Yesterday morning, my gospel group had it's first practice with a man who may well be our new tenor, replacing Derrick who was with us for 8 years and recently moved to Florida. (I have to learn to type shorter sentences.) I was trying to explain to Doug (the new man) why we sing. Our reasons for singing are clearly different in some ways than those for singing folk music, or rock or reggae. But, there are some common reasons for singing. In my group, the question always comes down to who you're singing for, and I think that's true for all of us singers and musicians. Most of us sing for several people. We sing for ourselves because we enjoy singing. We also sing for others because we feed off their praise. Hopefully, we also sing for others because we recognize that our ability to sing or play an instrument is a gift to be shared. For those of us who perform, the real answer to why we sing comes when we get off the stage. It also comes when we sing for people who don't realize how cool we really are.

In talking to Doug about why we sing, and who we are singing for, I realized that all the things that we so admire in other singers often mean very little when we step outside of our little insular circle of people of like tastes. Claude Jeter sang lead for the Swan Silvertones and to my taste he is perfhaps the greatest singer of black gospel music. But when you're singing to a woman who's husband died recently and who's just gone blind, she probably doesn't know Claude Jeter from Derrick Jeter. When a musician sings on stage, or with other people who have the same appreciation for their style of music, there is a common musical language. When you take your music into a group of people who don't know Doc Watson from Doc Ock, then you see the music in a whole new way.

I could go on and on, as I tend to do, but I'd like to hear some observations and experiences about taking your music to an audience that doesn't even know what folk music is.

Gotta run..

I'll be reading..

Jerry