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Essence Virtual Events
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00:03:11and of course, myself again.
00:03:13So welcome you all.
00:03:16Now that we're gathered today,
00:03:18as we're gathered here today,
00:03:19I actually wanna open up by asking you
00:03:21what were each of your first moments
00:03:25with the Clark Sisters?
00:03:26When was the Clark Sisters introduced to you?
00:03:29We can start with you, Anjanin.
00:03:31Okay.
00:03:34When I was in,
00:03:37when I was growing up in Mississippi,
00:03:41I grew up in the Baptist church and my best friend,
00:03:45her name was Tracy Grady.
00:03:47Hello, Tracy Grady, if you're listening.
00:03:49She grew up in the Kojic Church,
00:03:51St. James Church of God in Christ on Gradyville Road.
00:03:55And so Tracy would go to these legendary workshops
00:03:59that Maddie Moss Clark would conduct all around the world.
00:04:03And she would come back and she would just tell us
00:04:06these epic stories about Dr. Maddie Moss Clark.
00:04:10So I had an image in my mind of who Dr. Maddie was
00:04:15before I even heard the Clark Sisters,
00:04:18before I even heard their music.
00:04:19So she figured in my mind as this legend,
00:04:23in the same way Cinderella did, you know, as a kid.
00:04:26Yeah.
00:04:27Danielle, how about you?
00:04:32I grew up church, so like for me, my experience with the Clark Sisters
00:04:36is inseparable from my experience of being a black church woman.
00:04:40I can't pinpoint the first recollection because it's just always been there.
00:04:46They've always been part of my worship experience, a part of my liturgy.
00:04:50Maybe my most memorable like pinpoint might be that a rough side of the mountain infomercial
00:04:57that used to come on all the time during my long time.
00:04:59I remember that.
00:05:02I remember that.
00:05:04I remember having a truck on there.
00:05:06I think it was you brought the sunshine, we're going that way.
00:05:08And so it was just like, oh, I always like to remember.
00:05:12But they have just been in like completely inseparable part of my experience in there.
00:05:20And I've always been there with them.
00:05:23Ashawn?
00:05:25I, like Danielle, can't pinpoint the first time I was aware of the Clark Sisters.
00:05:30I grew up on Kojic.
00:05:32And so they were always like in the sort of ether of the way we talked about the music of our churches
00:05:39and always talking about the conferences that people would go to in the summertime,
00:05:44UNAC at the time, which is now Auxiliaries and Ministry, which is called AIM.
00:05:48I can remember the first album of the Clark Sisters that I purchased.
00:05:53It was a tape, cassette tape.
00:05:54It was their Conquerors album.
00:05:56And I love that album so much.
00:06:00Conquerors is a great song.
00:06:01Computers rule the world, but God is still in control is one of my favorite songs.
00:06:06That very early on, from my own recollection, the Clark Sisters were always doing music
00:06:14that was pushing the sort of limits even when I was like a very young teenager, 13, 14 years old.
00:06:23And so we were always talking about the Clark Sisters and there was always conversation about
00:06:27is their music too secular?
00:06:29Is their music pushing too far?
00:06:31Why did they have this rapper in their music?
00:06:33But it was always a part of how are they honoring their tradition while also trying to push the music
00:06:39forward?
00:06:39And so that's the first cassette tape I remember and always just listening to them
00:06:44sing, play the Hammond organ are things that we always talked about.
00:06:50Imani?
00:06:50Oh, they used up all of mine.
00:06:53Mine includes The Friends and Conqueror on cassette tape and Rough Side of the Mountain volume one,
00:07:01which I ordered.
00:07:02I did order it.
00:07:04I have a copy.
00:07:05So that was the best part of that commercial.
00:07:08And because it was the best song, and I remember growing up in New York,
00:07:12them playing it on WBLS, you just had to stay in the car long enough.
00:07:16It will come back on.
00:07:17Yeah.
00:07:17But my first in my hand Clark Sister object was also the Conqueror cassette,
00:07:24which Antoine Bryant, who had a locker in my hallway and was Pentecostal,
00:07:30at school gave me on Christmas, the last day before Christmas break, when I was in,
00:07:36I guess that's eighth grade, maybe.
00:07:39And I still have that cassette, but I keep it where I can put my hand on it.
00:07:42Amen, amen.
00:07:45Imani, we're going to stay with you because you are an independent scholar.
00:07:49And while the Clark Sisters work dates back to the 1970s,
00:07:53that biopic introduced new audience of multiple generations to the Clark Sisters sound and their
00:07:58story.
00:07:58Please share with us some of your learnings from studying the Clark Sisters over the years.
00:08:02I guess my biggest takeaway is that it's probably folly to determine how far their influence extends.
00:08:17It goes beyond what you can see, much like roots of a tree rather than a tree.
00:08:24I think we often talk about music in terms of a tree.
00:08:27I think more like the roots, the thing you can't see that's holding everything up.
00:08:33The invisible is what's critical here.
00:08:37Certainly they are your favorite singer's favorite singer, unbeknownst to you.
00:08:42Faith Evans, Kelly Price, Missy Elliott all have not only collaborated with them,
00:08:50and they shudder. You see them on stage to be near them.
00:08:55And Missy produced those fabulous tracks with Dorinda and Karen over the years.
00:09:01But besides that, if you just take a step back and you know their music,
00:09:06you hear them as a thread woven through.
00:09:09And one of the biggest things I would point out is that Twinkie's harmonies were so complex
00:09:17that they required a particular kind of vocal placement.
00:09:21So they do not use vibrato.
00:09:23The thing we're used to thinking of as a gospel sound, they do not employ that,
00:09:30except when they put in strategically in a solo.
00:09:34Because it's impossible to maintain those harmonies.
00:09:36They're just too difficult if you start to vary tone.
00:09:39That's what vibrato is technically, a tiny movement between two notes.
00:09:45So I would just say they kind of go everywhere and they come from everywhere.
00:09:51Because Twinkie records hymns from the 19th century.
00:09:54She records spirituals created by anonymous Black composers whose names we just have lost to time.
00:10:04But here she is talking about computers ruling the world in 1987,
00:10:09prophesying us all the way to this moment.
00:10:11Wow, that's real.
00:10:15Now, Ashan, thank you for telling us your Clark Sisters memory,
00:10:18but how have they impacted your work and what you do today?
00:10:23Well, I have an affinity for the Hammond organ and I grew up playing the Hammond organ in my own church.
00:10:31My brother was a musician for the church and then he went to college and we needed a musician.
00:10:36And so I started learning how to play my teacher, Yolanda Grice, who is a friend of all of the Clarks
00:10:43and has some background for Twinkie Clark on Bobby Jones, for example.
00:10:48My teacher is a person who taught lots and lots of people in New Jersey.
00:10:52I think of the Clark sisters in this kind of way that they are pedagogical,
00:10:57by which I mean they are a form of learning for how we can engage people in community,
00:11:03how we can engage people in care through the music and through the arts.
00:11:07And so for me, I'm constantly thinking with the kinds of pedagogical strategies
00:11:12that are not about book learning.
00:11:14I'm an ear trained musician. And so most of what I play is based on what I can hear
00:11:19and trying to replicate the things that I hear with the things that I can play on the Hammond organ.
