Stand Up Straight and Sing! by Jessye Norman

were kept apart from this endeavor. As it happens when the universe is determined to teach us a lesson once and for all, a mighty storm developed on the sea during one of the captain’s crossings from Africa to Europe. John Newton was certain that he would not only lose his precious cargo, but his own life as well.
    In that moment, in that instance of clarity with himself and with his trade, he wrote the words that the entire world now sings:
     
Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost, but now I’m found; was blind, but now I see.
     
    Some claim the melody for “Amazing Grace” to have originated in John Newton’s home country of Scotland. I choose to think that the meter, the shape of the melody itself and its resemblance to so much West African folk music, rose from the bowels of a slave ship, with human beings arranged so as to accommodate as many as possible on a single crossing, but still living and breathing through the miracle of a song, a melody, humming, as there was often no common language, yet making music from the deepest parts of their beings. Living energy, undimmed by even such circumstances, from one human being to another.
     
    WHEN WE REALIZE that energy is truly a living thing and that it travels a room as easily as it does a whole town—or an ocean—we come to understand that our thoughts have power and consequence, that we can extend loving kindness through positive thoughts, through openness of mind and spirit. And well we should! When an audience is engaged truly in a performance, this offering of positive energy can make all the difference in elevating the level of the performance from something that is merely good to something that is extraordinary. I do think that a performer, in order to remain at a high level of artistic achievement, must feed the spirit continually. The exchange of energy between performer and audience replenishes both.
    I am having a wonderful time with music that has been playing in my ear practically all my life but which I, until six or seven years ago, hardly ever performed.
    The wish to add more music to an already long list of repertoire became apparent to me during my research in preparing the festival for Carnegie Hall that took place in March of 2009: Honor! A Celebration of the African American Cultural Legacy . The idea of the program, as suggested in the title, was to honor the cultural contributions of African Americans to our world. From the time that Clive Gillinson, the artistic and executive director of Carnegie Hall, extended this amazing invitation to me in autumn 2006, I spent goodly amounts of time listening to recordings of the greats—in a range of musical genres—and decided then and there that I wanted to feel this music in my very being. Thus was born my first solo CD in about ten years, Roots: My Life, My Song.
    I thought it vital to share these songs with an audience. Studying and performing the music of the great Europeans is a grand pleasure in my life, an honor and a privilege. Adding jazz and songs from the American musical theater simply expanded and enlivened my own artistic growth. Offering even wider attention to the Spiritual was natural to me and relevant, as I’d grown up hearing my grandmother, my mother, and my aunts humming and singing these songs to themselves as they tended to their daily lives. When all is said and done, I am African, and I cannot think of a single reason why I should not celebrate this to the hilt. So when I sing a Spiritual, I am telling a most personal story. These cries, these longings, these testaments of faith are a part of my own DNA, and my goal is always that the audience understands the music in the same way that I understand it.
    In addition, I wish to help audiences appreciate the difference between a Spiritual—I use a capital S on purpose—and a gospel song. Whereas the whole world is filled with music of a sacred or spiritual nature, a Spiritual can