by Delta Taylor, staff writer
Renowned singer, songwriter, and vocal activist Melanie DeMore performed at the Centennial Campus theater in October along with drummers and a Threshold Choir in an evening of togetherness and joy.
The evening was sponsored in large part by Voices of Grief Support and Education Center, which works “to create supportive spaces to honor the natural process of grief and to educate our community in healthy expressions of grief and mourning,” says Executive Director of Voices of Grief Support and Education Center, Kathy Sparnins.
Along with the Voices of Grief Support and Education Center, this evening was supported by The Colorado Trust, the Mining Exchange, Springs Funeral Services, Pikes Peak Hospice & Palliative Care, Colorado Springs Health Foundation, Peak View Behavioral Health, Diversus Health, and Silver Key.
“We love the energy of this academic setting, ” says Sparnins. “We love that professors and students alike might feel the unity of our community coming together, unified,” she says. “There has been an epidemic of loneliness across our nation; coming together one event at a time brings us closer. We are not alone.”
DeMore tours extensively as a solo performer as well as a facilitator for vocal workshops. She has performed with artists such as Buffy Saint Marie, John Prine, Josh White, Jr., Laura Nyro, Sweet Honey in the Rock, and Pete Seeger. She guides audiences through original songs, African American folk traditions, and heart-opening stories.
Each group had pieces in which they would directly interact with the audience. The drummers encouraged the audience to clap along, and the Threshold Choir had a piece for the audience to sing with them as directed. DeMore used the sectioning in the theater to have different groups of people sing different parts of her music in sync. “With call-and-response singing, she transforms the crowd into a spontaneous living choir,” says Sparnins.
These methods of audience interaction bring forth a strong sense of unity – exactly what DeMore was hoping her audience would gain from the event. “What I want is for people to be connected to each other,” she says.
“We’re living in a world where everything is telling us we need to be separate, we need to be at odds, we need to be adversarial. We need exactly the opposite. We cannot get along without each other. And my life depends on you, and your life depends on me. So that’s what I want to do when I get people to sing and raise their voices together. I don’t care where you come from, what you believe, who you think you are. You have a right to raise your voice and sing. And there’s nothing better than doing it with a whole bunch of folks perhaps you don’t know,” she says.