00:11:24That's one of the things that I learned from listening, having a sort of strong attention
00:11:29to the ways the Clark sisters listen to one another, the ways they sing with one another,
00:11:33the ways they harmonize with one another is to a deep listening practice.
00:11:37You can't achieve it unless you are committed to being in the group with each other.
00:11:42And so for me, I'm constantly listening to the ways that they listen to each other.
00:11:46And that informs me as a teacher, because what I want to do in the classroom is to listen to how
00:11:52my students are talking to, with and against each other in order to shape a kind of learning
00:11:57environment where we can all learn together, where we can all sort of achieve a higher goal together.
00:12:02And I think that paying attention to like Maddie Moss Clark and paying attention to Twinkie Clark
00:12:07and the way she plays the Hammond organ and paying attention to the ways the sisters
00:12:11rely on the harmony techniques that her sister Twinkie gives them is a way to actually think
00:12:17pedagogically about what it means to learn in Black in general.
00:12:21Like they, they are kind of standard and their genius is still like, we've only scratched the
00:12:28surface with the film, even though the film was very necessary and important and amazing,
00:12:32that there's so much there in terms of what they can present to us in terms of
00:12:37like just teaching strategies. They teach me how to be a teacher.
00:12:41I love how to learn in Black. I love that. I love that.
00:12:44Danielle, can you tell me how the Clark sisters have impacted your work that you do?
00:12:49Man, now I'm not a musician, but I do sing. And so listening to the Clark sisters, of course,
00:12:57keeps me on my toes, because as Imani mentioned, like, those are complex harmonies.
00:13:01Those are complex runs. And like every other, you know, Black church girl, I'm trying to hit them
00:13:06runs that can't be hitting, but it don't work. Nonetheless.
00:13:14Keep striving. Keep striving, girl.
00:13:18I love their music because, as Ashawn mentioned, like, we're just scratching the surface of their genius.
00:13:24And for me, I'm really unpacking a lot of the humanity that went into writing these songs.
00:13:32And, you know, what were they going through? What was the headspace? What was the...
00:13:37Because these aren't just songs that we just write just to churn out album fillers,
00:13:41to churn out things for a contract fulfillment. When Twinkie's pen is in that paper, like,
00:13:47we're writing to not only bring people and draw people into Christ,
00:13:51but I think Twinkie's also writing for the salvation of Black women. I think she's also
00:13:56writing in a way that is trying to get us free. And if I may be so bold, just as observation,
00:14:03I can't speak for her, but I think she's also doing a little bit of subversion
00:14:07of what is expected of her as a woman, particularly as a woman in the Church of God of Christ. Now,
00:14:12I was raised charismatic Pentecostal. My mother was raised Church of God of Christ,
00:14:16but I wasn't formally part of the Kojic Church, but charismatic Pentecostal close enough.
00:14:20So I think when I listen to some of the things and I listen to how, or I think about how these women
00:14:27have literally crafted the sound of the Church of God in Christ and how you can't separate the identity
00:14:33of that church with that sound. And I think about the fact that this is a church that is in a theological
00:14:39position where women are not ordained into leadership, but they are still yet leaders.
00:14:45To me, that is just amazing. And thinking about how women still find ways to take power,
00:14:51even when we're not technically given power. So I think of them as just like these awesome womanists
00:14:56pushing the boundaries of what it means to lead, even when you're not in a position of ordained
00:15:02authority to lead.
00:15:03I just wanted to, because all of you said some things that I want to like, like us to go further
00:15:10down. If you don't mind, Corey, if we could.
00:15:12No, go right ahead.
00:15:13Okay. So one of the things that you said, Danielle, is you talked about subversion, right?
00:15:18Yes. And what I wanted to do was, Imani, how many no's are in the live performance of Is My Living
00:15:29In Vain? How many no's are there? Can you talk about that a little bit, Imani?
00:15:32Yeah. In the documentary film, well, wait, I have to do one more trace back. Danielle,
00:15:37you are a musician because you are a singer. And that goes back to the thing Anjanu was talking about,
00:15:43where we discount the creative output of vocalists and women vocalists in particular.
00:15:52So I just want to give you that space that as a vocalist, you are a musician. You're not an
00:15:59instrumentalist, but it doesn't keep you from being a musician. In the gospel documentary, that crazy
00:16:06film that has everybody and everything in it, and still the Clark sisters are the best.
00:16:13Twinkie sings 29 no's at the end of the solos, back and forth after she says, I can't leave it
00:16:19alone yet. And she poses that question and she answers it for herself. The song begins with asking
00:16:27and it ends with answering against the odds. 29 no's, my living is not in vain.
00:16:35Oh my God. Yeah. And I just feel like-
00:16:37I'm totally going back to listen to that.
00:16:39Yeah. I mean, you gotta, that documentary, it's called Gospel. It is incredible. Walter
00:16:47Hawkins is on it. James Cleveland is on it. Shirley Caesar, who is a master storyteller,
00:16:51we'll have another story about her one of these days. And The Mighty Clouds of Joy, they started off.
00:16:59But it is a seminal performance of the Clark sisters. And what I wanted to do, if we could,
00:17:07because since it's called Is My Living in Vain, the panel is called that. Let's talk,
00:17:12can we talk a little bit more about that and this idea of subversion and the 29 no's? Like,
00:17:17what is the importance all of you feel about this song, Is My Living in Vain? What is, what is it,
00:17:25what, how does it land on you? And what do you think it's, it's, it's significance is for
00:17:31Black people and Black women, not just beyond the Kojic church, which I would love to hear what you
00:17:35guys say about that. Well, for me, this is a concept that I'm constantly trying to think about in my own
00:17:43life. I grew up, as I said, in the Kojic church, but I'm a person that practices queerness. So I am no
00:17:49longer a part of the church of God in Christ. I believe in the affirmation of all people,
00:17:55regardless of gender identity or sexual orientation. And for me, that has meant being
00:18:01excluded from a lot of community, actually, a lot of the community that has made me possible,
00:18:06a lot of the care that I've received, a lot of the love and relationships that I had with the
00:18:10churches that I was a part of. Some pastors that I was a musician for will not talk to me and have not
00:18:16talked to me in years. And sometimes you do wonder, is this kind of living, the attempt to live
00:18:23a life that is with a practice of integrity, a life that is more free, is that living in vain?
00:18:30Because there's so much heartbreak that you actually experience by being excluded from
00:18:35people that you love. You have, and so for me, the genius of a song like Is My Living In Vain
00:18:42is that that song just cannot be contained to Black Pentecostal folks, even though it is
00:18:48produced by Black Pentecostal genius. What that song means for me is that I can ask myself on a daily
00:18:54basis, is the attempt to try to live a life of integrity and to affirm queer life, a life that
00:19:00is lived in vain? And I have to say like Twinkie, like, even though it's heartbreaking, and I have to
00:19:06keep saying it's very heartbreaking when the folks that you know, the people that you cared about,
00:19:10the people that you ate with will not talk to you anymore because you practice a form of life that
00:19:15they say is sinful, right? That they won't talk to you and you wonder like, well, what is the purpose
00:19:22of this thing or is my living in vain? But then you come to recognize that other people get free
00:19:28because they see you as an example of what freedom could possibly mean. They get an example. And for me,
00:19:34it has been the Black queer folks, the Black women folks that have taught me what freedom and liberation
00:19:39and joy and pleasure actually look like. And so when I get to the end of the statement is my living
00:19:45in vain, the answer has to be no. And so I'm thankful for Twinkie for producing a kind of song
00:19:51that has subversion within it, even against the community that would say to me that I'm a sinner.
