This is an excellent article about how the silence practiced by gospel choirs is leading to death. It appeared in the Sunday (10/23/94) News Journal, Wilmington, DE. There are also two excellent sidebars.
SPECIAL REPORTFrom small rural churches to center city arenas, voices rise in a joyful noise for the Lord. But AIDS has cast a pall of silence over the black gospel music community.
AND THE CHOIR SINGS ONby Rhonda Graham
Staff reporter Sunday News Journal, Wilmington, Del.
This wasn't just a funeral, it was an event. The socializing customary before the arrival of the family had grown to a low hum as friends who hadn't seen each other in months chatted across the pews. Many had come for the rare opportunity to hear the deceased's award-winning gospel choir perform for free.
The grieving stared motionless or solemnly wiped at tears. Then silence swarmed through the large gothic church on Wilmington's east side two winters ago. The sound of metal, muted by rubber, tapping against the hardwood floor followed. Ka-dat. Barely anyone moved. A few seconds passed. Ka-dat. Ka-dat. And on it went as an emaciated figure with grayish pallor came into view.
Slowly shifting his walker, the 30-ish man held up the long procession to the coffin, The more than 400 mourners packed into pews on the main floor and the balcony seemed entranced with a macabre sense of anticipation.
The man pursed his lips and moved deliberately. Ka-dat. Ka-dat. Overwhelmed,another young man in a burnt orange suit and chemically processed hair sitting near the rear of the sanctuary dropped his face into his hands and sobbed. Ka-dat. Ka-dat.
Finally at the coffin, the man with the walker briefly surveyed his brother in the Lord, then turned to find a seat. A low hum returned as he joined the grieving.
This past February, he joined his brother many believe in heaven.
A deafening silenceAs it has done to the fashion, theater and dance communities, AIDS is leaving an indelible mark on the black gospel music community, a central part of the African-American worship experience. From top-ranked Billboard choirs to the piano benches of Delaware churches, HIV infection and AIDS are widely rumored, privately discussed but rarely publicly acknowledged. They are as feared as leprosy was in biblical days.
Men, mostly ages 20 to 40, are being infected and dying in a deafening silence perpetuated by their congregations and the industry for whom they have spent the better part of their lives performing.
It is a spirit of silence rooted in paranoia and theological disagreements about homosexuality in the African-American community. Organizers of today's 8th Annual AIDS Walk in Wilmington hope their event will increase this community's awareness of the epidemic's impact.
"It's devastating. The same kind of impact in gospel that it is having in the world," said the Rev. Al Hobbs, chairman of the Gospel Music Workshop of America, the largest black gospel music association in the world.
There has been no official effort to tabulate the number of AIDS deaths in the black gospel community. But insiders trace deaths to the early 1980s.
"I think over the next couple of years some of the major players in gospel will be hit with this, " said Christopher Squires of the Rev. Ernest Davis Jr.'s Wilmington-Chester Mass Choir.
In Delaware this year, 26 people have died from AIDS. At least four were gospel musicians, one a woman.
Since 1991, at least 14 singers and musicians have died between Middletown and Philadelphia, a regional circuit for gospel musicians. In Kent County, about 10 singers and musicians in civilian choirs and churches have died since 1990, said Ruth Shelton, director of the Dover Air Force Base Gospel Choir.
If more than one member dies, groups fear being labeled as an "AIDS choir."
Interviews with more than 40 people connected with the local and national black gospel music community--singers, musicians, relatives, spouses, clergy and friends--illuminated the extent of the code of silence. Most agreed to talk only if guaranteed complete anonymity.
One exception is Wilmington recording artist Tracy Shy. "I'm looking at the senior citizens. They are living to be 100, and my peers are falling like flies," Shy said.
Uplifting music is big business </CENTER? black gospel community functions two concentric circles. The inner circle comprises about 30 choirs, quartets and small ensembles nationwide who command thousands of dollars in concert fees before boarding a bus or plane for an engagement.
The outer circle contains local groups and congregational choirs whose repertoires are mixed with original music and the hit songs of the national performers. Their goal it to grow in popularity through regional engagements and eventually join the inner circle.
These two societies share a common center--an evangelical Protestant belief that music must "lift up the name of Jesus" by portraying him as God the refuge, shelter in time of storm, deliverer and healer.
In Delaware, as in states across the country, weekends are filled with marathon worship services, where in recent years traditional gospel has been infused with worldly rhythm-and-blues melodies and self-affirming lyrics.
Gospel music is big business. As of October 1993, more than 40 million records had been sold. According to a 1992 Gallup poll, 31 million people have attended a gospel concert outside of church. The Gospel Music Workshop of America convention in Atlanta this summer drew 25,000 people.
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