If it’s a Wednesday night, you’ll usually find me in the choir loft at my United Methodist Church, trying to decipher notes on a page of sheet music with my long-dormant, never-great sight-reading skills (new and improved with middle-aged eyes!). Fortunately, Karen is usually there and she sings loudly and correctly enough for me to follow along and hide behind.
Seated at the piano or organ leading us is one of the most musically impressive people I have known in real life, although he shouldn’t be too flattered, given my generally talentless associations. But Jonathan is, by any standard, a naturally gifted and well-educated musician. He originally moved to the D.C. area to sing with the Washington Opera (which was recently made a refugee by Trump’s takeover of the Kennedy Center).
I swear, Jonathan can sing all four parts, including notes beyond my own reach. No offense to any of the lovely singers in our choir—and I am undoubtedly on the low end of the talent spectrum—but Jonathan conducting us isn’t far off from Van Gogh teaching finger painting.
Bless his heart. And his ears.
“Keep your vowels tall, drop those jaws,” Jonathan will invariably instruct, perhaps choosing to focus on the most correctable issue before him. Somehow, though, we get it together well enough by Sunday morning to sound tolerable.
Jonathan always sends us an email after the service with some charitably glowing reviews from the congregation. We appreciate them, but that’s not why we’re here.
I was seven when I discovered I loved to sing. After the movie Annie came out, I got the record (yes, I’m that old) and spent hours belting out every song. My older sister was my makeshift vocal coach, giving me tips and assuring me I would be a star.
For some years after that, I honestly believed maybe I could be. I clearly didn’t have the soprano pipes of most soloists, but I could do pretty well with an Amy Grant or Karen Carpenter number.
When I got to high school, I tried out for choir. When I didn’t make it, twice, that was pretty much the end of my singing fantasy. I eventually got in during my senior year, but by then, I had to face the fact that I had, at best, a “choir voice.” Which is just fine, because I love being in a choir.
My voice sounds so much better enveloped by those of others, and it feels so much safer to stretch my abilities with the generous support of those on either side of me. Singing in a choir is like having a meaningful conversation in a hard-won second language.
It’s like belonging, for a brief time, in the tightest-knit community or being offered a seat at a bounteous meal. It’s like life itself, the best of group projects.
And right now, singing together feels like a cure for what ails us.
It is what our nation is struggling to hold on to, E Pluribus Unum, many voices being as one. Everyone singing different parts, but at least generally on the same page.
Out in the world, it seems like the pages of music have scattered into a cacophonous wind. We just aren’t singing the same song anymore.
Resistance Songs
I walked into a different, unfamiliar church on a recent Sunday night, a cozy Episcopal church with huge windows overlooking woods and exposed wooden beams. The packed house already buzzed with chatter and song when I arrived.
It was my first meeting of the Singing Resistance. I had been deeply moved by videos from Minnesota of protesters singing in the streets. The songs were simple, repetitive, accessible to all skill levels, appropriate for all faiths and none at all. Songs of lament, songs of solidarity, songs of comfort, and my favorite, songs of defection, telling ICE officers that “It’s OK to change your mind” and that they were welcome to “join us anytime.”
It was a musical lifeline of conscience.
I joined a Zoom training offered by the Minnesota leaders and other singing protestors around the country. There were over 3,000 people on the call, and several other training sessions after that one. Out of that, chapters formed across the country, including a DC-area chapter. From there, it looks like multiple localized offshoots will be established.
Soon we will sing at protests and vigils in this area. I hope we will sing songs of defection at various federal buildings and on Capitol Hill. This town has a crap-load of people who really, really, really need to defect.
That Sunday night, we learned songs together, we held up the names of those killed by ICE, many more than those who are well-known, and we made new friends. We left with genuine hope.
I left believing there was no way on earth democracy could really and truly die in this country. Not when 200 mostly non-religious people pack out a church on a Sunday night to sing on the off-chance it makes a small difference in the world. Not when they have been inspired to do so by a city of ordinary citizens who turned out in arctic temperatures for weeks on end out of love for people they don’t even know.
The Spiritual Magic of Song
“What is it about singing that creates such a spiritual experience?” I asked Jonathan recently.
“I think it is vibrations. And energy,” he said, without hesitation. He had clearly thought a lot about this very thing.
“I think that there has to be something dealing with the frequencies of a specific note or notes being played together that just connects with a higher spirit, or our higher frequency,” he went on. “It’s kind of like a way of magic..a spiritual magic.”
I stared back at him wide-eyed. Of course, I thought. Of course, music is a kind of magic. It introduces a whole new dimension of experience. It is a vehicle of time travel that connects us to earlier times, in our own lives or with people in the distant past. It leaves a gift for people of the future.
When we do it alone, it is an intimate unleashing of our deepest emotions. With others, it is tangible, immediate evidence of the human capacity for beautiful cooperation. It is auditory love. It is created and creative joy.
The science seems to confirm Jonathan’s spiritual hunch. Research has found that singing improves heart health, lung capacity, and the body’s immune response. It releases endorphins and reduces stress and it instantly increases social cohesion.
A group of strangers who sing together develops demonstrable bonds in only an hour.
We could use all of these things right now—community, cohesion, calm, joy, health, strength, energy, courage, hope. And, yes, just a little magic.
So, sing a song. Don’t worry that it’s not good enough for anyone else to hear. Just sit next to Karen, she’s got you.
Just sing. Sing a song.
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Holly Berkley Fletcher is an author, historian, and former intelligence analyst. She was raised in Kenya by evangelical missionary parents. She earned a PhD in American history and taught in universities for several years before being hired as an Africa analyst by the Central Intelligence Agency, where she worked for nineteen years. She writes the substack A Zebra Without Stripes, and her most recent book is The Missionary Kids: Unmasking the Myths of White Evangelicalism. She lives in the Washington, DC, area with her husband, two kids, and delinquent rescue dog.