00:19:57Yeah. Come on, somebody. Oh, all right.
00:20:01I definitely have to stand up for that because that is exactly why I launched my platform Unfit Christian.
00:20:08So as I mentioned, I was raised character at Pentecostal, but I came to a place where
00:20:13what I was beginning to articulate in a sociological understanding of the world did not align with my
00:20:19theological position. So I had to figure out, is my living in vain? So am I going to continue to keep
00:20:25following this theological framework, this doctrine, this dogma that doesn't make room for everybody?
00:20:32Or am I going to give that up and just keep going on my life and let it go, let this God thing go?
00:20:39So for me, my no, of course not became now I can find a way to rearticulate God, to reimagine God as
00:20:47one for the oppressed, one for the marginalized, one who actually does want access for all people.
00:20:54So my big thing is removing these barriers that would keep people from God. So I'm very pro-LGBTQ.
00:21:02I'm very pro-sex positive, all of these things that my formal theological indoctrination would say
00:21:09is a sin. And so I think about this song, is my living in vain? And we keep sticking on this,
00:21:16no, of course not. But the part that always sticks for me is because up the road is eternal gain.
00:21:23And so I think Twinkie, yes, she starts this existential question at the beginning of the
00:21:28song and she gets to an answer that is still very familiar for most black church women or church
00:21:34people in general. The answer is in the end, God will take care of you. But I'm always of the
00:21:40opinion that there is many decades between now and when I get to heaven, if God is kind. And so what do
00:21:46I do in that interim? How do I find purpose in that interim where I'm constantly having to have
00:21:54this conversation? This isn't a one-time conversation. If you think about is my living in a
00:21:59vain is one of their biggest hits. And so when you go to their performances, they're constantly performing
00:22:04this song. So this is a question that she's constantly engaging. This is a question that we should
00:22:09all be constantly engaging. But when I watched the film and I was already familiar with their legacy,
00:22:15but when I watched the film, I couldn't help but rearticulate this song from the perspective of
00:22:21heartache, heartbreak. This is not just about, oh, God is going to get me into heaven in the end. No,
00:22:28this is about like, I'm really sitting here and I'm really mulling over my existence. What am I doing
00:22:34this for? And I don't think there is a single person in ministry past or present, even if you're
00:22:41not in ministry, just a person who has been part of a religious community where you haven't asked,
00:22:47what the hell am I doing this for? And so that's what I imagine with the song is this is a, what am I
00:22:54doing this for? And how do I answer this question in such a way that I am able to go on and run a little
00:23:00further? I think of this song as an exhaustion point. This is a point where you have to come to
00:23:05a rest stop and really reevaluate what you're doing this for. And so I just think it's brilliant.
00:23:11And this is again, one of those reasons why I say we're just scratching the surface of their
00:23:15brilliance because when you get beyond this, just being about a church gospel song, this song is
00:23:22really somebody tearing with me being Pentecostal. So I just, I find it to be brilliant and I love
00:23:35the song and I love the deeper meaning behind it for me personally.
00:23:52You're in the hospital, Twink. You had a nervous breakdown with mama and you and John's divorce.
00:24:06You're going to be fine.
00:24:14You're going to be just fine. I've been praying and got an accessory prayer going and
00:24:20you'll be back on that organ in no time.
00:24:38Amani, I would love to hear what you have to say.
00:24:41I just think it touches on all the selves. And so Ashaan talked about the self in community,
00:24:47the social self, um, as well as the, uh, kind of sexual identity as a self in that community,
00:24:57having to communicate, um, as a sexual being in truth. Um, Danielle picked up on that and then
00:25:05talked about heartbreak. So I think of that as the, you know, this emotional, um,
00:25:10um, self and also you talked about, um, existential, an existential question, which is the psyche and
00:25:20the, you know, the very essence of one, oneself. And I, I think that the last self that we're coming
00:25:26back to is the intellect that the mind, if one is engaged in a life of the mind, which you have to be
00:25:33to write a song like that, to play it that way, to sing it that way, is another frontier on which
00:25:41the same question is raised that all these selves are prisms or mirrors or facets. And the question
00:25:48keeps being asked and needs to keep the answer needs to keep being crafted. You have to make a no,
00:25:54of course not for your mind. You've got to make one for your soul. You've got to make one for your
00:26:01community facing public self. You got to make one you could live with for your internal self. And I,
00:26:08I just think of, um, the mind also related to back to the psyche and mental health. You know, this,
00:26:14this is a question, like you said, at a breaking point. And I think the film was brave in addressing
00:26:20some of that, um, because that's what it is to be human, not because we want to put anybody on front
00:26:27street, but because that's what it is to be human. And when we're honest, then we can all be more human.
00:26:33I just want to say one thing about the film that I've said to friends, um, it is the first time,
00:26:41I think, that I have seen a film about Black church women, specifically a Black church matriarch woman,
00:26:50um, a Black church mother who was given the fullness of context, who was actually fleshed out as an
00:27:01individual. Uh, Maddie Moss Clark wasn't just a cipher. She wasn't just a stereotype or a caricature.
00:27:08She wasn't just mean. She was a woman who had desires and longings and had huge heartbreaks that the film
00:27:14was so moving to me because it showed this deep complexity for Black church women. Like oftentimes,
00:27:23we dismiss Black church women because most Black church women are working class Black folks. And we
00:27:28don't like working class Black people in general, and we think that religious people are silly. It's one
00:27:34of the first times that I've seen a film actually treat Black church women as if their thinking is worth
00:27:39thinking about. And it was something very powerful. Um, something very, very powerful about the film,
00:27:47just doing that kind of work saying, we can't just dismiss Maddie Moss Clark without thinking about
00:27:53the way the men in the church of God and Christ tried to hold her to accounting and tried to dismiss
00:28:00everything that she was doing with her daughters as an act of power. And so we can't think about the film
00:28:05outside of patriarchy, right? Or outside of sexism. There was something very powerful about placing
00:28:11Black church women within the context of a world that is sexist and misogynoiristic and deeply patriarchal.
00:28:19And yeah, so I appreciate that the film was able to touch on so many different facets of what Black church
00:28:29women actually experienced. Um, and there's so much more room for exploration of those topics, too.
00:28:38Ashawn, I'm glad you bring that up, because Anjun, I want to ask you, because one of my favorite parts
00:28:42of the film is when Dr. Maddie Myers Clark had to go up against all the bishops and explain why she went out
00:28:49to the Grammy Awards. And when her ex-husband tells her, your ambition is too much. What was it like playing
00:28:57that part? Because it was so beautiful to see, because to Ashawn, your point, like there it was,
00:29:02what so many women deal with on a daily basis, but there it was to see and in the eyes of the church,
00:29:10you know, but, but Anjun, tell me when you, when you read that part and what was it like to,
00:29:15what's been the reaction that people, that you received from people?
