Joyful Noise, the electric choir competition film featuring Queen Latifah and Dolly Parton, hits theatres on Jan. 13, but the Joyful Noise gospel giveaway is underway now.
The grand prize for the giveaway includes: Six pastor and 100 choir robes courtesy of Murphy Robes/Herff Jones; round-trip air travel for (4) courtesy of American Airlines, and a music and wellness master class with Grammy Award-winning singer Donald Lawrence.
Here, Lawrence speaks to rolling out about the competition and what makes a good choir Grammy-ready.
What is the spiritual significance of the choir?
Gospel or spiritual music uplift a group of people and bring the atmosphere of heaven where you are. One of the spiritual significances of the choir is to create a similar atmosphere to heaven, meaning praise and worship.
Praise really speaks of what God has done and thanks Him for it; worship speaks of who God is, and how much we love Him. Where there’s unity there’s strength, for people come together and sing in perfect harmony, it uplifts people and gives people strength and hope.
What is needed to make a good choir Grammy-ready?
From the talent perspective, you must have a great group of singers with great ears as well as singers who understand music, content and how to approach music. [You must have] a great soprano, alto and tenor section, and also, soprano, alto, tenor and bass with similar tone texture helps, it’s like putting the right ingredients in food. It makes for a quicker and easier blend, if there are no similarities you have to work a little bit to get one common line or one common thread.
The performance ability and the ability to connect with the lyric personally; and delivery that is heartfelt are things that will get the choir Grammy-ready, other than understanding what the Grammys are, and how the [nomination process] works.
What is your definition of a righteous mind?
A righteous mind thinks from a kingdom perspective, empowerment perspective and spiritual perspective, meaning that it thinks about the good things a person can do and the great things that a person can accomplish. It really guards the negativity and don’t allow it in, and it really thinks on a positive perspective. When you get your mind in a place where it thinks positive all of the time regardless of the negativity that is around you, it can allow you to cut through and find the good, no matter how hurtful, painful or devastating. When you set your mind that way, you look for the lesson in everything.
How have you maintained your spiritual perspective in the cutthroat music industry?
I think spirituality is not religion, when you understand there’s a big difference between the religious perspective and the spiritual perspective, you realize every place that you are, there is a reason that you’re there and you look for the spiritual reason for it. You bumped into somebody that you helped that day, or the song that you wrote really got people through a very rough time and it takes the music business things that gets on people’s nerves out of it, for the bigger purpose.
I think that I really stay on myself to not get so caught up in all of the things that come with the music business, really focus on the reason I was put on this planet and that is to write songs to help people through some of the worst times of their lives and that keeps me a little more grounded.
I tell others all the time, whether you have a number one album or not, you’ve accomplished what you’ve been put on this planet to do.
Has gospel music become too commercialized?
I don’t think it has become too commercialized but what they have to realize is that the Gospel music business has become more commercialized.
People write music based on their perspective of life. Most people who write music for real they do it based on where they lived, so a younger generation grew up in a different time and with a different sound and different experiences and what moves them may not move people who are older.
Music comes as an expression of where we lived.
What do you want participants to learn from your master class?
Music is a lot more than singing and talent. It comes from a spiritual place, meaning that it comes from your heart. A lot of things can affect how you do music: where you are mentally, even what you eat, sometimes eating can change your mood and therefore change your delivery. What you give musically, I want to show them a total different type of perspective, it’s a whole body experience; music has got to be more than your ability to sing a great song.
What message do you have for those entering the gospel giveaway?
Continue to dream; never let a dream get away from you. Realize that time is manmade, and sometimes we put time on our dreams, and therefore if we don’t get there when we’re supposed to get there, it discourages us. When you look at it from a spiritual perspective, it’s never too late until you’re gone.
Live your life and get it all out, do it until you can’t do it anymore!
For more info on the Joyful Noise gospel giveaway, visit www.joyfulnoisegiveaway.com/.
