As MMC begins this new year, reinforced and galvanized by your incredible support and gifts, there are changes and new beginnings ahead for our community. Most significantly, after three years of service, Charlotte Moroz will transition out of her role as Community Curator at the end of February. While she will happily continue as a future leader and participant in our work, she is being called away to focus on her doctoral studies and explore life in California, where she has recently relocated.

Our bi-weekly Zoom Play Time group brought inventive experiments and heaping spoonfuls of creativity to the table, our first-ever Virtual Summer Retreat opened for registration, and our Summer Singing Celebration was a splash of a party, with Chanda Rule, Conie Borchardt, Ana Hernández, and other MMC leaders bringing over 85 attendees together in songs and visions of peace, justice, and community.

And, not least of all, our first round of Virtual Practice Groups took flight, with five groups practicing virtual song-leadership, building skills and community throughout May and June. Our participants spoke and...they were a hit!

"Centering, community building, and worth it!", reported one participant.

"The Virtual Practice Groups were a great way to meet new singers and to talk together about how to face the challenges of singing in online environments. I really looked forward to my hour of singing," said another.

We've all, by now, experienced myriad Zoom and virtual meetings, but participants thanked our intrepid MMC leaders for offering such a "unique and wonderful experience," one participant going further to say that "while many are busy with the technical aspect of virtual choirs, being in an MMC Virtual Practice Group gave me the opportunity to just sing and enjoy being with others in this new way."

This list of songs and online resources is for communities seeking to be more intentional about taking action to support justice, equity, and dignity for BIPOC lives (Black, Indigenous, People of Color). The list draws from a range of musical traditions and countries. Please feel free to add additional songs in the comments below.

Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Round - African-American Spiritual
All Shall Be Well / Another World - Ana Hernández
Another World - Kerri Meyer 

Danos un corazón - Juan Antonio Espinosa

Enviado soy de Dios / Our God Now Sends Us Forth - Anonymous Latin American

Gonna Bring that Light - Kerri Meyer (scroll all the way down)

Hold Everybody Up - Melanie DeMore
Hold On (Keep Your Eyes on the Prize) - African-American Spiritual

Freedom Bound - June Jordan
Freedom, Come - Ben Allaway 
Freedom is Coming - South African Freedom Song

Hamba nathi Mkhululi wethu - South African Freedom Song
Hold On - Gospel Song, arr. Geraldine Luce

Join several MMC presenters for an hour-long webinar focused on online song leadership next Wednesday, April 22 at 3 pm EST. We'll explore best practices for singing in online gatherings of all kinds: choir rehearsals, song circles, worship, and even meetings. We'll share some songs and creative approaches to singing we're finding effective on Zoom and Facebook Live (that might also be useful when we gather in person again).

Register here and after the webinar you're invited to make a contribution, as you're able, to help us continue our work.

**UPDATE** Due to the extraordinary response, we have closed registration for the webinar but will announce another very soon. We sincerely appreciate your patience!

With little preparation, worshipping communities around North America quickly shifted their worship online due to the COVID-19 pandemic. While online or streaming worship isn't a new thing, completely virtual worship experiences are unprecedented, and the experience is inviting us to discover new ways (or build on what we already know) to make community.

MMC is especially curious how we make spaces for participation, sung or spoken. How can leaders be present in online spaces in ways that support community engagement and deepening connection?

This week we saw a fantastic Facebook post by pastor, church planter, author, and liturgist Emily Scott (and co-founder of MMC!). Emily’s book, For All Who Hunger, which comes out in May, is about community and connection around tables, even in times of disaster. 

So we got through our first Sunday of offering worship online! Woo!

As we put plans in place for future online gatherings, I continue to believe that many of our congregants need spiritual and social CONNECTION more than they need audio/visual PERFECTION.

