Kiwi supergroup celebrates 10 years of gospel

KIM KNIGHT

There's nothing like gospel to make you feel good, say the star-studded members ofNZ's supergroup as they celebrate their 10th birthday. Kim Knight listens in. -

"NAKED MUSIC," suggests Jennifer Ward-Lealand, attempting to explain the sound of 33 voices raised in unaccompanied song.

She might be right. It was raining like the end of days and lightning had turned the skyline into a dance party. Auckland was cold, vile and horrible.

Enter the Jubilation Choir rehearsal room. The vocal equivalent of a warm bath; a hammock constructed of four-part harmony – and that was just the warm-up.

"Vvvvvvv," said the choir. "Zzzhhhhh," said the choir. "Enterprising elephants. Insinuating igloos," said the choir, repeating after Ward-Lealand.

Jubilation is the "gospel supergroup" whose members include a Shortland Street star and a singer from the 1970s' television show Happen Inn. It did the backing vocals for Hollie Smith's Don McGlashan-penned hit "Bathe in the River", and this week it celebrates its 10th birthday with the release of its first CD.

Favourite performance in the past decade: The Luggate Memorial Hall, Central Otago, for its old-school acoustics. Weirdest headline: "Higher calling draws monks to mountains", on the occasion of Jubilation's extra Womad show, when a group of Tibetan monks bailed in favour of an audience with the Dalai Llama.

"We're the Tibetan stand-ins," says Rick Bryant, singer, songwriter, legendary R'n'B front man of the 40-year-old band Windy City Strugglers.

He's been with Jubilation since the beginning, when it formed out of a breakaway group from another Auckland gospel choir, Heaven Bent. A recent North & South article on choir politics called the split a "horribly tense time". These days, everyone plays nice.

Says Bryant: "It has struck me as remarkable how the probabilities are stacked against such a large group not having a faction or a meltdown."

He's sitting in the back room at Ponsonby's Unitarian church, with Isolde Grunwald and Tim Tenbensel – the former is from Germany and learnt to sing on family holidays in a VW Combi, the latter is from Australia and once won a scholarship to learn cathedral organ. They're three parts of the official Jubilation organising committee. Jean McAllister, whose musical cred stretches back to Red Mole and The Drongos (former prime minister David Lange's favourite band) is overseas.

"We should talk about her song," says Bryant.

"It's challenging to sing, and it probably took us a year to get it right," says Grunwald. And now it's on the album, a Jubilation original, alongside traditional gospel and songs by the likes of Tom Waites, Roebuck Staples, Curtis Mayfield and the "father of gospel" Thomas Dorsey.

Conducting and soloist duties are shared. Jubilation has luminaries aplenty, but no one person gets the limelight.

"It's therapy for some hard-working people who don't have enough music in their life. And for the people who do music all the time, it's just more music," says Bryant.

Shortland Street's Dr Sarah Potts has just arrived. Amanda Billing apologises for the bag of McDonald's she's devouring before rehearsal and explains what gets her here every Tuesday night.

"Sometimes I would rather go home and sit on the couch. But it's just like going to the gym...it's necessary, it keeps me vocally motivated. It keeps me motivated, full-stop."

Writer, director and fellow chorister Fiona Samuels has always sung. "When I was little, I went to church of my own accord, not because I am a practising Christian, I just went off to the Methodist Sunday School around the corner, because I love to sing."

She pauses. "I've just outed myself as a real weirdo..."

Gospel makes you feel good, says Billing. "But it also makes you feel a little bit sad, or existential, or lonely, or whatever. `Poor Wayfaring Stranger' [sung by Samuels] makes my sister cry every single time. Gospel just lets you feel something, whether you're listening to it or singing."

Samuels: "It's the soul. We've all got a soul and it speaks to that part of you."

MULTIPLE-AWARD winning American science fiction writer Connie Willis once said "everything you need to know about the world can be learned in a church choir". YouTube sensation Susan Boyle's mum told her "start with the choir and just see where it takes you".

Internationally, gospel is one of the few music genres where sales continue to climb. New Zealand has never collated gospel-specific data, but in the United States, a 2006 Boston Globe story reported an 11.6% increase in sales on the previous year. R'n'B star Patti LaBelle said, "I think it has a lot to do with war and with the hurricanes and the tsunami and everything that's been happening. People have to cling to something."

Get ready, people – there's a phenomena coming. Jubilation will perform four Auckland shows over the next month.

"The music doesn't really come alive until you sing it in front of people," says Jackie Clarke – performer, singer, etcetera. "You learn all the parts in the rehearsal room, but the magic only happens when you get in front of people."

She signed up for the choir when she was pregnant with her first son. "It never occurred to me we'd actually perform live."

There's a waiting list to join Jubilation. Turnover is minute – just three new members in the past two years. The current line-up includes a postie, a boat builder and an electrician. Many of the group have decidedly un-gospel like music projects. Callie Blood and James Moore are, respectively, members of The Darlings and The Lure of Shoes. Buzz Worley and several other choir members record with The Jive Bombers.

In the old days, the choir performed at St Kevin's Arcade cafe, Hallelujah. It was, says Bryant, a semi-public space.

"Because there was every kind of young and old derelict and completely opportunist passers-by who couldn't help but hear us, we collected – and converted, if you like – some very, very unlikely and unexpected people."

Clarke says the attraction is simple. "I think we just communicate a little bit of joy. When we're really firing, it's transcendent. Whether you put the God aspect into that word or not. It makes you feel great, and there's something about the sound of people's voices."

Last year, at the World Science festival in New York City, neurologist and author Oliver Sacks delivered a lecture called Music and the Brain. The author of Awakenings and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat collaborated with the Abyssinian Baptist Choir to illustrate gospel music's "power to resonate and affect the human psyche through live performances".

"Music can be inspiring, moving us to the heights or depths of emotion," said Sacks. "It can also be our best medicine."

SALLY DODDS is in front of the choir now. Feel the power. A short woman in a lime, turquoise and yellow stripy jumper and jeans.

A piano teacher and accounting consultant by day, dig deeper and she'll confess to wearing seven-inch platform heels and a "red satin number" on the 1970s' Peter Sinclair-hosted music show Happen Inn. Later, in Australia, she worked on The Mike Walsh Show and toured with comedian Norman Gunston.

Her Jubilation audition was a song by The Nylons, which she had originally arranged for eight male voices (including Mark "Show No Mercy" Williams).

"Bop till you drop, shake it till you break it, move it till you lose it...I was leaping around, trying to sing all eight parts in one go. Anyone would have thought I was on speed. But I got through it."

She says the word "gospel" can be off-putting, "but there's not a very strong religious thread pulling us all together. It's a style of music that allows you to get out there and sing full gusto and have a whale of a time doing it".

Dodds has, she says, "worked with lots and lots of people and lots of supposedly professional people". Jubilation, she says, is better than many.

"There's a shared responsibility. It's very democratic. We should be running the country, really."

Jubilation – Shout and Never Get Tired, released this week. Auckland Four Corners tour: Titirangi War Memorial Hall, October 17; Mangere East Hall, October 30; St Matthew-in-the-City, October 31; St Paul's Devonport, November 7. www.jubilation.co.nz

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