The Healing Power of Song

Scenes from a pop-up choir in Lancaster, Pa.

The thesis of the pop-up choir event in Lancaster, Pa.

Today, a pop-up in the center of our town. Not food trucks or a makers market. But a sing-along. The message, loud, clear, bold and rainbow-beautiful: You are seen, you are loved, you belong here.

Up on the stage, a band, a singing trio, along with Pastors D. and Donte, the emcees.

We in the audience are a few hundred strong. Our boyz on the stage, they’re leading us into verse. It’s call and response.

The troupe leads: We sing for the change we believe is going to come

And we read from our lyric sheets, putting words into song:

We sing for their freedom

Ten minutes before this moment, many of us were strangers. Now we are a choir.

Pastors D. and Donte, they want a show of hands.

“Sopranos, where are you? Altos? Oh, we got work to do!”

We sing for their freedom.

With each verse (and there are four), the song morphs into a chant. We are swaying, we are crying.

Pastor D. asks us to turn to someone we don’t know and say “Hi neighbor.” It’s call and response, and it is like pixie dust, because everyone is turning in all directions and we’re walking up to each other with hugs and stating our names, and of course, that Pastor D., he knew what he was doing.

This is my new friend Declan.

By now, my cheeks are stained with tears, and I look around, and there ain’t a dry eye in every direction.

Pastor Donte motions us to form a circle. I don’t know how he does it, given the size of the crowd, but the circle comes together seamlessly. Then, a suggestion to hold hands. Hold hands! Nobody bats an eye. We all need this. We all need a sign that love in this hate-filled ninety-day stretch will prevail.

And then, like we were born to do this, our rendition of “We Shall Overcome.”

If only there was a way to measure the oxytocin just released into the atmosphere, dispersing across the city and into the countryside, onto the turnpike, and across the sea. Surely this is contagious, how could it not be, because we strangers-now-neighbors are high on love after just one hour.

As I type hours later, my heart, ripples on a pond. It don’t matter if you can’t keep a tune; all of us, we just need to keep singing, and sing and sing and sing. Until they all come home.

xokod