People need to hear their names. They need to tell their stories and know those stories are heard. They need spiritually grounding practices they can participate in, not just watch. We have highly produced content thrown at us all the time. How can we make our online gatherings personal and loving? (Not knocking high quality here...just saying it might not be all of our first goal, depending on our context.)

We have all experienced times of uncertainty, fear, and disorientation. And while so much may feel out of our control, singing is a powerful tool to support and strengthen community as we move through challenging, painful, and traumatic experiences. 

MMC leaders have compiled a list of songs that we hope will be useful to you and your community in these unsettled times. While we are writing in the context of a global pandemic, it's certain we'll need singing to face other local and global challenges.

As you think about what to share with your community, listen to your heart and your community as they name their needs, fears, and hopes. Short, simple melodies can be a powerful balm and many can be treated as pocket/zipper songs, which allow us to add words, names, and feelings specific to our context. 

No matter what you sing or how the songs are shared (in emerging online/virtual spaces or safely in person), may these songs comfort anxious hearts and remind us that we’re together in deeper ways than we ever imagined.

Lent is right on our doorstep and perhaps you're still looking for music? We've included a short list of paperless songs below, including some sturdy paperless standards, new tunes written in the past year or two, and a few surprises, as we imagine Lent not just as a season of repentance but an invitation to lives of justice, beauty, and love

If your community hasn't experienced paperless singing yet, try incorporating a short prayer song or psalm setting instead of a lengthy or complicated tune. Consistent, positive experiences encourage and reinforce the practice, and weekly practice helps this style of singing gradually embed. Consider a paperless song while there is movement or ritual action in the liturgy, or moments a bulletin or hymnal might take the focus away from face-to-face connection. 
 
We also suggest teaching at moments when intergenerational community is gathered. The experience of paperless singing is enriched when worshippers of all ages learn side-by-side. Our experience is that children and young people intuitively participate in mirroring and imitative singing, and they can help encourage the participation of more reluctant adults.

Mike Leigh is a former student of the College of the Resurrection and now serving in the North Scarborough Group Ministry and is Area Dean of Scarborough. This reflection on his summer sabbatical was originally published in the Community of the Resurrection Magazine (CR Quarterly).

“Congregational singing….has the power to create community, form and transform the heart and mind, and transport a person completely into a spiritual dimension unlike any other.” - DJ Bull

I’ve always said that it was singing that kept me in the church. I remember that I never really liked Sunday School as a child and the only way out I knew of was to join the choir! I distinctly remember when I was 7 years old we had a visit from the choir master to our school and he talked about needing new boys to join the church choir, so I went home and pestered my mum relentlessly until she gave in and sure enough, I was admitted to the church choir.

I loved the choir; it was my highlight of the week and the thing I enjoyed more than anything. The thing I found though, was that it was not the type of music we sang nor the quality of the sermons that I sat through (surprise surprise) that I loved, but it was the sense of belonging that I found which drew me in. We were a group of children bound to each other, yes, through the singing of Anglican chant and the wearing of cassocks and ruffs (not too dissimilar to my experience of being a clergyman in the Church of England, I have to say!) but we were also bound by the times when we passed jokes and mints along the choir stalls during particularly boring sermons, or played football after rehearsals, or shared sweets bought at the corner shop after a wedding. I loved the choir because it was my community and it was there that I was most at home.

Community has always been something that human beings have longed for, we are created to live in community and we need to find places to meet and share our lives with others. It doesn’t surprise me that in this age where families are more displaced and traditional community activities like social clubs,  music societies and churches are declining, we see other things emerging (very often online like Snapchat or Facebook ) to fill the gaps.

 It interests me then that in this world of changing community we discover that one area of growth is in community choirs. Gareth Malone is famed for resurrecting community singing but I am glad to say that this has been happening for a lot longer than the BBC like to think and in an ever changing world of community, it is wonderful to discover that people still want to sing together. For a long time we have known that singing is good for our health and that it has the ability to draw us together and create community. Why? Because as human beings we have always sung and a quick look at other cultures reminds us that for many people today, singing is simply part of what it means to be part of a tribe or a nation or a race.

