The Musical Box

guitarist kevin williams with the soweto gospel choir. photo by oliver neubert.

There was no denying the simple, emotive pageantry executed by the Soweto Gospel Choir last night during a program where world music met global spiritual expression at Danville’s Norton Center for the Arts.

At the onset of Jesu Ngowethu, a lone tenor voice ushered in two rows of singers from opposite sides of the stage. A pair of percussionists supplied the tune’s only accompaniment. Still, the force of the gathering 24 vocalists singing in Zulu sounded keenly orchestral.

Roughly a third of the concert had choir members playing electric guitar, keyboards, bass and a conventional drum kit. But such modern accompaniment tended to give the music a standardized pop feel. Similarly, some of the contemporary songs of unity, as in the brief pass at Bob Marley’s One Love offered as an interlude in the otherwise arresting Zulu meditation Avulekile Amasango, muted some of the traditional township edge in the choir’s singing.

But the performance’s most moving moments were also its simplest, as in the gorgeous traditional African hymn Tshepa Thapelo (sung in Sotho) and a novel Amazing Grace (sung in English, but with all kinds of arresting township harmonies).

A blend of global gospel and West Coast soul on Oh, Happy Day finally put the Norton Center crowd on its feet near evening’s end. The cultures summoning the spirits at this point seemed purposely undefined, but the jubilance in the resulting testimony couldn’t have been more unified or obvious.