00:29:19Well, for one thing, it wasn't there. It wasn't there. That was something that I insisted that we put in the
00:29:26script. And we don't know what happened in that room with Dr. Maddie and those elders. We have no
00:29:33idea. But what we do have a living testimony of is her daughters saying the devastation that she felt
00:29:42because that happened. They didn't just tell her that you can't sing no more. They told her that she
00:29:49could not perform with her daughters anymore. They literally excised her children from her. So imagine
00:29:59that as a mother outside of being a woman who was crafting music or crafting the sound of the Koja
00:30:06community for the next couple hundred years. This was a woman whose children were being ripped from her.
00:30:13And so I felt that it was necessary that we put words to that devastation. And so I worked with
00:30:25the producers and the director and for a long time to get those, what, what did that sound like? What
00:30:31did that sound like for someone to tell you, you can't operate in your anointing anymore? You can't
00:30:37perform with your children anymore? What, what does that heart sound like? Because that's a ripping apart of a
00:30:43heart. What does that sound like? So that was, that was very, very crucial for me. And going back to
00:30:49this idea of, is my living in vain? I think that what was so powerful, I love this relationship. I love
00:30:56the, I love the relationship between Dr. Maddie and, and Twinkie. And, and the reason why is I felt that,
00:31:05I felt that one thing I wanted to say was that this idea, this, how they sang, Imani, you guys can speak
00:31:12to this more because I'm not a, I'm not a singer. I'm not, I'm none of that, but I love music.
00:31:19They crafted that sound. Yeah. They crafted that sound. Karen will tell you, she said it the other
00:31:25day on the, on the internet, on the internet, she said that this sound that you hear, that they all
00:31:31sound the same. And even Imani and I play this game. They cannot tell who's who. You don't know if it's
00:31:37Karen. You don't know if it's Dorinda. You don't know if it's Jackie. You don't know,
00:31:39you cannot tell. And that's, they created that. It was not, it's not incidental.
00:31:47They created that. They, their mother pushed them to the limit so that they would sound that way.
00:31:55And it was metaphorical for how she wanted them to be in their lives. And that's why they still
00:32:00singing together right now. And it speaks to what you were talking about, about learning black, right?
00:32:05Ashon, this whole like, it's not just learning black, it's living black, right? Like you can
00:32:11sing like that. It's all right that you sing like that. This is what I want you to do. But the
00:32:14greater lesson is how do you stay unified in the world that wants to tear you apart?
00:32:19Right. And also this idea of like, of womanism, right? So, so is my living in vain? I feel that
00:32:26Twinkie was expressing her mother's frustration, right? That she was a leader in an environment,
00:32:33in a community that did not want her to do what she did, but they could not deny her genius.
00:32:39And so here's what I have to say about that. And I know all of you will agree,
00:32:43is that it's not just the, the existential expression of being a black church woman,
00:32:48it's the existential expression of being a black woman, period. How we operate in this nation
00:32:55that wants to erase us, that wants to marginalize us in every way, all of our accomplishments,
00:33:02artistic and otherwise. And yet we keep going. We keep voting the way that we should be voting.
00:33:08We keep organizing the way that we should be organizing. We keep doing that, even though the
00:33:13world wants to tear itself apart, we still operate in this way. So all of us are sort of waking up in
00:33:19the morning going, is this in vain, especially now? Is this in vain? And we're always all of us
00:33:26are like you said, Imani, trying to find our nose, trying to find our nose. Yeah. So I was in that,
00:33:34when for me, I was finding Maddie's no. Yeah. I was finding Maddie's no.
00:33:41And if I can put it back on that, I think about this idea of ripping away, of tearing apart,
00:33:48and the historical connotation, of course, of transatlantic slavery for us, constantly losing
00:33:54our children, constantly losing people that we love forcibly. And so I think about this,
00:34:01which is why I've always said, since the film, like you can't demonize Maddie Moss Clark as just
00:34:07like this, this big villain, like that's a disservice to who she was. And it's a disservice to just what she
00:34:15did. I think about the fact that we're talking about Twinkie and we talk about, you can't talk
00:34:21about the Clark sisters without talking about Twinkie and the impact that she's given there.
00:34:26And as a fat bodied, dark skinned black woman, being able to see myself through someone who is
00:34:35literally can't, you can't discredit her genius. And so I think, and I wonder if like, even though,
00:34:43you know, Dr. Clark may not have used this language, I wonder if she was empowering her girls
00:34:49to have power that no one could strip from them by how hard she drove them, by how much she pushed
00:34:57for them to be their best selves. I wonder if she was giving them power that she, as a black woman,
00:35:04knew that, and from her lived experience, somebody was going to always try to take from her. Even the
00:35:09church that she loved, even the men that she partnered with romantically, of course, the
00:35:14outside, you know, white world. I wonder if that was part of the drive of why she pushed them so much
00:35:21was to give them, if she couldn't give them nothing else, she could give them power. And I think that
00:35:28beyond anything else was probably the best thing she could give them. Now I can't speak for her, but
00:35:32that's just what I wondered, I imagine, when I think about the hole in the context of ripping apart
00:35:39and you excise her from her children, like they had become her life at that point. But I wonder if she
00:35:47wondered if her living was in vain, if she had done enough to give them the power that they
00:35:52you know, 47 years later still sit together. If that was why she pushed so hard was to give them
00:36:01something that the world literally could not take away from them.
00:36:04Mm-hmm. Yeah.
00:36:06I love that point because I saw it a little bit in the film when
00:36:10Karen is very hesitant to take that solo and she pulls her to the side and basically gives her a
00:36:17talking to like, you got to do this and then goes outside and tells the audience. I know it's all
00:36:22a reenactment, but she tells the audience and says to her on the side, like, welcome her y'all,
00:36:27this girl has a voice and look what she became. Like she empowered her time and time again. I really love
00:36:34that. And I must say, I think we could go on and talk forever with this wonderful group of people.
00:36:41And I know we are going to continue to talk and dwell more deeply into the genius of the Clark
00:36:47sisters. But I want to thank this panel right now for joining us today. So here with myself,
00:36:52Anjanew Ellis, the star of the Clark sisters, Imani Wilson, Danielle Thomas, and Ashawn Crowley,
00:36:58thank you so much. We're going to continue this conversation
00:37:01with some wonderful guests in our part two. So stick around for that.
00:37:13Hi, I'm Corey Murray, and welcome back to the essence studio segment is my living in vain.
00:37:43Inspired by the success of the lifetime film, the Clark sisters, first ladies of gospel,
00:37:48that shine a beautiful spotlight on the geniuses behind gospel music's most brilliant artists.
00:37:55We have been speaking with the Emmy nominated actress, Anjanew Ellis, who plays the phenomenal
00:38:00Dr. Maddie Mars Clark, as well as Imani Wilson, an independent scholar, but also a writer and musician.
00:38:08For part two of our conversation, as you can see, we have two esteemed guests. Please welcome Donald
00:38:13Lawrence, Grammy award winning gospel music maestro with 25 years plus in the business. And he is the
00:38:20musical director of the Clark sisters and Bishop Yvette Flunder. She is the presiding bishop of the
00:38:25fellowship of affirming ministries. Welcome.
00:38:28Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you.