Advent IV: Love

Girl with Hands Lifted (New Orleans, LA); photograph by Paul Vasile

While We Are Waiting, Come - Claire Cloninger and Don Cason (Matthew 1:18-25)

This meditative song by Claire Cloninger and Don Cason can be taught through call and echo patterns. It makes a beautiful prayer song or response during Advent and could also be effective as an acclamation or response with the gospel lesson. While all the verses are beautiful, focus on one so the text can deepen and become a prayer of the heart.

Learn how to teach the song and find a score here. 

Once the assembly has learned the song well, add harmony parts or keyboard accompaniment.

Tip: Trace the shape of the melody with your hand and notice several large, unexpected leaps. While you teach it, help the assembly remember and anticipate these moments through hand gestures or other non-verbal cues.

Advent III: Joy

Death Valley superbloom; photograph by Paul Vasile

Joy Shall Come in the Morning - Mary Alice Amidon

This hopeful song by Mary Alice Amidon was introduced to us by Rachel Kroh, MtMC’s first Executive Director. Notice how Rachel teaches the refrain to the assembly through call and echo, then invites a small choral ensemble to sing the verses in harmony. This is a wonderful way to imagine learning new hymns (especially with a chorus/refrain), alternating between the voice of the assembly and a choir (small or large).

Here’s a video of the Starry Mountain Singers sharing it in a four-part arrangement, as well as a link to purchase a score and learn more about this song created in the days after the Virginia Tech shooting.  

Advent II: Peace

Snow geese migration; photograph by Paul Vasile

Cantemus pacem mundi - Doug von Koss

As the second week of Advent invites us to pray and work for peace in our world, here is a three-part layered song by Doug von Koss that puts feet on our prayers. Written to protest the United States invasion of Iraq in 2003, Doug wanted a strong musical statement that would “lift the desire for peace to a more assertive and active place.” He borrowed a melody he had heard in Canada and used a short Latin phrase (translated "sing for the peace of the world") as the text. 

Notice how patiently Marilyn teaches each part, inviting those in the circle to listen and breathe together as the song grows in confidence. While this piece may be ambitious for a congregation new to paperless singing, try teaching one of the parts to the assembly and invite additional leaders or a choir to sing the others. It could also serve as an excellent warm-up for a choir beginning to explore oral/aural tradition learning.

Advent I: Hope

Sunrise in Williston, North Dakota; photograph by Paul Vasile

Listen - Bret Hesla

The first week of Advent invites us into a space of hopeful waiting and watching. This short song by singer/songwriter Bret Hesla is one way to invite the community to 'tune up' their ears and bodies, and could be used for gathering, prayer, or to prepare the community to hear a reading.

Debbie Lou Ludolph models how this song can function in a call and response format. She first teaches the response, "Be open oh my heart" with a simple gesture. Then she calls, "listen, listen...watching, watching...waiting, waiting," and the community responds. Additional calls can be added and improvised in the moment: Love is calling, Ever hopeful, etc.

Find a score for the song on Bret's website or in the Augsburg's collection Singing Our Prayer: Companion to Holden Prayers Around the Cross.

Advent is around the corner and this year Music that Makes Community is excited to offer musical resources to share in your community. As we prepare for and celebrate the arrival of the Word who ‘became flesh and lived among us’ we can’t imagine a better experience of embodied faith than singing with others!

We’ve organized musical material around Revised Common Lectionary texts (Year A) and themes for each week. There are links to with links to videos, recordings, and scores. We offer teaching suggestions and they are just that…suggestions. You're welcome to adapt them to your space and worship context.

