Community, Movement, and Song in Action: An Ethnography of the Imani Jubilee Singers’ Family Weekend Service

Benjamin Gellman

Professor Miller

Musical Youth Cultures

1 November 2011

Community, Movement, and Song in Action: An Ethnography of the Imani Jubilee Singers’ Family Weekend Service

“People, look to the ceiling and clap your hands!  This is the Lord’s hour!”  

Those were the first words that seeped from the pulpit at Manning Chapel on a cool Sunday evening in mid-October during the weekly Imani Jubilee service.  The young woman who uttered them, a petite young black woman with a deep Southern accent reflecting her roots in suburban Memphis and a silver cross glittering on her neckline, prompted a cascade of clapping from the 50-strong audience as the choir began to hum its homegrown rendition of Israel Houghton’s “Lord You Are Good.”  The young woman sitting next to me, who grew up in Port-au-Prince, whispered along with the words.  Then she turned to me and asked, “do you know this song?”  My blank face indicated a no; she smiled and nodded along with the music.

Born in 2010 from the desire to infuse Brown’s weekly black nondenominational Christian prayer service, Imani Jubilee, with musical fervor, the Imani Jubilee Singers are a community of black students from disparate geographical, cultural, and even religious backgrounds; what guides them, and the audience that follows them each week, are their musical narratives of faith in the divine and affirmation of shared black identity; these forces are embraced through a musical repertoire that pervades the ninety-minute service almost without pause.  In this ethnography I will posit three key conditions that mark the Singers’ performance and render their following on campus particularly significant.  The Singers’ positioning in a predominately white and largely secular campus community, use of clapping and vocal gestures that bridge their performance with their audience’s worship experience, and their reliance on a holistic perspective of black religious life that incorporates a variety of languages and musical techniques into their performance, are pillars of the musical experience at Imani Jubilee and indicators of the group’s significance and versatility as a cultural institution within the Brown community.

The positioning of Imani Jubilee as Brown’s only service designated explicitly as “a contemporary worship service in the Black Church Tradition which Celebrates the Faith as Believers in Christ” (http://www.brown.edu/Administration/Chaplains/Communities/imanijubilee.html) at a predominately white university with a largely secular student body is imperative in driving the spiritual fervor of this service.  Okize, the young man who organized the Singers last academic year, explained to me before the service that “lots of black students here [at Brown] are accustomed to hearing gospel choirs, listening to their pastor’s sermons, shoutin’ in the crowd, but they get to Brown and realize how there isn’t that much God here after all” (Okize).  Okize’s comment underscores a campus vibe in which many students do not utilize religious resources when they come to Brown. Furthermore, while many black students at Brown were raised in communities and worshipped in churches whose racial composition was predominately black, here at Brown the trappings of black neighborhood life, let alone the fervor of predominately black religious spaces, are rendered slim by the relatively low concentration of black students.  These factors render the need for a space for black Christians to gather especially pertinent for those students who wish to maintain Christian traditions at Brown.

Music, Okize explains, was “truly at the heart of the church experience for many of us [black students] growing up,” and the insertion of a musical component into the Imani Jubilee experience through the creation of the Singers was, in another student’s words, “imperative to bringing back the religious experiences of our childhood Sunday mornings” (York).  This constitutes a variety of stylistic qualities that could be easily perceived at the Family Weekend concert that are typical of black Christian musical traditions as a whole.  For example, the Singers’ (and audience’s) use of clapping was a cornerstone of all the songs they performed at the concert.  On the first verse of their rendition of Kirk Franklin’s “My Life, My World, My All,” Okize ushered the audience to “clap along with us, let the Lord hear your hands come together!”  The ritualized clapping that accompanied the choir’s performance allowed unschooled participants, like me (I was raised in a Jewish household and had only been to one black Christian service before) to join in the experience.  During the Franklin piece, I felt at least marginally integrated into the performance; that said, considering the significant level of physical interaction with the Singers’ performance, juxtaposed with my religious upbringing amid emotionless recitations of Hebrew prayers, I recognized that my background inscribed a sense of disengagement with the performance.  This sense of being out of place within the service was probably evident, as the Reverend later asked, “how did you like the way we do things around here?”  

Midway through the Kirk Franklin tune, two members of the choir entered the aisle that ran between the rows of pews in Manning Chapel, shouting “stand up for the Lord!”  As everyone stood up, an element of togetherness among the crowd became visible in this moment of shared group movement.  Once the choir ended that selection, its members spread out along the aisle and sustained a harmonic humming sound as Reverend Mathis begun reading a verse from the New Testament.  This delicate hum of voices remained as the sermon continued, uniting the Biblical content coming from Mathis’ mouth with the affirmation of this content through the Singers’ harmony.  This choir’s power in creating new dimensions of sound alongside the Reverend’s voice allowed a message of faith to extend physically throughout the crowd, mediated by the Singers’ dispersal across Manning Chapel.  

As Reverend Mathis finished his reading from the Bible, the Singers sprinted to the stage, rearranged themselves, and began singing a song called “Oh Mon Dieu” in Haitian Creole.   It dawned on me that, despite the shared black identity of the Christians involved in the Imani Jubilee experience, there was tremendous diversity in their cultural and religious backgrounds, and the very makeup of the Singers attests to this heterogeneity.  A Haitian-American Catholic from outside Boston taught the Singers this piece, and the group was simultaneously learning an African-inspired hymn from a Nigerian-American Singer.  The performance of a multilingual and multicultural gospel repertoire demonstrates the importance of a holistic vision of black Christian life in a university community that features a phenomenally diverse range of national and religious identities among its black students.  This is both a necessary and versatile feature of the Imani Jubilee experience, as it proves that the musicians’ capacity for building community around collective identity recognizes the nuances within black Christian experiences and helps foster a spirit of togetherness among a highly nuanced black Christian demographic.

The service ended with the Singers’ round of “Betelehemu,” a Yoruba round loaded with opportunity for the audience to clap along.  As the Singers filed out, my friend Jessica slipped into the pew next to me and whispered, “I’m glad to see you here! God bless!,” gave me a peck on the cheek, and slipped back into the aisle.  There I stood, enmeshed in a spiritual energy unlike any I had seen growing up, a visitor rendered welcome by the power of a collective spiritual energy and a magnificent soundtrack.

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