00:38:32Now, Bishop Funder and Dr. I mean, and Donald, before you, the first part of our conversation,
00:38:41and I think Anjanew and Imani will agree, we had a very lively and beautiful conversation,
00:38:46a discussion about the many levels of the Clark sisters song is my living in vain. You know,
00:38:54they each express how the song touched them personally, but also what it meant to a wider audience. And I would
00:39:02love to hear what their song has meant to you both each.
00:39:08I'll let Bishop go first.
00:39:10Yeah.
00:39:11Yeah.
00:39:12Well, first of all, it's important because the question is connected to
00:39:20sort of an eschatological reward for having done service or ministry. Is my living in vain? Is my
00:39:31singing? Is my preaching? Is my praying? I think that it speaks to what can happen in the life of
00:39:41someone whose whole life is given to the service of church and of religion and of faith. And whether or
00:39:48not the rewards will happen in this current life, or whether or not the rewards are coming in the
00:39:56afterlife. What I think is the deep message is that often they don't come in this life. And the question
00:40:04is, is it worth it? Is it worth it? And that's connected to, I'm a Kojic kid. And I think that there
00:40:15there were a lot of conversations about the power and the salvific value of suffering.
00:40:25And that if you didn't get rewarded in this life, you would be rewarded in the next life. And one
00:40:32conversation I had once with my mother, we were talking about suffering. And my mother said to me,
00:40:37she said, Yvette, honey, she said, the people just don't want to suffer. They don't want to suffer.
00:40:43So we kept talking. And I said, mama, isn't there something wrong with people when they want to
00:40:48suffer? There's something sideways about it. They're not supposed to want to suffer. And she thought
00:40:55about it for a minute. And she said, you know, that's the truth. Something is kind of wrong with that.
00:41:02And we had we had an opportunity to talk a little bit about the whole idea of suffering.
00:41:10And we came to the conclusion that we have added some salvific value, some saving grace
00:41:17for suffering, but for more so for some people than others, and particularly more so for women,
00:41:24often times than for men. It was important that we were somewhat internally, that it was the will of
00:41:34God that we suffer in this life in order to be rewarded in the next life. There's much more I can
00:41:41say about that in the history of gospel music. In the early days, the slave songs talked a lot about
00:41:47I got shoes, you got shoes, all of God's children got shoes. When I get to heaven,
00:41:53I'm going to put on my shoes and walk all over God's heaven. So deliverance or beautiful things or
00:42:00expensive things or lovely things were to be reserved for eternal life. That's an important
00:42:08theological conversation that we need to broaden and expand if we're going to have a full life
00:42:14while we're living on earth. That's
00:42:16That's great.
00:42:17When you brought up the term suffering, it reminded me of a time we were discussing cover lines and
00:42:24someone came up with the line, sanctified and suffering. And I remember everybody in the office
00:42:30was like, you know, fell out like, yes, that's me. That's me. And everyone resonated with that.
00:42:35Um, so thank you for bringing that, uh, Donald, tell, tell us what is my living in vain means to you.
00:42:44Well, you know, um, definitely I identify with Twinkie a lot. I wasn't a Koja kid,
00:42:49but I grew up a Pentecostal kid. And, um, and you know, for some of us, your gifting can be a little
00:42:56bit way more mature than you are. So I know when Twinkie wrote that song, the revelation of it was
00:43:02probably beyond her. She grew into it because I've experienced that myself, you know, writing songs in
00:43:07my twenties that I really finally know the revelation of what it is. And even, I don't even know if she knew
00:43:13what she was saying, but what I get from that song is you get to a point to where you wake up and you
00:43:18wondering, are you just living a life or is what you're doing? Does it have some, some meaning to it?
00:43:24Does it have some purpose for you being here? Because I think early on when our gifts mature,
00:43:29um, when they mature faster than we do, we think about living and dying. I don't know if we really
00:43:35think about what we put here in the earth or why we're here, but we grow into that. So to me,
00:43:41when she said it's my living in vain, it's just that what she brings to the earth, she finally
00:43:46realizes that what she brought to the earth was something that was needed, that she made an
00:43:49agreement to come here and to put what she put into the earth. And I think that that's what that
00:43:54song means to me now. It wouldn't have meant that to me then, but now when I hear the lyric,
00:43:59it's my praying and it's my singing, it's my playing, it's my preaching, all of that in vain,
00:44:03now it's like, did I fulfill my agreement? Am I fulfilling the path that I chose to come here for,
00:44:10that I agreed to come here about? And I don't know if everybody thinks about it that way because
00:44:14that line is a hook that we hear in church all the time. And Twiki was great with taking something
00:44:19that was kind of like a cliche that you would hear people say and take it into making it something
00:44:24deeper. And I think that when she took is my living in vain and just stretched it out and made us think,
00:44:29and she answered her own question. She said, no, of course not. And she went for the eternal,
00:44:35but I hear it more for the now and the eternal, meaning that, you know, I'm going to do what I
00:44:40agreed to come here to do. And not only am I going to get that mission accomplished here,
00:44:45I'm also going to experience a reward when I get there. But when she wrote it,
00:44:50as Bishop talked about, that's pretty much the mindset of the church that you don't get the reward
00:44:55here, you struggle here, then you live over there. But I always, you know, just kind of being a little on
00:45:01the edge would always question like, why is it we got to be sad the whole time that we down here?
00:45:05I just don't believe God would allow us to come here just to be sad and go back to him. He could
00:45:09have kept us where we were. So, so I, I really find that song to be, you know, awakening for me to
00:45:16start thinking about my path, why I'm here, the agreement of why I came here and what I came to do
00:45:21and to own that and to go and to make sure that I'm doing what I agreed to do so that I can say,
00:45:25no, it wasn't in vain because what I agreed to come here to do, I'm doing,
00:45:29and I'm going to rejoice about that I accomplished that here. And then I'm going to rejoice later
00:45:34as well. So that's kind of what the song is to me.
00:45:40And I think Imani brought up how many no's are in the song?
00:45:44Oh, in the version from the gospel documentary, Twinkie sings 29 no's when she says, I can't leave
00:45:51it alone yet. And that final one, and then she goes to the curtain and can't quite get off the stage,
00:45:56but she says no 29 times. That's great.
00:45:59Before she gets to, of course not.
00:46:01That's great.
00:46:02She meant no. She meant it.
00:46:05She meant that, yes.
00:46:07Well, as kids, we always program don't, right? As kids, we always don't touch this. Don't do that.
00:46:13Don't do that. It's never say, go ahead and do that. Go ahead and do that. It's always don't,
00:46:17don't, don't, don't. I think from just after being born, we, we focus on the don't more than we focus on the do.
00:46:23Can I just add one other thing? There's something that, that Donald brought up that I think is
00:46:32incredibly important because it isn't, again, an eschatological or future faith reality that he had
00:46:41to come to and that I had to come to and others. And that is that if we are eternal beings, then we are
00:46:47eternal in both directions. Essentially, if we are eternal, we don't become eternal when we come
00:46:54into the earth. We are, we were sent to the earth essentially on assignment because God knew us before
00:47:01we were formed in our mother's wombs. I believe that is true. And I believe that in the spirit realm,
00:47:06we dwelled in, in an eternal place and then we are sent to earth sort of on a working visa, we have a task
00:47:16in the earth realm. And when you are able to fully embrace what your task is and what your assignment is,
00:47:24I believe that you are more inclined to move toward it, no matter what the external opinions of other people
00:47:33are. So the Clark sisters were sort of an enigma to those of us who were in Kojic because they had
00:47:41tentacles that reached into a larger reality, same way it was with the Hawkins family and singing with
00:47:49the Hawkins family who got condemnation for singing in clubs and in bars and in places like that because
00:47:56the assignment was greater than the closed environments that we were a part of. It's important to say that,
00:48:04but you have to really be clear to his point about your eternal assignment. And I encourage people,
00:48:12seek to be in harmony with what was your assignment, what is written on your work visa, what were you
00:48:21sent here to do. And I believe that the Clark family in so many ways in the Clark sisters as an entity really did come to that.
