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The Linewaiters' Gazette
March 6, 2003
Published by the Park Slope Food Coop, Brooklyn, NY
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Photos by Lisa Cohen
 
 

The Brooklyn Women’s Chorus is trying to change the world, one shaky voice at a time. Part activist organization, part support group, the five-year-old chorus has become a regular fixture in Park Slope and in the lives of at least 25 Park Slope Food Coop members.

The chorus got started when director Bev Grant was talking to Ann Klaeysen, then the booker for the coffeehouse at the Brooklyn Ethical Culture Society. “Wouldn’t it be cool,” the two mused, “if Brooklyn had a women’s chorus?”

In the seventies and eighties, Grant had been the leader of the folk-rock/world-music band called “The Human Condition.” For the past 11 years she has worked at the Osborne Association, a non-profit that provides services for prisoners, ex-offenders and their families. In the nineties, Grant also directed “The Righteous Sisters,” a women’s chorus in Montclair, New Jersey, but soon grew tired of the commute and wanted something closer to home. “I kept thinking about that conversation until finally I got serious and got the word out,” says Grant.

That’s where the Coop helped. General Coordinator Linda Wheeler and Office Coordinator Ellen Weinstat knew Grant through her activist work in the neighborhood and the fact that all three women had daughters about the same age. Both Wheeler and Weinstat became charter members of the chorus, and, naturally, they talked up the group at the Coop. Soon more Coop women joined. Now there are 40 women in the chorus and 60 percent of them are also members of the Coop, Grant estimates. The group has sung at such far-flung venues as Methodist Hospital, Manhattan cafes and conventions for midwives (there are two in the chorus). They have a regular gig every four to six weeks at the Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture, where they also rehearse every Tuesday evening.

Lately the group, whose repertoire focuses on songs that deal with freedom and struggle, has been busy singing at various anti-war rallies including the October march in Washington D.C. and the February 15 protest in Manhattan. Perhaps most gratifying, however, is the group’s recent efforts to raise thousands of dollars in production costs for their first CD, which Grant expects to be released by the end of May.

Community Philosophy
It’s easy to see why the chorus attracts so many Coop members. The philosophies of the two groups are not dissimilar. Both try to provide a community where a basic and important need can be met. For the Coop, of course, that means healthy food at inexpensive prices. For the chorus, it means women finding their voices through the power of song.

The Brooklyn Women’s Chorus holds no auditions or screenings, doesn’t require any previous singing experience and welcomes all women, no matter how shy or tone deaf they think they may be. “I work from the premise that anyone can sing—singing is really just learning to exercise your voice,” says Grant, “People are done a great disservice by being told they can’t sing.”

So, Grant reverses the damage by creating a supportive environment where neophytes can feel at home. Grant often has new members record rehearsals so they can practice at home. During rehearsals, she often sandwiches them between two more experienced members who can help with pitch and timing.

“In the fourth grade, I was told to ‘mouth the words’ in chorus,” says Linda Wheeler. “I had been hiding ever since, singing essentially to myself in Girl Scout camp and at civil rights demonstrations in the 1960s, then at home to my babies. The Chorus has really transformed me. Bev has such tremendous faith. She really believes that everybody can sing. And because of her, we do. And we can. And we are good.”

Ellen Weinstat was equally intimidated but for completely different reasons. Her mother was a trained opera singer and several cousins are professional singers, but Weinstat herself hadn’t sung in a chorus since junior high school. “I told Linda, ‘I can’t sing anymore,’” says Weinstat, “But she convinced me to try. By the second rehearsal, I was there.”

Even members with lots of experience embrace the all-voices-welcome philosophy. It creates a new dynamic that I like,“ says Angela Lockhart, a Coop member since July and a chorus member who sang a lot as a child and young adult. ”It cuts down on the competitiveness that you find in a lot of other choruses and choirs.”

Politics and Support
For this chorus, polishing your singing voice also means fine-tuning your political voice. Grant comes from an activist background, and the songs she chooses and composes for the chorus are centered around anti-war, anti-racist and feminist themes. Jackson Brown tunes, South African freedom songs and Garth Brooks’ “We Shall Be Free” are all part of the chorus’s menu. “I’m always searching for a way to use my voice politically,” says Glenda Garrick, a chorus and Coop member. “I had sang in more traditional choruses, but classical music wasn’t enough. The songs we sing are personally meaningful because they are progressive songs.”

The group also performs many songs written by Pat Humphries, an activist musician known as the “true spirit-child of Woodie Guthrie.” Humphries and Grant have been friends for years and Humphries is known to sit in on a rehearsal once in a while.
Grant’s own compositions make up an important part of the repertoire. One favorite of chorus members, “The Power of Song,” talks about the healing powers of singing. And many chorus members named Grant’s “We Were There,” a moving ballad about the history of women’s labor, as their personal favorite.

Get a bunch of women together week after week singing about freedom and struggle, and you’re bound to create some unbreakable personal bonds. After so many years, it’s a tight circle. One of the chorus midwives, for instance, delivered the baby of Grant’s daughter. Another member with fundraising experience spearheaded the efforts to raise money to produce the CD. And then there’s the personal support. “I won’t say it’s a therapy group,” says Weinstat, “but it’s a very supportive group of women. Just as we’re aware of what’s going on in the world, we’re aware of what’s going on with other people.”

The most dramatic example may be that of Glenda Garrick. Just five months after she joined the Chorus back in 1998, Garrick was in a serious car accident that eventually led to the amputation of one of her legs. “The first thing I asked after a series of surgeries was, ‘will I be able to sing?” recalls Garrick. “The women were wonderful, and I marked the milestones of my recovery through the Chorus—when could I go again, when could I walk on my own. I looked forward to the singing because it meant I was getting my life back.”

Just last summer Grant may have merged the Chorus and Coop communities for good. After decades of living in Park Slope, she finally joined the Coop. Her workslot? Booking the Very Good Coffeehouse Coop concert series. Says Grant, “It’s the perfect job for me.”

You can hear the Brooklyn Women’s Chorus at the following events.
April 12, The People’s Voice Café at Workman’s Circle, 45 East 33 St., 8:00 p.m., (sharing the program with the Bev Grant & Bruce Markow Band).
April 23, The Great Hall, Cooper Union, anti-war rally, 7:00 p.m.
May 30, The CD Release Party, Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture, 53 Park Slope West at 2nd St. 8:00 p.m.