Fiona Vidal-White is a musician, Christian educator, and liturgist currently serving at Church of Our Savior in Arlington, MA. She is the author of the hymnal My Heart Sings Out and its companion leader’s guide, designed as a musical resource for all-age worship. Her passions include the welcome and formation of all God’s people, especially children and teens, through teaching and learning, hands-on in-reach, and outreach and liturgy and music.

Read Part I of Fiona's reflection here.

What ideas should we consider when singing with children and intergenerational groups? A good starting point might be “how can I model and facilitate best practices in (church) music for children as they grow up?"  

Also take into consideration the developmental skills of children, and the different interests and priorities they have in each stage of life, and the fact that their adults will probably be with them, and like to know that what we are singing has meaning and value as well as being fun. Then there’s the fit of the song with what’s happening in worship. Are we reading, praying, sharing a meal? What is the theme of the service? Baptism, a Saint’s Day, the different seasons of Advent, Lent, or Easter? Matching our music choices to enhance the teaching without being “teachy” is, I believe, a major role of simple congregational music.

Fiona Vidal-White is a musician, Christian educator, and liturgist currently serving at Church of Our Savior in Arlington, MA. She is the author of the hymnal My Heart Sings Out and its companion leader’s guide, designed as a musical resource for all-age worship. Her passions include the welcome and formation of all God’s people, especially children and teens, through teaching and learning, hands-on in-reach, and outreach and liturgy and music.

I certainly didn’t know the term then, but it was paperless music that drew me into both singing as a youth choir member, working with children and church music, and finally creating a hymnal of my own that focused on intergenerational singing. I was a teen when my father, a vicar in the UK, purchased Sound of Living Waters to go in our pews alongside Hymns Ancient and Modern, and us choir kids were so thrilled. We sang Seek ye First, and I Will Sing a Song unto the Lord,  We See the Lord, and Let All That is Within Me Cry Holy, as well as many of the hymns. As we developed a repertoire, we were allowed to choose the communion songs “on the fly”, which we really enjoyed.

This October Music That Makes Community collaborated with Alice Parker, a legend in the choral music world. Best known for arrangements and compositions created for the Robert Shaw Chorale, community singing has been her passion and joy for the past four decades.  

Alice and I had the opportunity to lead Sharing the Song, a workshop for song leaders excited to nurture and sustain singing in their communities. In partnership with her non-profit Melodious Accord and Eden Theological Seminary, MMC was part of welcoming 18 song leaders to a transformative time of skill building and reflection.

"It was the perfect wedding of instruction, inspiration, and affirmation for me as a community song leader. I take home a renewed sense of the energy and power of music." 

While many come to our workshops expecting to learn new songs, they discover something even more transformative - new ways to build community through singing, even in unexpected places! 
 
Did you have a required morning class your first year of college? The one you only survived with coffee or skipped more than you care to admit?
 
Dr. Justin Yonker, a professor at Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia attended MMC’s Paperless Singing/Story Sharing workshop at St. Elizabeth’s Episcopal Church in September. Inspired by our encouragement to take singing to places where it could help create community, he walked into his Intro to Astronomy class the next morning and taught a song. It didn’t take long for students to jump right in. And for the rest of the semester they sang before each class and students led songs of their own (all astronomy-themed, of course)!

While many come to our workshops expecting to learn new songs, they discover something even more transformative - renewed confidence and creativity as leaders! 

Consider the testimony of Sarah Brockus, a United Methodist musician who attended our fall workshop at Cross Roads Camp and Retreat Center in New Jersey:

"I can’t thank you enough for the gift of this retreat. Our Pastor was gone this Sunday so I led almost the whole service – and the spirit moved in ways it never has before!

The workshop gave me permission to “go with it.” I composed, I shaped – I made up whole new things in the moment that I’ve never done before. The congregation’s response was through the roof!! And they appreciated that I took time to fully teach them the songs – the listening part was extremely important 

The communal spirit was heavenly and received positive feedback from the congregations for weeks afterward!"