00:48:32Anjana, this makes me think, and I hope this doesn't come off too flippant, but do you kind of feel like
00:48:37you're coming off the mega success of When They See Us, right? And here you are about to play a gospel
00:48:46legend, someone, a very small group of people in the wider sense know about. Do you feel that this was
00:48:52an assignment for you to bring, help bring the Clark sister story to life?
00:49:05You know, I, I, you know, I feel like in a way I'm just, I'm just going to be real. I feel like I live a
00:49:13haphazard life. And, you know, I go through my life making decisions that hopefully I do no harm.
00:49:22And mostly I do it in service of making sure that the people in my life are okay and safe and
00:49:28well and can eat. So I don't feel like I have, like, you know, I have sort of a, a lot of people
00:49:39sort of feel like they have a plan for their lives. I don't feel like I have that. However, what I will
00:49:45say is that I, I can't help but feel that one of my deepest connections to Imani Wilson is that I would
00:49:55say the, the, a huge part of our connection is the, our love for the Clark sisters. And what we talk about
00:50:06most of the time when we're at this music and, you know, I would say 40% of that,
00:50:11those conversations are about the Clark sisters and about their music. So for me to end up playing
00:50:20their mother, I cannot help but feel that that was cosmic. I cannot help but feel that way. And, and,
00:50:28and, and, and beyond that, you know, I, I, you know, in, in the spirit of transparency,
00:50:33when we got the script, I felt that the script did not live up to
00:50:38what should be the testimony on television of who the Clark sisters were, or who the Clark sisters are,
00:50:46was not the testimony of, or the testament, I should say, of, of who Twinkie Clark is, and who she was,
00:50:54and who she will be. And I, I insisted that the story that we tell about them should not be about
00:51:05dating. It should not be about their weight. It should not be about a lot of the concerns that
00:51:15I feel weigh down stories that are about black women. When we tell stories, stories about great
00:51:22black women, right? They end up being about these petty concerns. And these women did not live in petty
00:51:30concerns. They lived in themes, they operated in themes that changed who, how we live as black
00:51:37people who have church lives. It changed how we live as black people, period. You know, because
00:51:46these songs, they, they don't just inform, they're not just fun to listen to. You know what I mean?
00:51:52I mean, they affect how we, they are, they are in some ways, determiners of how we live this life
00:51:59that we live on the, in the United States of America. You know, when you hear, is my living
00:52:04in vain? You don't just hear that and you go, oh, this song is just, you know, I love this song.
00:52:09You know, when you hear that song and you hear her ask that question and answer her own question,
00:52:16that's, that's self-liberation right there. That's self-determination right there. And that impacts me
00:52:22in a way that that was my first understanding of womanism. So there was no way in the world that I
00:52:30could do anything less, or at least try my best anyway, than do anything less than how, or try to do
00:52:38anything less than how they impacted me. So I, I believe in terms of like, you know,
00:52:44was my steps, were my steps ordered to play this part? If that were the case, I hope maybe it was,
00:52:51because I just wouldn't accept anything less in, in telling these women's stories. I just,
00:52:58I just couldn't do that.
00:53:02Thank you for that. Thank you. So a big part of their story is the music.
00:53:08And I want to talk about my own introduction to briefly to, uh, the Clark sisters. And I don't
00:53:14want to disrespect, but, um, I remember having a moment at a club, uh, on 14th street in Manhattan,
00:53:22and they play, you've got the sun, you brought the sunshine at the club. And I remember being like,
00:53:28how dare they bring in the Clark sisters to the club. But, uh, and working with Imani on this panel,
00:53:35you know, I realized that in 1983, uh, the year that the, you brought the sunshine appeared on
00:53:41Billboard R&B chart, Walter Hawkins released Love Alive III, on which you sang Bishop Flunder.
00:53:48And for some context, the other songs on the R&B chart were Atomic Dog, Ain't Nobody,
00:53:54Juicy Fruit, outstanding.
00:53:55Juicy Fruit.
00:53:56Juicy Fruit.
00:53:58Too May.
00:53:59I'm too May.
00:54:00Yes.
00:54:01That's right.
00:54:02Yes.
00:54:02That's right.
00:54:03Yeah.
00:54:04So, Bishop and Donald, can you please, uh, and Imani, please reflect on that moment in music history
00:54:11and the impact of that the Clark sisters right there in the middle of it, when their song was
00:54:17really reaching out of gospel, but going to a wide audience?
00:54:22Wow. Um, definitely that was a, that was a great time. And you know, it had happened before,
00:54:29of course it happened with Edwin and Oh Happy Day. So it was kind of, it seems like it happens every
00:54:3410 years or so, um, maybe every seven to eight. Um, um, to me, when I, I, I, I heard that song
00:54:43playing, um, the way it was playing, but then later on, I ended up being a musical director for
00:54:48Stephanie Mills and we were doing, of course, um, I was doing her tour and when we would get out of
00:54:54shows, if we were on a street that had clubs, I would hear it banging from the clubs because it
00:54:58kind of hit the clubs later than it started on the gospel charts. And that's usually what happens
00:55:03with a crossover gospel song becomes a huge hit on gospel. You need to eat kind of seeps over and all
00:55:08of a sudden someone takes a risk and play it over on the other side and then it blows up. Um, so for
00:55:15me, you know, I just thought it just, it was allowing everybody to see this wonderful, wonderful
00:55:21talent. I, I knew what the church was giving them, but I was just glad to see that other people outside
00:55:28of where I grew up and what I grew up in got to witness how great they were. So I, it didn't offend me
00:55:35like it would have mostly offended. And it may be because again, I've just always kind of been,
00:55:39and I would say I've always walked left of center and I just learned my path and trusted it and let
00:55:45it guide me to where I was, where I needed to be guided. So I was kind of one of the oddballs. So,
00:55:50you know, like you said, I love the fact that you said they had tentacles and they reached outside of
00:55:55this normal space that we were supposed to be in. I kind of tend to follow those tentacles as well.
00:56:01And so I just thought that was a beautiful time to see that happening versus it being offended by.
00:56:05Is it coming up for me too? Oh, let me just mention that I've been to a lot of secular, secular music
00:56:17concerts. And then the Patti LaBelle's and the, and the Diana Ross's and, and, and several other
00:56:24folks that I can think of. And they never had any issue with singing songs that spoke to their faith.
