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Minneapolis Star Tribune, June 20, 1996

Faith in the Music

The Minneapolis Community College Gospel Choir is not your typical gospel chorus. The volunteer singers don't have to audition. They're not all African-Americans. They have learned how to feel what they sing, and it has changed their lives.

By MICHAEL ANTHONY
Star Tribune Staff Writer

Gospel music, whether it's sung by a choir or a quartet, ought to rattle the roof and produce some sweat. So the city's biggest roof - at the Metrodome - may be in need of repair after Friday night. One of the featured choral groups at the Billy Graham Crusade will be the 100-voice Minneapolis Community College Gospel Choir, led by its founder, Robert (Eddie) Robinson, a round, sweet-voiced gospel singer who has been known to feel the spirit on occasion and to rattle walls as well as roofs.

Gospel choirs are not unknown in the Twin Cities, but this one is unusual:

• The MCC Gospel Choir has released three CDs since it was formed in 1990.
• Among the 60 or so performances it gives each year, many have been in such nonstandard venues as prisons and homeless shelters.
• On June 1, the group represented the state of Minnesota at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., as part of the center's 25th anniversary celebration.
• Most gospel choirs, going back to such veteran ensembles as the Clara Ward Singers and the Argo Singers, have been staffed totally or predominantly by African-Americans, but the membership of the MCC Gospel Choir is racially mixed, and purposely so.
• The group, moreover, is made up of volunteers. No dues are charged to the members and, in a strong break from tradition, the singers don't have to pass an audition to be admitted.

Many of the singers say that performing with Robinson and his choir has changed their lives.

"In the first year that I sang with them, I would almost break down during every performance," said Jeanne Lee, a Korean-American who joined the group about five years ago and frequently sings solos. "The spirit was so strong, and the songs so powerful."

Lee, who grew up in Ohio, had sung in choruses most of her life before joining the MCC choir. But she was unaccustomed to Robinson's rehearsal method, which is to learn the music by rote, with only a text in front of them, no music. "That's really been different for me," she said. "This is much more working with feeling and instinct and intuition and spiritual strength."

Learning by rote was even harder for alto Judy Dworkin, who, having earned a degree in vocal performance at the University of Minnesota, was steeped in traditional choral singing. She joined the chorus shortly after it was formed.

"I didn't think I'd be able to handle it. I mean, the majority of the singers can't read music," she said. "But after a while, it just totally freed me. It's a whole different way of singing when you're not tied down to the music and just singing from the heart. I think that's what makes our performances so contagious."

Robinson himself admits that not asking singers to audition is a bold practice. Many choral conductors would call it crazy. "Well, in a way, they're right," he said, laughing. "It's tough and it's sometimes scary, because there are people in the choir who are not strong singers. There are a few who aren't even singers. But they have so much energy, and their heart is so much into it. They realize they don't sound like Aretha Franklin. But it doesn't matter, because everything they get out of it they're willing to put back.

"They do the best they can do," he said, his voice taking on the rhythm of the African-American preacher, a rhythm not foreign to gospel itself. "There's something about this kind of music. At some point, you lose yourself. You lose focus on all those things that would normally freak people out, like, 'Are people looking at me?' or whatever. And when it's over with, it's almost like you come out of a spiritual trance. And that's what this music has done for these people. It has moved them out of themselves to a higher level."

Starting a chorus

It was the college itself in 1990 that asked Robinson, who had been singing gospel since he was 6, to start a community gospel choir. About 30 singers showed up for the first rehearsal. Four months later, the group won a talent contest at the State Fair, and within a year the membership was running close to 100.

Right from the start, Robinson wanted the group to be multiracial. "What I wanted to do was open this up so that everybody could experience it," he said. "Gospel's for everybody. It's not just for black people or your local church."

But what about those who say white people can't sing gospel? "Anybody can be trained to do anything," he said. "Plus, the thing that makes this choir work is that the people in it want to do it."

Within a few years, the chorus received a grant to perform at prisons and homeless shelters. "We're sort of the house choir at Lino Lakes," said Dworkin, referring to the Lino Lakes Correctional Facility. They've also performed frequently at the Shakopee Women's Prison.

"To see the walls and barriers come down with these guys in prison who have determined that they're going to be tough and untouchable is really something," Robinson said. "They cry and they stand and they jump. They totally lost themselves for an hour and a half."

That grant ran out a couple of years ago, however. Robinson, who says the chorus is struggling financially, intends to launch a fund-raising campaign soon so they can resume the prison and shelter performances. The group's annual budget runs between $40,000 and $50,000, he said. The college no longer gives the chorus financial support, though it continues to offer rehearsal and office space.

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