Hear His Voice
Robert Robinson brings gospel music to the masses across the Midwest
By COURTNEY LEWIS
Photo by David Ellis
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Robinson continued to sing with the church over the years, but pushed himself into popular music, looking to expand his range. He became a favorite at area karaoke bars. “I would sing songs that had absolutely nothing to do with God,” he says. “People would come up to me at the end crying, just crying. That was a powerful thing. It helped me realize that what I have to give is touched by God. And that if I can share it, then I’m providing more and more people with that touch, that connection to God.”
Sharing his voice wasn’t a solo mission—he needed backup. So Robinson enlisted his siblings to form a new choir and encouraged new members by not requiring auditions. TCCGC gained recognition that first year: four months after its first rehearsal, the choir won the Minnesota State Fair Amateur Talent Contest. They returned the following year to present 13 concerts, and have completed three recordings to date, including Make Me an Instrument, which was included on local top-10 lists in 1996.
Few gospel choirs then—none in Minnesota—extended beyond the church. Now 100-strong, the unconstrained TCCGC remains the state’s most-decorated gospel group. The choir continues to gain converts; some eventually become members, hoping to fully experience the music. But its growth is better measured in quality than quantity.
“You all signed up for gospel choir and now you’re all reading charts, professional charts,” says guest singer and voice coach Holly Collison to the novices. “And they’re hard, so I’m really impressed.”
Although there is little structure in gospel music, the “call-and-response” refrain that began with spirituals makes the style seem easy to pick up. But there are challenges in teaching gospel, says Sanford Moore, director of the University of Minnesota Gospel Choir, who took over the 10-year-old program when founder Sam Davies died. Moore focuses the popular program, which has grown from about a dozen singers to 230, on history and musical style, which he notes as more percussive. “I can’t really teach them gospel music,” he says. “It’s something they have to experience.”
In that, Moore sees an obvious difference between his student choir and the church choir he directs at Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church in north Minneapolis. “I have to break it down a lot more,” he says. “When I present a song, I have to talk about what the song means so they know why they have to sing it that way,” Moore says. “At church, it’s a given. It’s felt. It’s understood.” Regardless, Moore says the change in his U students over the semester is “like night and day. Many of them tell me how the experience has uplifted them. Gospel encourages the soul.”
AT PARAMOUNT THEATRE, the center of St. Cloud’s arts district, the audience for TCCGC’s first holiday concert of the 2006 season gets gospel. Home to a symphony orchestra, touring local and national troupes, and a visual-arts center, the Paramount is a small stop for the TCCGC, which has performed at the Guthrie Theater, the Metrodome, the Governor’s Mansion, and Kirby Puckett’s memorial service. But the audience is ready to listen. Robinson speaks to the crowd as if they are old friends, explaining the origins of “Down Home Christmas,” an original country song that is a nod to his Southern parents. He discusses how his music and choir have developed and the messages of his favorite songs.
“I think the music is a way of watering the dryness of an individual drought,” Robinson says. “If I’m able to do that with my music—if I’m able to do that in a bar, if I can do it in a theater, if I can do it in a prison—wherever there’s an open door of people that need it and want it, then I’m willing to go there. Because I feel that people everywhere, no matter our status or color or anything, we’re all dry and dying from something.” Judging from the multiple ovations at the Paramount Theatre, the thirst has been quenched.
Courtney Lewis is editorial assistant at Minnesota Monthly.
The Twin Cities Community Gospel Choir will perform at the O’Shaughnessy in St. Paul on February 25. Call 651-690-6700 for tickets, or visit www.tccgospel.org for more concert dates.
