By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
When people are frustrated, sometimes the only thing to do is sing.
Pastor Mary Jane Saunders, of the First Presbyterian Church, knows many people are concerned about the current state of affairs, and she decided to help organize an event that will enable them to give voice to their frustrations.
She was inspired in part by a video of Pete Seeger, Holly Near and others who use music as a form of activism.
So Friday, March 3, at 7 p.m. ‘Singing for Our Lives: Empowering the People through Song’ will be presented at Grounds for Thought, 174 S. Main St., Bowling Green.
Saunders enlisted the local ukulele quartet the GRUBs – Grande Royale Ukulelists of the Black Swamp – to be the house band for the event.
Sheri Wells-Jensen, of the GRUBS, said the set list will include both old and new material.
The GRUBS have already dipped their toes, or ukuleles, into current issues when they recorded “Where’s Bob?” a humorous song about Republican U.S. Rep. Bob Latta’s unwillingness to hold a town hall meeting. Wells-Jensen and her husband, Jason Wells-Jensen, added their voices to last Sunday’s rally to support immigrants.
They have written a call and response blues number “Send Them All to Me” for “Singing for Our Lives,” she said.
“The purpose is to reintroduce people to the power of singing together and why people do that,” Wells-Jensen said. The event seeks “to reclaim the label ‘protest music,’ and to give people permission to ditch that label if it gets in the way.”
“We Shall Overcome” has to be on the setlist, Wells-Jensen said. They will also include “This Land Is Your Land” with all the verses. The Woody Guthrie classic has come to be perceived as a harmless ditty, but taken in its entirety it is “a marvelously rich and wide-ranging song that includes a lot of people,” she said.
“We’ll sing patriotic music, too,” she said, “because these folks are patriots.” So “America the Beautiful” will be on the program.
Even if a song doesn’t connect with their concerns, it may mean something to the person sitting next to them. “The thing is you don’t have to love all the songs,” Wells-Jensen said. “These are not songs for the individual these are songs for the community. … Any time people share a concern, .they get together, and sing about it, it can make things better.”
She and Saunders hope this will be the first of a series of gatherings.
While the GRUBS will be the house band for this, Wells-Jensen said, she looks forward to passing the torch. “There are so many great musicians in our area, it sort of astonishes me.”
She’d love to see someone pick it up, adding wryly, “if we don’t wreck it.”