Jeanette Burgess is the Music Director at St. John's Lutheran Church in Atlanta, GA, a community with a lively, diverse musical life that includes paperless singing. Last year, she emailed to share a set of Advent chants created with her community. We offer them to you with her explanation of the process, hoping they'll jumpstart creative thinking as you approach the holiday season.

At our 2017 Advent planning retreat, we read the scriptures for a given Sunday then were invited to capture our thoughts in haiku fashion (syllables in a 5-7-5 pattern). The results were amazing and four became the basis for our Advent candle lighting chants.  After deciding on melodies and considering the sparseness of the season, I limited accompaniment choosing from the following instruments: recorder, hand chime, Chinese cymbal, dingsha/finger cymbal, udu, and djembe.  

The poems were also used as an opening worship statement and as part of the dismissal each week.

Late last spring I got one of those invitations that just makes you want to shout, "YES!" 

My friend Amy Baker, a fellow parishioner at St. Gregory’s, San Francisco is Program Director at Old Firehouse School, Mill Valley.  She wondered if I’d want to lead a half-day in service for all the teachers at Old Firehouse.  She wanted the work,  

- to be rooted in brain development (why music is so fundamental for humans, why young children respond so well to music and rhythm, how we can use early childhood development to make our teaching lives easier/better/etc…)

- very practical (specific songs, but more emphasis on learning useful principles and musical basics that smart teachers can take and use creatively)

- and very reassuring and unintimidating (so that even people who think they know nothing about music and/or who have been told they can't sing will be comfortable integrating sung and other/rhythmical music into their classroom lives)

What a great invitation to share Music that Makes Community’s work and discoveries with teachers who already sensed that singing together shapes our humanity! And to encourage them to risk singing more in their classes! Yes! Yes! Yes! 

So what in the science would help us find our way? 

Could our noticing free us from the interpretative restraint of the commonplace computer metaphor for the brain and thinking - data delivery, data storage, and data retrieval? 

Could we shape a fragment of practice and experience that would help us discover “people-making” in our singing together (borrowing systems theorist Virginia Satir’s wonderful name for the mutual formation that we are always offering one another). 

Would we hear whispers of “tacit knowing,” scientist-philosopher Michael Polanyi’s description of the knowing and truth that’s there before speech and gives life to personal knowledge? 

Over the coming year the MMC blog is featuring composers who write paperless music! While you may recognize a few names from our song collections and workshops, we're especially excited to share new compositional voices bringing breadth, depth, and richness to an evolving body of music sung without paper. Each composer has generously agreed to offer a free piece to the MMC community; others can be purchased from the composer directly or found in existing resources. We hope you'll enjoy the videos, audio clips, and sample scores, and find new songs to share with your community.

About Kerri Meyer:

Kerri serves St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church in San Francisco and is a candidate for ordination. In another chapter of her life, she was the Executive Director of Mila Vocal Ensemble, a professional women's group specializing in the folk music traditions of Eastern Europe and Georgia. The Christian vocation to justice-seeking neighbor-love motivates her work and her singing. Kerri is well-known to the MMC community through several songs, including Go On Your Way in Joy, My Friends and There Is Enough. 

Several of the songs below are from Resistance Through Preaching and Song, a project involving several MMC presenters including Kerri and Sylvia Miller-Mutia. Comprised of six pastors from various denominations, the group is harnessing the liberating, prophetic power of the gospel and the role of song in countering an empire which seeks to tell a single story about people. They believe that using scriptures to create new songs to sing in worship will help open ears to hear, tongues to proclaim, and hearts to receive the gospel anew.

Over the coming year we'll regularly feature new composers who write paperless music! While you may recognize a few names from our song collections and workshops, we're especially excited to share new compositional voices bringing breadth, depth, and richness to an evolving body of music sung without paper. Each composer has generously agreed to offer a free piece to the MMC community; others can be purchased from the composer directly or found in existing resources. We hope you'll enjoy the videos, audio clips, and sample scores, and find new songs to share with your community.