00:56:32A lot of times at the end of a concert, they would sing something, you know, and because most of us
00:56:39were church people, either there on the down low or there because we just loved them. You know,
00:56:45we showed up for those concerts, but they never had a problem with singing something that made folks
00:56:51know that they were people of faith. And we sang along with them. The opposite was true often
00:56:57in the gospel concerts where we were in gospel only venues. Now it didn't mean that we didn't have a
00:57:04great love for secular music and message music outside of our experiences in church, but it was frowned
00:57:12upon much the same way as it was frowned upon for Maddie and the girls to go to the Grammys. We, we had a much
00:57:21greater division in very conservative church and particularly in conservative Pentecostalism and
00:57:29conservative Trinity, Father, Son, Holy Ghost baptism, Pentecostalism, not to be confused with
00:57:37oneness Pentecostalism with Hattie. So, and neither of us thought the other one was saved. So it was hard
00:57:42during those times. Absolutely. It was tough. But I can say that we did love secular music and message
00:57:50music that talked about the human experience. But I think that people who were engaged, like the
00:57:57Fantasias of now, who came from a oneness Pentecostal background, were more engaged with
00:58:03life and secular messaging, also held on to their spirituality in powerful ways and brought that. I think
00:58:16that is one of the missing pieces of a lot of school music in our history is as though suddenly we became
00:58:24something other than human. People who didn't have love for someone, and I mean in an intimate way,
00:58:32people who didn't experience sadness and pain and brokenness and sometimes despair,
00:58:40and talk about the blues, you know, the feelings that come along with that, that we did not homogenize
00:58:48those things, not publicly. Although we did privately, we did not homogenize them publicly. And I have
00:58:58to the secular artists. And, you know, Diana Ross never ended without saying to reach out and touch
00:59:04somebody's hand. And it was that moment, make this world a better place. There's a, there's a,
00:59:09there's a theology there.
00:59:11And there's, there's a, a, a, a teaching. There's faith in that. And it was the same
00:59:18and all the rest of them, they just went in. It's totally in. Aretha Franklin is totally in. It's
00:59:22any given time in the middle of just totally in. It's beautiful to see. But that was the thing that
00:59:29alienated Dr. Maddie Moss Clark from the leadership of the church was that she was receiving fame
00:59:38and her daughters and acclaim in secular venues, not just clubs, but the Grammys. That's pretty
00:59:47significant, significant. And that means that she was forced to make a choice. And I have to give it to
00:59:53her. And I don't think she ever agreed, but she was determined not to lose the platform of the Church
00:59:59of God in Christ to con, to continue to care for her daughter's, uh, forward moving ministry and career
01:00:08and for the forward moving ministry and career of many up and coming artists. That's a huge decision
01:00:14to make. That's a huge decision. Then she made that decision. So that's our experience. That at least
01:00:21is my reflection about our experience.
01:00:31Do you want to make this right? Yes, sir. I do.
01:00:36If you want to maintain your position as the international music department president,
01:00:41then you cannot perform with your daughters anymore.
01:00:46Our decision is final.
01:00:47You're trying to keep me away from my girls.
01:00:54These are my children.
01:00:57This is my calling.
01:01:00God called me to do this.
01:01:04Just like he called Moses. Just like he called Samuel. Just like he called you, Bishop.
01:01:09He called me. This ain't about the church. This ain't about the Bible. This is about you trying
01:01:18to sit me down, trying to shut me up, trying to keep me in my place.
01:01:22Just thinking about that time where any other gospel music that I wanted to hear. I grew up
01:01:31here in New York City. Anything else I wanted to hear by a gospel artist other than
01:01:37Tremaine's In the Morning Time, I'd have to listen to the AM station. And I did because I was that kind of
01:01:44extra churchy kid who listened to the AM crackly, you know, tin cam with a string gospel station that
01:01:52we had in New York because it's a different kind of market. We don't have a gospel station where on the
01:01:58FM airwaves. But I have a distinct memory of You Brought the Sunshine playing on WBLS
01:02:06and us having our windows open and passing another car going in the opposite direction with their
01:02:12windows open playing it too. And it's that kind of surrounding sound that I think Twinkie has that
01:02:21ties us all together in listening to it. And that's what was in the movie. And she inherited that from
01:02:27her mother, that they created something that we shared without ever meeting one another. It was a
01:02:32virtual sharing, but it was no less real or tangible. Because when that comes on,
01:02:39just the tension of the congas, it just does something to you. It does something to you. And
01:02:45it's funny, outstanding, you know, also gives you that same conga lead in. You get that feeling. And I
01:02:52think it can easily be traced back to the continent. It's the drum. The drum is there. It's talking.
01:02:59It's speaking before they speak. Before they get to the words they've already spoken in the music and
01:03:05in the composition, Twinkie has already said some things. And of course, she talks about
01:03:14being inspired by Stevie Wonder. So there are just so many legacies. Nothing comes from nowhere.
01:03:21Everything is coming from something. And we're coming from deep places of rooting.
01:03:26I was going to jump in and say what she said. I have this theory that people of melanin identify
01:03:33with lower frequency. And when you kind of have bass, and when you kind of have drum there,
01:03:38it's something that speaks to our soul. And I pose this based on the fact that
01:03:44the lighter bounces off light, and music is energy. So a white wall bounces off light,
01:03:50life bounces on it, but a darker wall, the energy goes into it, we absorb it. And it's one of the
01:03:55reasons why I think more people of color tend to like soul and beats and deeper sounds versus
01:04:02people who are lighter, like higher frequencies, like hard rock. Because we don't internalize
01:04:09the screaming guitar. We take it in, they don't. It bounces off of them because light frequency bounces
01:04:16off a light wall. However, energy goes into something deeper. And so I think we identify with
01:04:21the congas because it's lower. And I always started like this. I always say it like this.
01:04:25White people tend to like rock music. Asian people like to tend to like classical. It's still kind of
01:04:29high end a little bit, but it comes down. Latin people tend to like percussive things because we
01:04:33got a little bit African in them, but it's in the middle. And the lower you go, the deeper the melanin.
01:04:38So I love what she said about that, because I do think the congas speak to us differently than it
01:04:43speaks to anybody else. The other thing is, we do that in church. We always had beats, especially the
01:04:48Pentecostal church. We always had bass. We always had beat. And when we hear it over there, we just
01:04:53identify with it. It might have a different lyric, but trust me, we've been grooving in Pentecostal
01:04:58churches out the gate. We've always done that. So we tend to hear it. It's just, we weren't allowed
01:05:03to put the different lyric to it. And then we didn't always have the technology to make it sound the way
01:05:07it finally sounds when you add urban technology to it. But we've always, if you take the basics away,
01:05:13we always identified with that. That's one of the reasons why when I started producing, one of my
01:05:19biggest influences was Teddy Riley. And New Jack would just sound like our youth choir to me, just
01:05:24with more sophisticated stuff. It just did. All the changes and everything. It sounded like what we
01:05:30did at church. And I was like, this is great. Okay, this is going to be urban music. I love it. I love
01:05:34him to the day. I was talking about my producing hero. He made me want to produce because I identify with
01:05:38all the changes and I identified it with the beat. So when I finally did Tri-City, it was like a New
01:05:43Jack choir because I knew what that was. I had never heard it put in that space, but I understood it
01:05:48because we were just doing it in church since I was a kid. Yes. Wow. And the passion, you always have
01:05:58so much passion in your music. And I think that that passion is to some degree also a part of a people
01:06:06emerging from suffering. And authentic suffering, not just something that you make up, you know,
01:06:14like you really- I understand, yeah.
