The call was from an acquaintance of mine who shares my enjoyment of music and the cultural arts. It came  late in the evening after a particularly long work day when I had stretched my gangly frame out along my sofa, waiting to regain enough energy to fix a late meal that I would eat alone.    “I got the flyer about your upcoming concert” said the voice, “and was more than a little disappointed to see  non-African Americans involved in the program.  Why would you use other artists when there are so many of us available?  And now I realize from reading your past blogs that you’ve formed a mixed Master Singers chorus, even though there are all-Black groups you could hire for something like this.  It seems to me as if you are taking the Negro spiritual song away from our community.”   After a little moment of surprise I sat up and began laying out for the umpteenth time in our history the philosophy that has supported the mission and work of this Foundation from inception. Simply put, the white Catholic bishop Thomas J. Grady and black opera singer Curtis Rayam who started this project  enlisted the help of a widely diverse group of supporters in order to celebrate the Negro spiritual as an American art form, and to assist minority youth in their quest for higher education. From the beginning it was clear that the project intended to cross many of the racial, social and cultural lines that were traditional barriers in places like Central Florida, and those of us present with them at the start understood that we would go anywhere and ask anyone for help to make the dream a reality.

So there are two schools of thought, one of which sees the need for a degree of separation when preserving a cultural treasure like the Negro spiritual, another that wants the ‘our” in my caller’s complaint to mean all of those who value such cultural treasures, without separation.  The Foundation’s response, to quote the vernacular, is a ’no-brainer’.  We teach in the school of inclusion, and we walk its hallways without apology or shame.  True, the Negro spiritual song arose in an Afro-ethnic context and is cradled and kept there still .   But it is equally true that this song is America’s hymn, and that every voice can lift it.  Our task is to find and present the best of these voices among the Afro-ethnic youth population and well beyond it too.  We are going about our work undeterred by economic hardship or petty complaints.

Now, the lesson learned.  Two days before I took the upsetting call, my friend David Michael (he of the stenorous bass voice and villainous operatic personae) wrote an e-mail in response to his having seen the flyer in question.  David said he was glad to see us stretching the limits of the Negro spiritual a bit and, with unerring foresight, he warned that we might take some hits for doing so. Today’s lesson from the curriculum of the school of inclusion comes from professor David Michael himself, the last line of whose message to me reads “… if you are not risking enough to offend the few you are not really making anything worthy to be called art by the many.”  Enough said.

I am looking forward to Suitable Airs XI on Sunday, 4th October .  I hope, and now fully expect, that the sanctuary of  Eatonville’s Madeconia Missionary Baptist Church will be crammed to the hilt with people of every sort and kind who love America’s musical heritage and who value our community’s spirit of inclusion.  We’ll have a song or two ready to celebrate the moment…..

In earnest,

Rudi Cleare