Robert Sims curated the San Francisco concert coming Aug. 28 in which mezzo-soprano Federica von Stade will join singers from the world’s great opera houses.
“The slave masters thought they were just singing harmless religious songs, and on one level they were,” says Robert Sims, of Oakland, who has spent his life as an ambassador for this uniquely American art form. “But spirituals were also songs of liberation, with coded hints about how to escape. ‘Wade in the Water’ could be about baptism, but it also had another meaning: The water will wash away your scent so the bloodhounds can’t catch you.
And people are still documenting what it’s like to be Black in America, from the music of the Civil Rights Movement to the hip-hop songs that are the soundtrack of Black Lives Matter. “There would be no Motown without the spiritual,” says Sims, “and spirituals are still being written because the struggle for liberation still goes on. It’s a continually evolving art form, as deeply rooted in the present as it is in the past.
“Majesty of the Spiritual,” will feature 12 award-winning singers from the great opera houses of the world joining Oakland resident and great mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade, above. “Majesty of the Spiritual,” will feature 12 award-winning singers from the great opera houses of the world joining the great mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade, who lives in Oakland, singing works by three living composers of spirituals.
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