Together
Whiteville Apparel Choir
Send US$13 (cassette) to UNITE Choir Project, 1010 Tucker St, Greensboro, NC 27405, USA
Fortunes of the Highway
Phil Cohen
Send US$15 (CD) to PO Box 5208, Chapel Hill, NC 27514, USA
Review by Norm Dixon
"We are the children of the angel of freedom/ We are the soldiers of the good fight/ In unions across this land we live in/ We are the workers joined by UNITE/ I remember the days when we started our union/ Our power was hope and their weapon was despair/ They did all they could to hurt and divide us/ All we wanted was justice and a wage that was fair/ We stood at the gate when the rain was a-freezin'/ We were lied to and fired, sometimes we were scared/ But we never backed down, we just kept a-comin'/ And our contract bears witness to all that we dared ..." — from "Angel of Freedom".
Gospel music has directly and indirectly expressed the hopes and demands of the African-American people for justice and liberation for centuries — during slavery, segregation following the civil war and the civil rights movement of the 1950s and '60s.
That great tradition continues in the inspiring Whiteville Apparel Choir, an "amateur" choir of 24 or so union-proud factory workers from North Carolina.
During slavery, church services provided enslaved Africans their only opportunity to gather free from the gaze of the overseers. The biblical struggle of the oppressed Jewish people to escape to freedom in the "promised land" struck a chord.
This analogy was soon expressed in religious code within spirituals, versions of white Christian hymns. From these evolved black gospel. They were protest songs, a few were subversive calls to rebellion, most were laments, but they all tended to galvanise the oppressed and give them strength and courage.
In early black gospel, lines like "steal away to Jesus", "crossing the River Jordan" or "a-goin' to glory" could refer to a successful escape; "judgment day" to the end of slavery or a slave uprising; "Canaan", "the promised land", "Jerusalem", "heaven" are at first references to Africa, then, for later generations of African-Americans, the northern states and Canada, later still, a code for full civil rights. The ubiquitous gospel call for "freedom" needs no explanation.
Those coded demands, as well as many others openly espoused, are today put at the service of the working-class struggle by the Whiteville Apparel Choir's untrained but very talented performers.
The choir was formed in 1994 when a group of machinists, stitchers and pressers from a suit factory in Whiteville got together. The workers, predominantly black and female, already sang in church choirs in the area.
The choir soon began to concentrate on gospel and soul songs that emphasise solidarity, workers' unity in struggle and an end to exploitation. They also "gospelised" union anthems and labour movement folk standards.
Not content with that, they reinterpret contemporary pop songs to stress solidarity. Their twice weekly after-work rehearsals rattle the rafters of the local union hall.
In 1995, when their union, the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union, merged with the International Ladies Garment Workers Union to form UNITE! (Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees), the choir was invited to perform at the founding conference in Miami.
"Our songs are all about struggle and that's something that unions and gospel music have in common", the choir's director, Melvin Chambers, told Sing Out! magazine. The choir does not restrict itself to appearances at conferences and meetings but heads off to picket lines and demonstrations to support workers in struggle.
UNITE!'s Carolina organiser and producer of Together, Phil Cohen, tells of the choir inspiring 550 workers in their struggle against K-mart last year: "They were at every single demonstration ... folks were literally getting arrested to the soundtrack of the Whiteville Apparel Choir."
"You have to understand the love, faith and dedication these folks make available to the union whenever necessary", Cohen told Sing Out!.
"These are working people. They'll get off work at 3pm on Friday, drive to Atlanta to sing at a conference, and then drive four hours to be back at work that Monday morning. Part of their appeal is that their commitment is so contagious. It's impossible to be in their presence for five minutes and not get caught up in their message."
Together, bankrolled by UNITE!, captures some of that inspiration. And the music swings! It includes two anthems to their union, "We're UNITE" and "Angel of Freedom" (written by Cohen), and several other funky pro-union hymns.
The choir does great versions of Woody Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land" and the civil rights anthem "We Shall Not be Moved". The gospel take of the soul classic "Lean on Me" is a gem.
Phil Cohen is also a songwriter in his spare time. His CD Fortunes of the Highway is the culmination of his life experiences.
Cohen left his home in New York when he was 16. Since then he has driven illegal taxis, managed a skid row hotel and travelled the world. He ended up in North Carolina where he got a job driving buses and helped organise the drivers into a strong union branch. He has been a UNITE! organiser for 10 years.
"My music is about life, love and working people", explains Cohen. "In essence, I am an artist, a romantic and adventurer who got caught up in a fight." Cohen's gentle folk songs are well worth a listen.
Phil Cohen has a web page.