Bringing People Together

Ok, from the top! comes from the voice of Darla Earnest, new teacher at The University of Mobile, wife to the new Dean of Music Theatre, Bruce Earnest. Darla is instructing a group who has been in rehearsal now for two hours, a group that Darla and Bruce have been molding and working to make into a mode of outreach to help high school students stay away from drugs. How? Well, through a recent grant from the Drug Research Council, this group will go into high schools, singing about freedom from addiction. 

Right now Sounds is singing a song important to the soul of the United States. The song is called Coming Together, written by Jason Robert Brown. This song was written for September 11th. 

They begin, pooled into a circle, backs turned to the audience. You hear a collective harmony ease into the room through their beat up microphones that don't do justice to the harmony pouring out. The volume increases. First comes a powerful soprano, she really gives it to you, and delivers that courage we all need so much right now

Stand to the night, 

See the light, let it grow

Hold on for hard winds are starting to blow

stand up! hold on and swear you won’t let go...

...wow! In comes a piano, and then a milky baritone with that new, clean Broadway sound, telling the message of our country

Whatever I felt I’ve forgotten, 

Whatever I planned I released, 

But come take my hand,

Come down to the water...

Bruce is standing there with you. He's an ambitious man, just now taking the helm of music theatre at The University of Mobile, young for the many successes he has. He’s the kind of guy that has come to The University of Mobile for its faith mission, and to help foster kids into positive performance and healthy living. He whispers to you while he's watching them, tells you about the kids’ lives. It is not as pretty a picture as the stage. Many of these kids are placed in very difficult circumstances, working their way through, holding fast to their faiths… and it makes you want them to succeed, to pull through...

Where people are coming together, 

and people are falling apart, 

and no one can hide, 

we're caught in the tide, 

and punched in the heart.

And you know the heart-ache of the song, and you are wanting more, ready for the song to pick up...and it does... The kids spread out on stage, and the best part of the song is really sweeping you up. It's built to make you clap, to make you dance.

People are coming together, People are coming together, People are coming together,

All across the water!

And the repetition.

People are coming together, People are coming together, People are coming together,

All across the water!

And then you get it. You get Sounds. You see another miracle from God. These kids, fighting to stay in school, fighting to make things work, fighting, fighting fighting...

and they succeed. The song ends. The feeling remains. Bam. They drew you in, you feel that same thing everyone felt over September 11th: the need for each other, the desire to hold on tight through difficult times. It is not a message lost to the world now. While things are falling down around the world, here is this group singing about what really needs to happen…people are coming together. 

Sounds is a group of kids bringing light to broken lives that they themselves came from. Their collective voice, bringing forth a song from one of the more traumatic times in the United States, generates an energy our culture needs. It is this kind of message, these kind of kids, that can really show the world who God is. Sounds will be singing Coming Together at vivace on January 26th. 

Get ready to join in.