Rejoice - Page 2

.Practice, together with their natural talent and harmony, has paid off. During a recent anniversary concert at New Charity, the Brokenbrough sisters worked a wall-to-wall crowd of celebrants into a fit of joy following an emotionally exhausting rendition of gospel standard “His Eye is on the Sparrow.” “It was true harmony, the way only sisters can do,” says Rossilind. “I remember the first time we heard those girls. They rehearsed some of our songs, and we thought, ‘Whoa, they sound better than we do!’” Mary nods, but adds, “Back in the day, we would have given them a run for their money.” Rossilind laughs, “But they’re young now, and their voices are strong.”

The girls of 3 Dyvne have spent most of their spring break and after-school hours at Full Code Recording’s Carraige Lane studio. It has meant long hours and hard work for the sisters, repeating songs until the sound is just right. “Even if we don’t go anywhere big with it, I’ll still be happy,” says Quiana of the album, “because we’ve had a taste of the different things that go along with music and performing. Not everyone gets to do that.”

 Gospel, in the African American religious tradition, has long been associated with triumphing over trials and tribulations. As a musical form, it descended from the spirituals that emerged during slavery. “The chronological order is that the spirituals came first and then you had the blues,” Charleston Symphony Orchestra Gospel Choir president Lee Pringle explains. “Blues gave us gospel as we know it today.”

“Blues is music that blends the experiences of a person’s life along with the times,” says Ron Conyers of a cappella-style groups The Brotherhood and We Be Brethren. “Gospel does the same in a spiritual way.”

While gospel music gained popularity through record sales from the 1930s to the ‘60s, the doors of many Southern churches remained closed to it for most of those years. “Nobody wanted that bluesy-jazzy style in their church,” explains Alphonso Brown of the Mt. Zion AME Spiritual Singers. “That was the kind of stuff you heard in the piccolo joint. The dominant seventh chord and all that, it wasn’t acceptable.”

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