When I brought home a report card for the first time in my life that was just shy of putting me on the dean’s list, there were many questions. “How did this happen?” my father asked. I countered by listing all of the extracurricular activities that were taking my attention. I was fascinated by a brand-new school, was participating in the math club, the Future Teachers of America club, and the chorus. Plus, I had a close friend in the band, and would find myself at his rehearsals, and the football games. I was busy. But in my father’s mind, certainly, I was not too busy to bring home better grades than this.
It was not a request; it was an expectation.
This was the prevailing sentiment of many African American parents of the time. Despite the often desperate hand they’d been dealt, despite a government-sanctioned caste system that denied them basic rights, and despite the constant threat of danger, these parents dared to dream of and plan for brighter futures for their children—futures they held dear even if they had never experienced anything like this for themselves. I recall a conversation with my maternal grandfather on such a subject. We talked as we stood looking out over his land, a farm that he and my grandmother owned outright. They had worked it to sustain themselves and their hefty family of fourteen, some years after my grandfather’s first farm had been lost in the Depression, when he, like all too many black landowners, had fallen behind on his taxes. Unbowed by this setback, my grandparents did all that they could to save enough to purchase another farm—land they walked proudly, sometimes with me trailing not far behind. I was only seven or eight years old when, during one of these walks, I discovered that my voice could produce an echo if I stood looking out over the ridge down into the valley. This seemed very big to me at the time. I heard my voice rise high into the sky and then rain down over the treetops and back toward me. “God willing,” my grandfather said simply, as I stood in wonder, “I’ll be able to cut down some of these trees to send you to college one day.”
This was a wonderful thought at the time, though I couldn’t quite make the connection between those giant trees and college tuition payments. But even at that tender age, I knew that college was an expectation. It was not a matter of “if,” but “where.” This man had seen all twelve of his children graduate high school—a thirteenth, Samuel, had died in a tragic horse-riding accident—in a place and at a time when segregation assured inadequate teaching materials, inadequate facilities, and low teachers’ pay for black schools. Yet he saw nothing but better things for those who carried in their veins both his blood and that of the sainted ancestors. With him, the sky was blue, the well was full of water, birds flew merrily above, and all of his grandchildren were going to make a good life for themselves. Yes, expectations were high, but really, it was so very easy to make my elders happy, especially my parents. Nothing pleased them more than having their children make it all the way through a memorized rendition of a passage of Scripture or a poem without missing a word or two.
My siblings and I recognize this now as a true blessing, because the world is full of parents who offer a different level of attention to their children—mothers and fathers who are intent on choosing what their children will be and pronouncing them prodigies before they can barely walk. I have run into quite a few mothers who push their way backstage, children trailing in their wake, to pronounce their kids the ninth wonders of the world, possessing unparalleled talent and skill—at age eight. These children are pressed through a mill of voice coaches and vigorous singing schedules that do nothing more than make it impossible for them to thrive when they are adults and their bodies are finally ready for the rigors of singing professionally. Nothing is sadder for me than to meet a twenty-year-old who has been studying voice since the age of thirteen or so and to find that young voice now ruined. I have gone out of my way to frighten my very young colleagues intent on early training by saying, “Listen, the vocal cords must be protected. They can help you produce an extremely powerful sound, but they are themselves very delicate.” And the thing about this is, as is true of any ligaments in the body, once you have stretched them, once you have put them out of their natural expansion and retraction, they will seldom return to their natural state of flexibility and strength.
This is simply a matter of understanding human anatomy, how the body functions. With all athletic performances, whether running a marathon, playing a strenuous game of tennis, or singing on a stage in front of an auditorium full of people, one uses the body and muscles in ways that one would not do normally. The body must be trained to do these extra things and can do them very well with the proper tutelage. And whether or not a person has a wonderful wingspan perfect for tennis, or long legs perfect for running, or a voice perfect for the stage, those special abilities and the required control cannot reveal themselves fully until the physical body is ready and strong enough to withstand the demands of the discipline in question. It takes training and a certain respect for one’s body to be a professional singer whose voice can withstand the demands of preparation and rehearsal, and the travel, and everything else involved in a performance. One can train a voice to have greater projection, just as one can train to run a two-minute mile or perform a front pike somersault on a gym floor, but in each of these cases the correct technique is crucial. Children’s bodies are just not suited to the demands of serious vocal training. The torso muscles used for singing are still developing in youngsters. It is not until one is past puberty and well into the teenage years that serious voice training should begin. The entire vocal apparatus has to develop along with this growing body—and has to be left alone to speak and sing naturally while this amazing physical development is taking place. When it is ready, it can be trained to do more.
This is why I am so grateful that instead of being sent off to voice lessons when I was eight years old, my parents made it possible for me to study the piano. Rosa Sanders did not try to teach me to sing. Instead, she taught me songs. Vocal technique was far from our thoughts at the time; the focus was on encouraging me to enjoy my music, to excel in school, to honor my elders, to be comfortable in front of crowds, and to be sociable—all things that, at a young age, were important to the building of the solid foundation that ultimately shaped the musician I would become. By the time I entered Howard University and began vocal training, I was lucky indeed that I did not have to unlearn an incorrect way of singing. The sound that came from my mouth, from my body, was just what came out naturally.
