500 Voices, One Mission: Keep Baltimore’s Gospel Legacy Alive

Five hundred singers and musicians gathered at New Psalmist Baptist Church on Sept. 19 to record “The Sound of Baltimore.” The choir filled the stands; worshippers filled the sanctuary. Organizers said more than 2,000 people attended. 

For Eric Waddell, the Baltimore musician who brought the choir together, seeing gospel leaders sing alongside people they had helped inspire was as meaningful as the recording itself.

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“It was just overwhelming,” Waddell told Word In Black after the event. “Baltimore needed this for this season.”

Now Waddell is preparing the project’s second part: A documentary on the people and churches behind the music. He wants the city’s gospel pioneers and today’s singers and musicians in the same room, sharing the stories behind the music. The live recording brought those generations together.

“We’re getting ready to document the sound of Baltimore,” he said.

Waddell singled out the Baltimore Fellowship Choir, a longtime community ensemble, for joining the mass choir. Its members, he says, are an example of what Baltimore’s gospel choirs have contributed to the city, and he spoke with gratitude about veteran musician Roland Joe Smith and other local leaders.

“This is Baltimore,” Waddell said. “When we all come together, we’re stronger.”

The event was a milestone for an effort Waddell described to WIB in April, when more than 400 singers answered his call at a rehearsal at Gillis Memorial Christian Community Church. At the time, he defined The Sound of Baltimore as a collaboration among musicians raised in the city, including some who had moved away and were returning to sing. He named organist Gloria Thompson and artists Jonathan Nelson, Jason Nelson and Maurette Brown Clark among the musicians connected to the project. 

Photographs from the September recording show Jonathan Nelson performing, an organist accompanying the choir, and Marco K. Merrick conducting “Great Is Thy Faithfulness.” They also show worshippers listening, praying, and joining in the moment. 

In an earlier interview with Word In Black, Waddell spoke about shrinking church choirs and his hope that young people would have opportunities to learn music in school and sing in their churches. The recording brought hundreds of voices together for a day. Keeping those voices in choir stands across Baltimore is the longer work. 

The documentary offers another way to carry that work forward. Organizer Rodney Whitley told Baltimore Beat that the documentary would focus on the choir and the history of gospel music in Baltimore. In his message to WIB, Waddell said he would gather pioneers and current leaders to tell the story together. 

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That history lives in people as well as songs: The directors who taught a young singer where to come in, the musicians who kept playing for decades, and the congregations that gave choirs a place to grow. Waddell wants the next generation to know their names and hear what they built.

“Everybody is somebody,” he said.

The recording captured what happened when Baltimore’s gospel community sang together. Waddell’s next undertaking is to help the city remember who taught it to sing.