Robert Sims curated the San Francisco concert coming Aug. 28 in which mezzo-soprano Federica von Stade will join singers from the world’s great opera houses.
“The slave masters thought they were just singing harmless religious songs, and on one level they were,” says Robert Sims, of Oakland, who has spent his life as an ambassador for this uniquely American art form.
“But spirituals were also songs of liberation, with coded hints about how to escape. ‘Wade in the Water’ could be about baptism, but it also had another meaning: The water will wash away your scent so the bloodhounds can’t catch you. “Or take ‘Follow the Drinking Gourd,’ which is another name for the Big Dipper. At the end of the handle is the North Star, so if you keep following it you know you’re heading north to freedom. ‘Crossing the River Jordan’ meant crossing the Ohio River, which divided Kentucky, a slave state, from Ohio, a free state. And when they sang, “Go down, Moses, tell Pharoah to let my people go,’ Moses could mean John Brown or Harriet Tubman, and heaven meant Canada.” And people are still documenting what it’s like to be Black in America, from the music of the Civil Rights Movement to the hip-hop songs that are the soundtrack of Black Lives Matter. “There would be no Motown without the spiritual,” says Sims, “and spirituals are still being written because the struggle for liberation still goes on. It’s a continually evolving art form, as deeply rooted in the present as it is in the past.” Spirituals will be front and center at San Francisco’s beautiful Herbst Theatre on Aug. 28, when the Noontime Concerts series will present a concert titled “Majesty of the Spiritual,” curated by Sims himself. “Majesty of the Spiritual,” will feature 12 award-winning singers from the great opera houses of the world joining Oakland resident and great mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade, above. It’s a musical testimony to the indomitable will that navigated and ultimately survived an impossibly tragic, unforgettable past, as well as a celebration of the musical lineage and poetic tradition that is powerfully alive today. “Majesty of the Spiritual,” will feature 12 award-winning singers from the great opera houses of the world joining the great mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade, who lives in Oakland, singing works by three living composers of spirituals. Lena McLin, who was Sims’ high school music teacher and the niece of Thomas Dorsey, who wrote “Take My Hand, Precious Lord” and “Peace in the Valley,” is one of the composers, as are Roland Carter, who is famous for his arrangements of “Lift Every Voice and Sing” ; and Jacqueline Hairston, whose songs have been showcased by soprano Kathleen Battle in her “Underground Railroad” concert tours since 2011. “I was thrilled to be asked to participate,” says von Stade, who has loved spirituals ever since her college days in New York, when she would take the subway on Sundays to a church on 125th Street in Harlem to hear them. “I immediately said, ‘yes.’ I’m looking forward to learning more from Robert. I adore the people I’ll be singing with, and I know the hall. So what’s not to love?” Despite the name of the sponsoring organization, Noontime Concerts, “Majesty of the Spiritual” will actually begin at 3 p.m. Herbst Theatre is in the War Memorial Performing Arts Center, across the street from San Francisco City Hall on Van Ness Avenue. You can find out more and buy tickets at“Music heals,” says Sims. “There’s a hymn that says, ‘There is a balm in Gilead to heal the sin-sick soul.’ ” Music can do that.”
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