Why I'm Not a Pro

On Monday night, James and I had our first rehearsal with the Pittsfield Sister City Jazz Ambassadors, a group of professional jazz musicians who travel to Pittsfield's sister cities in Ireland, Italy, Nicaragua, and South Korea (although I don't know if they've actually gone to South Korea yet) to promote peace through music.  This coming June they're going to Istanbul to begin the process of establishing a sister city relationship, and we've been invited to join them as part of the band.  Well, I was fully aware of my lack of jazz vocal skills and music theory, along with my total lack of jazzy personality (I don't have a single hambone in my body—well, maybe one tiny one, somewhere, that enjoys people enjoying my performance, but that's it), but I'm confident of my ability to sing well, on pitch, in tempo, and as part of a group.  I just never gravitated towards jazz singing for a reason: it's not who I am.  I can put my heart and soul into old Baptist hymns, folk music, indie singer-songwriter pieces, and some rock-and-roll and even country tunes.  If I love a piece of music, I can sing the hell out of it.  But I can't dress up a tune convincingly for the sake of performance.  Which is what a professional singer has to do.  Which is why I'm not a pro and have chosen consistently throughout my life not to become one.

In the two days since our rehearsal, I've been searching out why it is I love to sing, what it is I want to do when I sing, how to define why I want to go to Istanbul and how I want to spread peace there through music.  The fundamental truth of music for me, I think, is what's inside the music, not the externals.  I have always been fervently opposed to paid soloists in church choirs because it does nothing for me to hear someone sing, no matter how technically "beautifully," about something that they don't feel in their heart.  And when someone is only there on Sunday and singing that piece of music because we're paying them to be, there's no assurance that they really care about the content of what they're singing or even about whether or not they successfully contribute to the worship experience.  I can hear the difference between a technically beautiful performance and a soulfully beautiful gift of song.  It's much more meaningful to me to hear someone sing something imperfectly from the depths of their heart.  I want sincerity in my music, not technical perfection.  My favorite singers don't have the best voices:  Randy Newman, Mark Oliver Everett, Johnny Cash—what they have is realness.  When I hear them sing a song, it's not about them, it's about the song.

In the past 15 years or so, my journey in music has been to develop the spiritual grounding, along with the musical skills, to put my real self into a song when I sing it.  I was terrified to sing solo until I was in seminary and canted a service in chapel one morning.  In that setting, it wasn't about me at all, and the music a cantor sings isn't showy so it's not about the externals of the music, either.  It's about helping create a place where people can gather to share their human vulnerability.  I discovered I had a gift for creating that space with my voice.  I still don't really understand why that is—when people tell me they love to hear me sing, I don't know why.  I don't hear anything special in my own voice.  But I've come to take their word for it since I've heard it consistently now for a number of years.  And I've come to know that when people say that to me is when I've sung a song with all my self in it.  When it's been all about the music, not about me.

So my vision of our time in Istanbul is using my gift to help create a place where people with vastly different backgrounds, experiences, histories, beliefs, cultures, and just about everything else can stand together and share our souls.  Music can be a place beneath all the differences where we can meet each other.  Food and music are particularly good for that.  So I want to eat with Istanbullus and sing with them and find that place where we aren't so different after all.  One of the songs we practiced on Monday night was "Moon River," and I found this video of a young Korean boy, Sungha Jung, playing the song soulfully on his guitar.  It expresses so much of what music can do in this world.  A South Korean 14-year-old playing a song from a 1961 American movie, beautifully.  (I also just discovered another tidbit about this movie and song that makes it even more appropriate for me to sing with the Jazz Ambassadors:  according to Wikipedia, "[Audrey Hepburn] herself regarded it as one of her most challenging roles, since she was an introvert required to play an extrovert."  Just like me with jazz singing!)  Music can truly be a place where our differences—I won't say they disappear or don't matter at all, but they become condiments, not the meal.  The music is the main feast.