Today there were about 12 people in the group, plus Mario and six members of the Open Program. Again, the training consisted of three hours of singing and about thirty minutes of question/answer. In addition to the Afro-Caribbean songs, we also sang several songs from the tradition of the African-American Spirituals of the Southern United States.
We were able to learn songs slightly faster today with the added voices of the members of the Open Program. The standards for accuracy were set even higher than yesterday and we moved quickly from one song to another.
Mario worked with me for a few minutes on a song that invoked the loa Yemaya. His instruction was quite insightful. I record here what I remember of the adjustments he gave me so that I don’t forget.
• Sing as though you are speaking. It’s a communication.
• Forget everything you’ve ever learned in voice lessons.
• The vibrations you’re creating in your voice are added on top rather than emerging from the action. You are trying to produce a result rather than undergoing a process.
• As you’re singing, see other people. And see them seeing you. Use that connection.
• Relax and soften your upper body and arms so that you can embrace the song as though it were a lover.
In the question/answer period, Mario answered a question about how he arrives at his adjustments by saying that it is important for a teacher or director to be able to differentiate between intuition about a performer and projections about what that person should be like. I asked him how he could tell the difference between the two. His answer had several parts, which I’ll try to recreate here:
• You can’t, ultimately, it’s always a risk.
• Practice.
• Know that you’ll be wrong sometimes.
• Trust the performer enough to handle your possibly-wrong advice.
• Remember that the other person is a different universe, like at the edge of old maps where it said: “hic sunt leones” or “here there be lions.”
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