacks, whites, Asians, Hispanics, Jews, and Christians, all singing together the joyful sound that is gospel music. For one year we toured the county, singing at temples, churches, Martin Luther King commemorative programs, and finally at a church where Nicole’s father, the minister there, dubbed us “The Ecumenical Gospel Choir.”

Yet while I sat in the pew and listened to the reverend praise our wonderful example of brotherhood and racial and ethnic harmony, it occurred to me that I hardly knew any of the Black members of our choir. Like my white friends, I saw them every day at rehearsal, yet when each rehearsal ended, I congregated not with the bulk of the choir but with my group of white friends. My high school prided itself on the fact that diversity existed everywhere we turned. Yes, this was true; everywhere we turned we saw a group of Black kids separated by a thin space of air from a group of white kids. But none of my friends seemed “prejudiced,” a term we had always associated with the hatred of a particular group and the desire to stay away from it. We were all raised in homes that valued diversity, and our parents taught us not of differences between people but rather of the value of everyone. And yet, there we were, the group of white kids and the group of Black kids, physically together, but somehow separate.

Nicole graduated at the end of that year, and there did not seem to be anyone in the choir with the desire or motivation to direct and organize. Instead, many members insisted that I was the natural successor, and that I should take over the leadership of the group. This was fine with me; I had plenty of leadership experience. On the eve of the new Gospel Choir’s first rehearsal, I was excited about being able to share my newfound love of gospel music with my fellow students. In fact, the rehearsal was packed, and the room was full of eager high school students ready to sing. I stood at the front of the room and conducted the rehearsal.

Also in the front with me was Anita. Anita had been in the Gospel Choir since she began high school, and she carried with her an extensive gospel repertoire. She had volunteered to help me find material for us to sing, although she told me she did not want to direct the group. So she stood in the front with me as I led the rehearsal. She stood there because I might need assistance teaching the music, but I needed no assistance. In truth, she stood there as a figurehead. She stood there because, subconsciously, we were aware that many of the Black students who had been involved with the choir from the outset might be uncomfortable with a white director. We never admitted this to each other. The only topics of conversation between Anita and me dealt with the song selections and harmonies.

And the song selections and harmonies once again resonated throughout the music room, though somehow with less enthusiasm and vitality. I assumed it was because Nicole had a special type of charisma that had brushed off on the choir, and Nicole was now gone. So for the next rehearsal I became excitable and led the group as Nicole had done the year before. The energy did seem to brush off on about half the choir: the white half. It was at this moment that I realized the problem: I was not a bad director. I was white.

As much as today’s Americans value diversity in society, we tend not to promote it in our personal lives. When our extremely diverse Gospel Choir debuted, it was the talk of the school. Why? Because never before had a student club rooted in a specific culture consisted of members from so many different backgrounds. Our group was the exception, not the norm. Yet underneath our veil of a “melting pot” of colors lay many people of different cultures who would not really let themselves melt with one another.

As time went on, I tended to notice fewer and fewer Black students at our rehearsals. I began to miss faces that I had seen every week for almost two years, but of whose corresponding names, personalities, and interests I had no clue. I had never made the effort to get to know them. They had never made the effort to get to know me. Once I had taken over their club, they left to return to their culturally homogeneous groups of friends, just as I myself had always done. In attempting to lead the Gospel Choir as a diverse, multi-ethnic club, I had unknowingly taken away an important cultural center that the original members had valued as their own.

“They can’t make the rehearsal,” Anita repeated as she closed the door and took her place in the front next to me. “We should probably begin.”

So I motioned for the choir to rise, and out of their mouths flowed the rich, energetic, white sounds of music.