Sarah Gumina
Audio By Carbonatix
Social awareness has always been important to the Denver Gay Men’s Chorus, and “Motown and More,” one of the shows it had planned for the 2020 season, is no different. The group meant to entertain the audience with songs such as Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)” while also educating about the social impact of songs and their connection to the civil rights movement, including Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On?” and Aretha Franklin’s “Think.”
“Black music has always led to change,” says DGMC artistic and managing director James Knapp.
Of course, the COVID pandemic struck and put the kibosh on large groups of people singing in a room. The year 2020 also saw the death of George Floyd and Elijah McClain at the hands of police officers, and the subsequent protests against police brutality that swept the country. Watching those horrors unfold and the reaction, particularly the Black Lives Matter movement, made Knapp question his own role in the world.
“I’m not racist,” he says. “I knew that. But what I didn’t realize that was so important for me – and I’m only speaking for myself – is it wasn’t enough to not be racist. I need to be anti-racist. I need to take action in what I do, where I write my checks and where I volunteer my time.”
Knapp saw an opportunity to make a deeper impression with the Motown show, which will now happen Friday, April 1, and Saturday, April 2, at the Ellie Caulkins Opera House. The performances will also include a collaboration with Cleo Parker Robinson Dance.
The set showcases a variety of songs by popular Black musicians – Gladys Knight and the Pips, Stevie Wonder, Martha and the Vandellas and John Legend, to name a few. Aurora’s Ridgeview High School Choir will also join the DGMC on stage, for a total of about 170 singers.
“We were already addressing things like white privilege, inequity, violence against African-Americans, particularly Black men,” Knapp says. “All of that was originally in the program from two years ago. But it was not nearly as pronounced as it is in this program.”
The event will also include composer Joel Thompson’s “The Seven Last Words of the Unarmed,” which sets to music the last words of seven black men killed by police or authority figures: Kenneth Chamberlain, Trayvon Martin, Amadou Diallo, Michael Brown, Oscar Grant, John Crawford and Eric Garner. Borrowing from Haydn’s “Seven Last Words of Christ,” Thompson drew from visual artist Shirin Barghi‘s #lastwords project to structure the work. The piece premiered in 2015 at the University of Michigan, according to the Seven Last Words organization.
“This piece was written in response to his grief,” Knapp says. “He is an African-American man, and he just had to express himself.”
The performance includes three songs in collaboration with iconic Denver dancer and choreographer Cleo Parker Robinson and the dance company she founded. The collaboration means a lot to Knapp, as he considers Parker Robinson one of the grande dames of Denver and “one of the most stunning human beings I’ve ever met,” he says.
“It’s one thing to have enormous talent,” Knapp says. “It’s another thing to have this enormous heart that is part of that talent. That is why we have collaborated together, because she also, in her dance work and company, is always furthering the cause of social justice.”
Cleo Parker Robinson Dance will perform newly commissioned works to “I Wish I Knew How it Would Feel to Be Free” by Nina Simone; “What’s Going On?,” by Marvin Gaye”; and “Rise Up,” by Andra Day. (The show on March 27 will include the DGMC’s own dancers.)
The Marvin Gaye and Nina Simone songs lead into the performance of “The Seven Last Words” and can be taken to represent different aspects of the quest for equal rights in the United States. Knapp says “What’s Going On?” is a plea for communication between people.
“This could absolutely be part of the conversation of ‘Seven Last Words,'” Knapp notes. “‘Hey, officer, or authority figure, if you would just talk to me, you’ll realize I’m having some kind of mental episode, or I’m just walking home from my job or my college class, and I just happen to be an African-American man with a hoodie on.'”
The Nina Simone song, Knapp says, calls for equity; Simone was an active proponent of civil rights during her lifetime. She eventually left the United States in anger at the lack of progress and settled in France.
“She was a different voice than a lot of the other artists,” Knapp says. “She was pretty angry about it. She used to say in concerts, ‘Do you know what it’s like to sit in a jail cell? Do you know what it’s like for Martin Luther King night after night? Well I do, because I’ve been there.'”
After “Seven Last Words,” the program wraps up with “Rise Up,” a newer piece of music, but one Knapp says bookends the other pieces well.
“It is an amazing call to action and being supportive of each other,” he says. “There are some phrases in it like ‘All we need is hope, and for that we have each other.”
Knapp says the DGMC strives for excellence in choral music, but one of its core values is addressing social justice issues. That, of course, includes issues impacting the LGBTQ community, but he believes the group’s work should go beyond that. He is happy for the opportunity to perform these pieces, because he sees common struggles among marginalized groups. Black women and other women musicians are just one of the groups with whom he feels solidarity, but it is a strong one.
“I think there has always been a huge connection between African-American artists, female artists and the gay community,” he says. “There are some similar struggles [with] the icons who speak musically and emotionally to gay men.”
He wants to take the performances all over, because he sees them as a way to bring more understanding to people. It’s important, he says, to move outside of a relatively more comfortable place like Denver.
“What I’m most committed to is going to Douglas County, going to Sterling, Colorado, going to the Western Slope,” he says. “It’s easy to sing these concerts in Denver, where there’s a lot of like-minded people. Where are you going to do your mission work? In places that need to hear different perspectives.”
Motown and More, Ellie Caulkins Opera House in the Denver Performing Arts Complex on Friday, April 1, at 7:30 p.m., and Saturday, April 2, at 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Tickets ($15-$75) can be purchased via denverchoruses.org.