The Spirit is alive!

Yesterday evening, I drove up to Ames for the Soweto Gospel Choir concert. If you've not heard of this group before, they are made up of a group of people who belong to different African churches and sing in those choirs. More on the choir later in this post. Before I went to the concert, I met up with Nora Tobin, a former religious education student on mine who studies at Iowa State University and Misty Heinen who is the campus minister at Iowa State. The three of us went to a Mexican restaurant for dinner and since it was a Lenten Friday, we did not have meat. Nora and Misty were seated together and the irony of it all is that we ended up sitting in the same row almost fifteen seats apart!

I read up a little on Soweto and they seemed really impressive. They even won a Grammy Award last year. I knew I was in for a "wild" ride with this group. The opening song definitely caught all our attention. It was nice when different members of the choirs did some introduction to the songs. They sang in at least four different languages. To say they sounded stunning would be an understatement. What really caught my attention was how much they were enjoying themselves. You could see it in their dancing and on their faces. It's one of those things you just can't fake.

Many of the songs were very inspiring and uplifting at the same time, you could feel/sense the pain and anguish on some of the songs that talked about hardship during the time of oppression. It's been twenty years since African countries achieved democracy and like one of the choir members said, they are still celebrating!

Another observation that brought a smile to me was the audience participation. There were more than a couple of Africans in attendance and they were "partying" with the choir. Needless to say, they brought a certain energy with them and it showed. It was as if the choir fed of their energy. Towards the end of a concert, it kind of felt like a mini praise and worship session which is not all that bad. As long as everyone had a good time, it was well worth it. We the audience gave the choir a long well deserved standing ovation.

Two words would sum up the performance best - inspiring and uplifting.