ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, February 25, 1996 TAG: 9602270054
SECTION: BOOKS PAGE: G-5 EDITION: METRO
TYPE: BOOK REVIEW
SOURCE: LENI ASHMORE SORENSEN
LIFT EVERY VOICE: Expecting the Most and Getting the Best from All of God's Children. By Dr. Walter Turnbull. Hyperion. $19.95.
HOW SWEET THE SOUND: The Golden Age of Gospel. By Horace Clarence Boyer. Elliot & Clark Publishing. No price given.
Reading about music will never be as powerful as hearing it. Just the same, for those of you interested in the people who make music, these two books offer a history of some of the most famous figures in American gospel music and an introduction to the Boys Choir of Harlem.
Anyone who has heard the Boys Choir of Harlem already knows the power and beauty of their voices. Those who have yet to be thrilled by Bach or Mozart or "Amahl and the Night Visitors" soaring from the mouths of a choir of more than 40 black youths can do no worse than read about them here for a start.
At first glance the life history of William Turnbull, the founder and director of the choir, seems to have little in common with his young charges. Turnbull, born in poverty in Mississippi, chopped cotton to earn money to help his family. He felt a child's terror when Emmett Till was murdered, and he fought to gain an education in a deeply segregated South. Perhaps his boys' lives are not too different. These bright, talented youngsters, often neglected and hungry, live on the edge of fear, surrounded by defeated and ravaged adults. In the Boys Choir Academy they find one safe haven of hope and creativity.
Together Turnbull and the boys make sublime music, demonstrating that black youth can represent our country on the music stages of the world with honor and skill, at the same time creating lives of productivity and pride. "Lift Every Voice" tells the inspiring story of the choir and is full of solid suggestions that adults who love children will find helpful.
Understanding the evolution of gospel music in the black community and its impact in both the black church and the white church is a lesson in 20th-century American history. "How Sweet the Sound" covers those dynamic musical decades, as well as the composers, the singers, the sanctuaries, halls and radio waves where this music became a staple.
Boyer is a graduate of Bethune-Cookman College and the Eastman School of Music, and he knows of what he writes. He has been professor of music at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and served as a guest curator for the Smithsonian Institution in the "Wade in the Water" radio series. His text here is supplemented with photographs of many of the performers he discusses.
Music lovers everywhere will be interested in both of these books for the vital history provided. They will find them also to be inspirational.
Leni Ashmore Sorensen is a graduate student in American Studies at the College of William and Mary.
LENGTH: Medium: 56 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO:by CNB