Case Study: Working with Communities, Shana Berger, Coleman Center for the Arts
Community Sing, Samita Sinha and Stephanie Loveless
Coleman Center for the Arts, 2010
The Coleman Center for the Artsʼ artist-in-residence program offers artists and community members opportunities to work as co-participants in projects that address civic and social needs. Calling on models of contemporary art and consensus based organizing, projects are characterized by close collaboration with the community. Participants are directly involved in the process and outcomes of projects. Artistsʼ initial work is open ended, exploratory, and collaborative, and precipitates larger projects that are a result of this socially engaged process.
In the spring of 2010, artist Samita Sinha and collaborator Stephanie Loveless began work with the CCA and the York community. The artists spent a week offering workshops in sound, choral experiments, and singing. Their visit concluded with a “Community Sing,” in which area residents sang and talked about American folk songs and contemporary mythology. The “Community Sing” was inspired by the work of late artist Sekou Sundiata, who began these experiential gatherings after 9-11 as a way to discuss new ideas of citizenship in a time ofincreasing American imperialism. Sinha worked with Sundiata in multiple capacities before hisdeath, and is one of a number of artists who are directly and indirectly continuing his practices.
Sundiataʼs work was a starting point for Sinha and Loveless, but their work differed both in practice and content. Choral experiments influenced the way participants sang as a group and related to each other. One of the most significant moments was a “Slow Sing” – a meditative,improvised intoning together that asked each individual to sing their favorite song, slowly singing one note per breath. Though the artists had reservations about whether this activity would be too experimental for a community situation, the exercise created a stunning moment foreveryone in the room. The group sustained both dissonance and unity through different notes and common breath.
Through the process of singing collectively, talking, singing again with deeper awareness, and talking more deeply, the group identified and discussed ideas of personal and cultural faith,transformation, and citizenship. Conversation connected themes between songs. A line in “God Bless America,” God mend thine every flaw, was compared to the story accompanying “Amazing Grace,” a song written by a former slave trader who later became an abolitionist. The group affirmed stories from various faith backgrounds, defining a commonality among Christians, Muslims, and Hindus present in the conversation. Stories of personal transformation led to statements about the community at large. As one participant remarked, “I remember whenwe didnʼt sit around like this as a people.”
With no tempo set by instrumentation, sheet music, or a conductor, the notes came out slowly as participants listened to each other and tenderly progressed through the music. After singing “This Little Light of Mine,” it was noted that significantly different versions of the song existed.Participants from different backgrounds were familiar with different lyrics, melody, and performance styles. This experience paved the way for imagining a project with greater musical depth that could also create a space for healing longstanding divides that occur in the music itself.
Sinha will return in the summer of 2011 to collaborate with area performers John Brown and Audrey Graves. The group will create new compositions that braid different versions of the same songs that are common to the repertoires of the area’s black and white churches, but that are arranged and performed differently. The work will provide a new ground for exchange, while creating a powerful shared experience with social, political, and spiritual implications.
Shana Berger
Co-Director
Coleman Center for the Arts, York, AL
