You have to be made of stone not to be touched.

You have to be made of stone not to be touched.
by journalist Maria Dohn

People are talking loudly and giving each other kisses and hugs as I enter Fredens Kirke late on a Tuesday afternoon in January. The atmosphere is warm and light – a bit like a family reunion, where cousins, uncles and aunts who haven’t seen each other for a while meet again.

Almost all the benches in the simple church room are in use, and it's hard to see at first glance that the many people form a choir, but a friendly lady shows me where the altars are located, and I find a free seat among smiling women.

Like knocking rust
During the initial warm-up – including a difficult rhythm exercise that triggers a collective roar of laughter – my voice feels like a ship being knocked off its rust. It’s been almost ten years since I stopped singing in another gospel choir. Not because I was tired of singing, but because a full-time job and two minor children took up most of my energy. Now the children are grown, and there’s a little more space in everyday life (and unfortunately also in my voice), and singing must once again have a place in my life.

The choir is large. It has a good 100 people, the vast majority of whom are women. The few men – about 20 – are located in the middle aisle. Our choir director, Hans Christian, stands behind a digital piano and does something that seems impossible with only two hands – he plays and conducts at the same time. But it works, and even quite well.

Humor an important pedagogical trick
Everyone has a small booklet with lyrics, and over the next two hours we manage to go through a good handful of songs. All voice groups get undivided attention. Some have sung in the choir for many years and know the songs in other variations, and occasionally a lively discussion arises between Hans Christian and the choir members about how a particular passage should be sung. Other times Hans Christian manages to argue with himself.

Hans Christian is indisputably talented both as a musician, composer and educator. We are a bunch of happy amateurs, and yet he manages to get us to sing relatively difficult songs, some of which he has written himself. As a bonus, he is super charismatic. With an eye for detail and without losing sight of the whole picture, he steers us around the musical stumbling blocks, often using understated Jutland humor and thick, thick irony. With a clever smile, he teases and verbally abuses the respective voice groups during the evening, something that everyone magnanimously accepts, enjoys and forgives.

Gospel is love
As the daughter of a lukewarm Catholic and a ditto Protestant, I have come across as an absolute non-believer, and I therefore have an ambivalent relationship with the lyrics and their religious content. But I choose to perceive them as love songs, as a tribute to life, to people and to everything that is difficult to understand. The great emotions – from doubt, sorrow and longing to heartfelt joy and ecstatic jubilation – are given a voice in gospel. For me, gospel is intensity and fervor, and you have to be made of stone not to be moved.