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March 1,1990 • Southern Voice/9
Counterculture
"But we will not despair—we will celebrate"
Feminist Chorus: Notes on Doing Your Best
Barbara Snell
by Charlene Ball
"Shooby bop bop wah, shoo-bop shoo-
bobby bobby..." 85 women stand on risers,
voices trying for close harmony. Linda Vaughn
swoops her hands, drawing the voices together.
Suddenly she lets them drop. The voices trail
off: "Dwee-oop."
"Altos, you were flat. Listen to that note."
Linda nods to Joy Peterman, seated at the E
Church's grand piano, who strikes the note
again. The altos sing it. Linda darts over to
them, listening hard.
It is Sunday afternoon, and the Atlanta
Feminist Women's Chorus is rehearsing for
concerts on March 3 in Atlanta and March 10
in Cincinnati..
"Now from the beginning! We can do it, I
know we can." Linda raises her hands, appears
to look each of us in the eye, nods, and we're
off.
In thirty seconds, "Put that away."
Cheryl Pittman, assistant director, takes
Linda's place. Linda sits, sips water and listens.
"Wood River!" calls Cheryl. "Watch me, not the
music on those last three measures. I'll give you
your cue. Trust me," she smiles wickedly.
We're off again.
Next it's "Sister Heathenspinster's Calendar
Days," a ballad by Therese Edell. Lanky, dark
haired Beiyle steps down, takes her guitar out
of its case. She tunes it, then gives us the intro.
"Not bad!" Linda's voice holds a note of
incredulity. She laughs.
The synthesizer rips into the calm air. Linda
pounds the keyboard while, Lennie, a cocky
Elvis lookalike, curls her lip, cuts her eyes, and
launches into the intro of "Freeway of Love."
The synthesizer releases forgotten energies.
"Go! Go! Go!" we shout.
"The chorus wouldn't be what it is without
Linda," avers Shirley Chancey, chorus presi
dent and general manager. "She has pulled us
up and challenged us to be excellent in a way
that has brought the community something they
can be proud of."
Margaret had not sung since high school.
Mary Louise was looking for an opportunity to
use her voice: "It's wrong to have a talent and
not use it. But I thought I wasn’t good enough.
So when the opportunity came to join without
auditioning, I jumped at it." For Sandy the cho
rus is a way to connect with the lesbian com
munity: I was isolated. But when I joined the
chorus, suddenly I knew people. I was instantly
a part of the community."
How did the chorus start? "Right after I
came to Atlanta, in '81, I met a woman who
said, we've tried to have a chorus here, but it's
never seemed to work. I said, you get some
people, I'll direct," recounts Linda.
At first about 20 women rehearsed in one
another’s houses. Then they moved to the
ALFA House. Then to the Existentialist
Congregation, where they have rehearsed for
the last five years. "The last concert at the
Church," says Chancey, "all the doors were
open, people were out to the sidewalk, packed
to the street,"
Why not the "Atlanta Lesbian Chorus" or
"Atlanta Gay Women's Chorus"? "Everybody
in the group is not a lesbian," explains Chancey.
"We wanted everybody who wanted to sing and
be with women to be able to join. We did want
to say up-front that most of the chorus was les
bian, but we didn't want to say that anybody
that wasn't a lesbian couldn't sing."
And there's the Chorus Auxiliary.
"Everything we do, they get to do. Anyplace
we go, they can go." Sometimes ruefully refer
ring to themselves as "chorus widows" or more
optimistically as "chorus groupies," the 20-
member Auxiliary holds yard sales, dances, and
other fund-raising events; "Every penny we
raised last year came from the Auxiliary,"
explains Chancey.
The AFWC seems to be unique. While other
gay and lesbian organizations struggle to sur
vive, it has survived and grown; kept old mem
bers and attracted new ones.
What's the secret formula ? Carefully built-
in attempts to include all while ensuring that, in
the heat of controversy, discussion of differ
ences will not rip the delicate fabric of commu
nity. The chorus has had its share of arguments
over political issues, from whether to change
lyrics of songs to whether to have childcare.
But the kind of discussions that often spark
division elsewhere have not done so here.
Chancey attributes this to several things. "The
most important is that we didn't want to lose
what we had."
"We keep the focus on singing. The Gay
Men's Chorus was larger than us at First Then it
changed directors and split in two. Rick, their
director, said, 'We almost didn't make it, but
then we found some new friends that helped us
and we pulled together and started making it
And some of those friends were the Atlanta
Feminist Women's Chorus."'
Linda Vaughn is another force that keeps the
chorus together, according to Chancey. "She's a
dynamic person; she draws people in. She's
taken a group of people... some who can't read
a note of music, and made something that
sounds pretty good. She has instilled pride in us
by demanding the best."
It can be enormously exciting to do your
best. It takes you out of your frustrations and
troubles, out of the injustices and conflicts and
oppressive forces of the world. It is not
escapism, but renewal and empowerment.
Linda Vaughn: "I think this group of
women is very empowering. We have always
Cont'd on Page 14
The music of Therese Edell is not a style, but a sensibility
by Charlene Ball
Therese Edell sits in her
wheelchair listening to the
rehearsal. An album, Fro m
Women’s Faces, with a picture of
her taken some years before,
stands on the piano. She is here to
talk to the AFWC, who will be
performing some of her work at
their March 3 concert. b*»b*»* sum.
She nods to the rhythm of Texas, Texas, smiling. On
This Longest Night she listens thoughtfully, then raises her
hand. We stop to listen. "That line is the song. In other
words, this is where you goddamn sing."
Therese has multiple sclerosis and cannot move her legs
nor her left arm. But though strained and ill—in discomfort if
not pain—she is attractive and vital.
She has kept on writing music, more and more complex
music. "I never would have done this [the music] if it hadn't
been for the disability," she acknowledges. "I would have
been running around, drinking beer. Because I was that kind
of person. Now somebody puts me in front of the computer
and I stay there—for hours."
She wrote Blue Moon, one of her more challenging songs,
in trying to deal with the disability. Expressionistic, with dis
turbing, atonal-sounding chords and stream-of-consciousness
words, the song is not exactly what we expect when we hear
"women's music". We think of love songs, political anthems,
or folksy ballads about gym teachers. But Therese's music
can't be classified in those terms; it is not a style but a sensi
bility. "It's feminist, it's pro-woman. It's not necessarily folk
music. And it doesn't have to have words."
Therese started performing at age 12, playing the accor
dion, piano, saxophone, and the baritone hom. A bassoon
major at the University of Cincinnati Music School, she
began writing music at 18. Performing came in 1968, doing
solo guitar and vocals. Songs like Sister Heathenspinster's
Calendar Days and Texas, Texas came out of her travels.
In 1975, at age 25, she first heard Alix Dobkin, then Meg
Christian. "I couldn't believe they were saying "lesbian" in
their songs. I didn't realize that what I had been doing had a
name."
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