It was Mrs. Sanders who came up with the idea of my participation in the Marian Anderson Vocal Competition in Philadelphia when I was but fifteen years old. My parents were eager for me to have this experience, but traveling all the way to Philadelphia in the middle of the school term was quite a different thing to consider. Of course, I was gung ho!
It was a heady time. The principal of our high school, the long-suffering Lloyd Reese, with whom I had had my frequent meetings as a middle-schooler, was now at Lucy C. Laney High School. It was he who came up with an idea that to this day warms my heart and brings happy tears to my eyes. At one of our weekly school assemblies, Mr. Reese announced that I would be attending the competition in Philadelphia and that he wanted the whole school, hundreds of students, to participate by choosing one day on which, rather than going to the cafeteria and paying twenty cents for a hot, well-balanced lunch, they would contribute that money toward travel expenses for me and Mrs. Sanders. To be certain no student went hungry, the PTA paid for all school lunches that day. It was a novel idea and a beautiful gesture. Wonderful.
Mrs. Sanders and I prepared my songs for the competition. And soon enough, we were on a train heading from Augusta to Philadelphia. I was more than excited about this adventure; it was utter joy. All of my father’s siblings and their families lived in the Philadelphia area and so I had made this particular journey with my family on a few occasions. But this was different; somehow, even more exciting.
The age group for the Marian Anderson competition was sixteen to thirty, a very wide sp
an, and I was on the way to being sixteen, but not quite there. So I should not have been allowed to participate, and I was competing against singers who were up to twice my age, some of whom were already singing professionally. Others, too, had a great deal more experience than I did. But I was too excited and happy to worry about these things. When my time to perform arrived, with Mrs. Sanders at the piano, I sang Schubert’s “Leise flehen meine Lieder” (“My songs lie gently on the wind”) in English—I had not yet studied German—and “Stride la vampa” (“The rising blades of fire”) from Verdi’s Il Trovatore, since one of the requirements was to include a Verdi aria in the presentation, and the sheet music for this aria happened to be available at the local music store in Augusta. I promise, this was why this particular aria, about a woman burned at the stake, found its way into the repertoire of a fifteen-year-old. I laugh out loud at the thought! I can still see the orangey-red and white cover of that sheet music.
Needless to say, I did not win a prize at the competition, but I was fortunate in meeting the sister of Marian Anderson, who told me that she “wished to keep an eye on me,” and encouraged me to reenter the competition once I had had vocal training. This was good enough for me. I was much too delighted by the whole experience to feel any disappointment at failing to win a prize.
Since the day following the competition was a Friday, we decided that on the way back to Augusta, we would stop in Washington, D.C., where we both had relatives and where Mrs. Sanders was acquainted with the associate dean of the School of Music at Howard University. As it happens, Dean Mark Fax had been chair of the music department at Paine College in Augusta when Mrs. Sanders was a student there. Upon our arrival in Washington, we went straight from Union Station to the Howard University campus, where we met with Dean Fax in the school’s College of Fine Arts building.
After meeting for a few minutes with Dean Fax, he suggested that we visit with the head of the voice department, and he ushered us upstairs, where the renowned professor Carolyn V. Grant was in the middle of a graduate class on vocal anatomy and pedagogy. Too excited to be nervous, we waited outside her classroom until Professor Grant, no doubt wondering who we were, came to the door. After she received an explanation from Dean Fax, she welcomed Mrs. Sanders and me into her classroom, and suggested that perhaps I would sing one of the songs I had performed in Philadelphia. There was a piano in the classroom, and I had no thought of warming up or concern as to whether or not I was dressed properly for the occasion, and without further ado, I offered one of my songs. I was ever ready for a performance. Afterward, Professor Grant thanked us and asked that we wait for her outside the classroom.
It was not long before her class ended and Professor Grant was standing before me, saying that she had been pleased with what she heard. She asked my age, and whether or not I was a good student. “Oh, yes,” I answered enthusiastically. “I am on the dean’s list in high school.” Then and there, as amazing as it sounds, she told me that if, indeed, I had good grades in high school—and my high school transcript would have to bear this out—then after I completed high school, she wished to teach me at Howard. To say that I was flabbergasted would be the understatement of all time.
We called my parents with this amazing news, and without seeing a single relative, we took the train back to Augusta.
The train ride home was a blur of excitement and anxiety. What had just happened? I had been to Philadelphia, had an enlightening time of it, had not won a prize, but then had met Dean Fax and Professor Grant at Howard University, all within a very short period of time. My mind was swimming. Had I truly been invited to become one of this storied professor’s students? Dean Fax had told us how revered she was as a teacher. Oh my, it was all too wonderful.