About Angela Morris:

If Brooklyn’s music circles draw a Venn diagram, saxophonist-composer Angela Morris thrives in the loop between avant-jazz and pop. Originally from Toronto, Canada and based in NYC, she has performed throughout North America and Europe. Her vocal group Rallidae released their new album, Turned, and Was, in November 2016 on the NYC-based label Gold Bolus Recordings; their debut Paper Birds was praised by AllAboutJazz as “an exceptional debut by and exciting and innovative new band.”

Morris is a member of Motel and TMT Trio, two collaborative trios that have respectively released albums in 2017: like you always do, I always did too by Motel (Prom Night Records), and Star Ballad by TMT Trio. Morris composes and co-leads several groups, including a 17-piece big band with Anna Webber – she is an alumna of the BMI Jazz Composer’s Workshop lead by Jim McNeely and studied composition with the Grammy-nominated jazz composer Darcy James Argue. In addition to her own projects, she performs with Helado Negro, Jason Ajemian’s Folk-Lords, Myra Melford, and Jessica Pavone. Morris also gives workshops and private lessons, serves as a presenter for Music that Makes Community, and coordinates music and liturgy at Saint Lydia's Dinner Church in Brooklyn.

Over the coming year we'll regularly feature a composer who writes paperless music! While you may recognize a few names from our song collections and workshops, we're especially excited to share new compositional voices bringing breadth, depth, and richness to an evolving body of music sung without paper. Each composer has generously agreed to offer a free piece to the MMC community; others can be purchased from the composer directly or found in existing resources. We hope you'll enjoy the videos, audio clips and sample scores, and find many new songs to share with your community.

About Barbara Cates:

Barbara Cates has never thought of herself as a composer until now, but she usually has melodies rolling around in her head, and sometimes they attach themselves to words, or the right words rolling around call forth a melody. The inclusive, intuitive approach to composing at Music that Makes Community workshops have brought something forth from deep within or beyond; one song even came to her in a dream! 

Barbara has had many musical influences: Foreign Service postings in Russia, Trinidad and Tobago, and Uzbekistan, living at The Taizé Community for a time in her youth, and exposure to a wide variety of paperless musical traditions, from Jubilee Gospel to Sephardic to Georgian polyphony, at Vocal Week at the Augusta Heritage Center in Elkins, WV.

At home in Baltimore she is part of two faith communities: Memorial Episcopal Church, where the informal [email protected] and Taizé services give her a chance to experiment, and Brown Memorial Presbyterian Church, where she sings in a choir with a wonderfully inclusive repertoire. She and her husband Matthew Stremba sing to their cats, Bobur and Koshka. Barbara also convenes MMC’s new Baltimore Practice Group at the Cathedral of the Incarnation.

Each month over the coming year we'll feature a composer who writes paperless music! While you may recognize a few names from our song collections and workshops, we're especially excited to share new compositional voices bringing breadth, depth, and richness to an evolving body of music sung without paper. Each composer has generously agreed to offer a free piece to the MMC community; others can be purchased from the composer directly or found in existing resources. We hope you'll enjoy the videos, audio clips and sample scores, and find many new songs to share with your community.

About Debbie Holloway:

Debbie Holloway is a congregant and sometimes-composer at St. Lydia's Dinner Church in Gowanus, Brooklyn. St Lydia's is where she was first introduced to paperless congregational songleading, which meshed naturally with her other musical proclivities and interests.

After working by day in Operations at the Museum of Food and Drink, Debbie enjoys exerting creativity in her side gigs as a freelance film critic. But her first love was music; whenever she can, she loves to make music with her husband or siblings, participate in choral singing, and support the music of other artists. Congregational songleading holds a special place in her heart because of its nonperformative aspect, simplicity, and the trust and camaraderie it builds within a community. 

While these songs are her first few efforts, she hopes these will be the first of many.