College spirit

The students who met in a Spokane Falls Community College classroom for the first time last week came from many cultures and backgrounds, but they shared a love of two things – singing and the Lord.

Welcome to SFCC’s newest course, “Singing Gospel Music,” guaranteed to raise your spirits if not your GPA.

There’s no test, no grade.

The college is proud of its music program, said Dan Wenger, dean of arts and humanities, but something was missing.

“We didn’t have a lot of cultural representation,” Wenger said.

So school officials turned to one of their own for help – Sharon Jones, community and equity relations coordinator for Community Colleges of Spokane, who also happens to be the director of the Spokane Community Gospel Mass Choir.

Her credentials were found to be in order.

The granddaughter of Mississippi sharecroppers grew up hearing her grandmother singing gospel hymns as she kept time by churning butter. By age 12, Jones was directing the choir of Pilgrim’s Rest Baptist Church in Memphis, Tenn.

“She was perfect,” Wenger said.

Jones had no trouble filling her class with 44 students, two dozen of whom are members of her community choir.

Last Thursday night, the students came into class, sat down and waited for the spirit to move them. It didn’t take long.

“It was prophesized to me that God was going to take us to the next level,” Jones began.

“Amen,” answered a few of the students.

“I’m a believer. Let’s get that out of the way,” Jones told her class. “Gospel is about Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and we’re going to spread the good news,”

“Uh-huh,” was the natural refrain from one of her altos.

Though SFCC is a public institution of learning, Wenger said gospel is a legitimate part of the musical curriculum.

“It’s inseparable from our national history,” he said. “It’s the music that informs the civil rights movement.”

Gospel is the basis for jazz, blues and rock – blending African rhythms with Western music.

“Our curriculum isn’t advocating a religious belief,” he said. “But how can you have a gospel choir that is secular when the purpose of gospel is to spread the word?”

Or as Jones put it, “It’s singing until the power of the Lord comes down.

“If you feel it, let it happen,” she told her class, and it happened.

Jones started singing ” ‘Tis the Old Ship of Zion.” A baritone voice joined in, followed by others. Jones had to organize the sopranos, but soon they got on board, too.

Then Jones directed the students to stand individually, introduce themselves, tell why they enrolled in the class and sing a bit of their favorite song.

“My name is Thomas Johnson, and I joined this choir because praise is what I do,” one student said.

“My name is Dawn, and I’m really happy to see some other colors,” another said.

Others were clearly nervous singing solo. Their classmates would help out with vocal accompaniment depending on the level of timidity.

One woman, a retired United Methodist minister, said she had not sung in a choir in 30 years, then belted out “It’s Me Jesus, It’s Me.”

Then it was Doug Bendewald’s turn. He’s a big white man with a graying ponytail, a baritone in the choir who also took up the saxophone five years ago at age 43 because “gospel has a forgiving audience.”

“I joined the class because I wanted to be the first one in my family to go to college,” Bendewald said, leaving everyone in stitches.

There were two Shadle Park High School girls who said they would sing “whenever you give us a chance,” a choir member who said she came because Jones told her to, and a pianist who grew up “playing in quiet church.”

Another woman said she hoped it was OK to be Catholic.

“In this choir, there is no discrimination,” Jones said. “We are one body – Catholic, Jew, Protestant – it doesn’t matter. It’s what’s in your heart.”

Wenger, in his analytical way, explained that “gospel fuses the hope of spiritual salvation with political emancipation.”

Most people enrolled in the class just said, “It feels good.”

The students paid only $18 for the class, which is now closed. There will be no credit for the class this quarter, but next year it will be a hybrid – for-credit or not-for-credit.

Toward the end of the class, Jones led everyone in a rousing rendition of “If I be lifted up.”

Class dismissed.