I was so happy, the following Monday morning, to tell Principal Reese all that had transpired on our trip. He was no more disappointed than I that I had not won a prize at the competition. The invitation to Howard, he said, was a far better prize for me.
Now, even in the midst of all this excitement, I was still harboring the desire to pursue a career in medicine. But I decided not to bring this up with Principal Reese. It did not seem a good time to speak about it.
My parents were, of course, thrilled at the prospect of my going to Howard University, and totally overjoyed when, just a few weeks later, word arrived that not only would I have the opportunity to attend, but that on the recommendations of my two new best friends there, Dean Fax and Professor Grant, I was being offered a full-tuition scholarship. I did apply to other universities in the course of my senior year in high school, just for the fun of it. I found myself in happy disbelief that I was accepted wherever I had applied, though none of the others offered me the scholarship assistance that Howard had.
The summer before I entered the university, I spent a great deal of unnecessary time packing my trunk. My mother would walk through my bedroom while I pretended to have so much to do to get ready to travel to Washington. She knew well that I was feeling torn. Part of me wanted to study in the College of Liberal Arts at Howard, in preparation for medical school. Yet I also held the “bird in the hand” prize of the College of Fine Arts. In her typical fashion, my mother stated something like “I’m not trying to tell you what to do, dear, but you do have a full-tuition scholarship to the School of Music.” We both had a little laugh at that.
I’m most grateful for that not-so-subtle nudge. You have to wonder how many parents would have encouraged a child to pursue music over medicine.
AT LAST, THE FALL of 1963 approached. I would arrive again at Union Station in Washington, this time accompanied by my father, only a few days after the great March on Washington and one of the most renowned speeches of all time, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream.” Even then, the irony of this now historical speech’s title and my arrival in Washington was apparent to me: a dream.
At Howard, I arrived to find that even though I had been accepted to study vocal performance, I would still have to sing for the entire voice department, as only Professor Grant and Dean Fax had heard me sing those many months ago. This is a normal part of the entrance process there. First-year music students present themselves before faculty in determining their two primary courses of study. I recall my uneasiness when waiting for my appointment outside the door to the audition room, I spotted another student holding a stack of music scores in what seemed to be about eighteen different languages.
“Do you know all those songs?” I asked nervously.
“Yes,” she answered confidently.
“Are you going to sing your Schubert songs in German?”
“Oh, yes!” she said matter-of-factly.
I thought I might as well go home right then and there. I still knew only the one Schubert song, and I was not going to sing it in German. I didn’t know that anyone expected me to. When the time came, I sang the music I had prepared, including my Schubert song in English. The faculty was pleased with me and asked me all kinds of questions about my education in Augusta. I was happy to talk about the many teachers who had supported me throughout my public school education. I also sat for an initial piano examination, which went so well that I was allowed to choose piano and music education as my second subjects.
It was Carolyn V. Grant who helped me to find and know my own voice. She had been teaching for about forty-five years when I came to her, and there was nothing about singing that had not come across her desk at some point. It was so wonderful to work with a person who, though a trained singer herself, was dedicated to teaching, who wanted to be a teacher, rather than a performer. Professor Grant was a person who, from the time she was a student studying music, wanted to teach other people to sing and to sing properly because she felt very strongly that, somehow, we were getting away from the understanding that the sounds we make as singers should be produced naturally. She insisted that there were not any tricks to the understanding of the science of one’s own physiology as it relates to breath control, posture, and the fun
ctioning of the whole body in support of the respiratory system. For her, it was essential for singers to have this understanding and knowledge, and to draw from it over the course of their careers.
I remember her saying to me after my first lesson: “Hmmm, underneath all that breath is a rather good instrument, and I am going to help you find it.” Those were her exact words.
Professor Grant’s understanding of vocal production remains with me to this day. It was she who taught me that the only “mystery” to singing has to do with the fact that each and every singer has a different sound, one that’s personal and unique. I was absolutely amazed when she explained to me that the timbre—the “color” of the voice—is fixed practically at birth. This has to do with our own physiological makeup—the shape of the nasal cavity, the lung capacity, the singer’s strength and stamina, the height of the inside of one’s mouth, the natural position of the roof of the mouth, the height of the uvula, the width of the nose, the distance between the end of the chin and the beginning of the nose, the distance between the end of the chin and the beginning of the collarbone, and the height of the cheekbones and their position near the eyes. All of these things with which you are born determine the timbre of your voice. Each of these things, when paired with one’s intelligence and musical understanding, is what sets us apart as singers, one from the other. It was this that Professor Grant insisted that I understand—that I learn to trust. And I was an eager student. I was especially taken with the anatomy component. I consoled myself with the fact that I was learning a little science even though medical school was not in my future. But it was equally important that I was not trying to collect a string of opera arias and operatic roles, goals that seemed to occupy the thoughts of my fellow students to no end. Instead, I wanted to know what Professor Grant knew.
Stand Up Straight and Sing! Page 5