01:06:15Going through something. But I mean a cellular suffering. I was listening. I was on the airplane
01:06:22once. I told Donald this when Goshen came out. And I was just listening to it. I had just picked it up.
01:06:28And I was entertaining myself on my way to the East Coast. And the sister started singing this song,
01:06:34um, I shall not fear the hell by day. That one. And so the Lord, as the Lord would have it,
01:06:42I was sitting in the window.
01:06:46Because I completely went into something. I just need for you to understand what I'm saying.
01:06:51I was sitting on the window seat as the Lord would have it. And I could just turn toward the window
01:06:56so as not to shock the people who were sitting in the middle and on the aisle. And I'm a Pentecostal.
01:07:03You know, I've got a lot of theological degrees. But I want you to know, I'm a true Pentecostal.
01:07:10And I went all the way in. My whole language and everything changed. I was right there.
01:07:16And it took me a little while to get straightened out.
01:07:18Because of the depth. And I heard everything that I have experienced and I'm experiencing
01:07:32in so many ways and so many levels of both acceptance and rejection. And exile and home.
01:07:39And all of that was happening at the same time. And I had so much church all by myself and in the
01:07:44window on the airplane. And it took me a good while. And I played it over and over again.
01:07:48And it just got worse and worse until after my language went from English to my prayer language.
01:07:53And that's a Pentecostal thing that I will never surrender. I'm telling you now, never give that up.
01:07:58But I've had myself a time. And I realized that it was born out of not only my heritage as a person
01:08:08of African descent, but my heritage as a person who understands exile and understands what it is
01:08:16to have the covering of angel armies and the power of God and the presence of God. So the messaging is
01:08:26also born out of our collective suffering and our collective pain, much of which was in the movie.
01:08:35Those moments of pain, all of that familial pain, church pain, physical sickness pain,
01:08:44and finding the glory of God in the middle of all of that. Can you imagine going to bless people in the
01:08:50middle of all of the drama that comes along with all those levels of pain? I shall not fear the arrow by day.
01:08:59And I won't fear any of the mess by night. Because that God who governs angel armies down the Lord,
01:09:08I understand that. And I think that they understand it. We have it. We have the sunshine.
01:09:16Hallelujah. And we have the power and presence of the divine, even when we are having all of those human
01:09:22realities that we have to face. So it blesses me. Anyway, I did have a moment that I want to share
01:09:28with you. Thank you, Bishop. Thank you. Donald, you know, we're here gathered to praise the Clark
01:09:37Sisters. Can you tell us what has their music meant to you in your career? And going back to what Imani
01:09:45talked about, like the root and legacy of the Clark Sisters and how that helped shape you. I mean,
01:09:50I know you give homage to Teddy Riley. And yes, but how? Oh, yeah. It's a few people. No, no,
01:09:58definitely. Teddy, when it comes to producing, really woke that up in me. But when it comes to
01:10:03songwriting, Twinkie, hands down, she's one of my writing heroes, mainly because Twinkie, again,
01:10:13was always left of center to me, just the content that she chose to talk about.
01:10:19You know, back then, nobody talked about endow me. Nobody talked about the fruit of the Spirit. I
01:10:24mean, I heard it then. I hear it differently now. I understand what it means to walk in the Spirit.
01:10:29But she was writing it then. You know, she was writing it in her 20s. And she was just writing
01:10:34this really new thought way of really understanding the revelation of the Scripture way early. And I
01:10:40identify with that. But so it was her lyrics. It was her choice of chord structure. It was,
01:10:47it was like I said, just the content that she wrote about. And not only that, I tell her this to this
01:10:52day, I say, one of the reasons why I have the oddest titles is because of you. Your titles was never
01:10:57like anybody else's. Everybody else's was, you would know the title. But when I looked at your title,
01:11:01it was endow me. It was overdose of the Holy Ghost. It was never a typical title. So it was just like
01:11:07seeing an odd book. And you always want to know what story was she getting ready to tell
01:11:11with this particular to this particular title. And I've always been fascinated with titles. So
01:11:18that's why, you know, that's why I write Jehovah Seboeth or Back to Eden or The Blessing of Abraham.
01:11:23It's just typical titles and content that people hadn't really wrote about prior prior to me writing
01:11:29about it. But it still talks about our divine experience, our collective experience. And really,
01:11:35honestly, I get a lot of that from, I was inspired a lot of that from Twinkie. Twinkie definitely
01:11:40inspired me to go deeper. And vocalize. You know, who else could run like that?
01:11:47Nobody. Who can do it? Who alive? They can do what the Clark sisters can do. Listen, and back then,
01:11:55nobody really did it then. So it was really left your mouth open then because now people do rip a lot.
01:12:02But back then, they didn't do it then. So when they would come to the stage and it would be Twinkie
01:12:06doing one, Karen doing one, and Dorinda Graham, you would just be, it was like a ping pong,
01:12:11a great ping pong game. You wouldn't know what to, you just didn't know what to say when you finish,
01:12:16other than it's a done deal. Like, let's just say amen. It's a done deal. So it was really,
01:12:22really, really, it was really an amazing experience. And doing the movie, I wanted to give people what I
01:12:29felt as a kid back then, listening to them. And that's one of the, that's one of the reasons why,
01:12:34along with Angelou, who, Angelou, I just want to say this to you. I'm going way back, but
01:12:39I want you to know, on set with you, you were chosen to play a role because when I would walk to
01:12:45you, I would feel the energy of Matty Mars Clark in you on set. So I don't know if you knew it or not,
01:12:51you just kind of just listened and did it. But I want you to know, it was a different kind of
01:12:55experience because I've been on some movie sets before, but just what you carried and your presence
01:13:00was there. I mean, it would just really make you tear up. And I was like, this lady is from another
01:13:05room. Her gift is just somewhere else. It's beyond just acting. Like it's, some people are just gifted,
01:13:11I think gifted in another realm. And I really like you, you blew me away. It was just,
01:13:17it was more than an honor to meet you. I was graced to meet you. And I just want to say,
01:13:22I really want to say that, but definitely when it comes to the runs and all that things back in the day,
01:13:27I just wanted people to feel what I felt. I wanted to take them back to that time. And that was
01:13:32my detail on the, on, on doing the music. And I watched her be the same detail with Matty Mars Clark and
01:13:37watch Christine Swanson just be the same detail with the choices and the shots and, and the,
01:13:43everything with the movie. So yeah, it was, it was an amazing time to watch. It was, it was nothing
01:13:48like it, man. Yeah. I wanted Imani to kind of break down as an expert, as someone who studied the history,
01:13:55like what made the Clark sound, Clark sister sound so powerful and why it, why it's resonated so much and
01:14:02why it's touched us all so much in different ways. So I, I would have to say I defer to these experts,
01:14:10but, um, and Bishop Flunder will have to pick up where I leave off and take us in. But I think that
01:14:18one of the reasons it's very moving is that the human voice is a shared instrument. If I get up and
01:14:26play a harp, well, you might not know a harpist. You could live a very rich life and never meet a harpist.
01:14:32But we all have a voice. We all have lungs. We all have vocal chords. And for the most part,
01:14:38almost any human has at some point spoken, hum, sung. It's universal. So I know what my voice can do
01:14:47on the best day in the best acoustics. So I know the distance between that and Twinkie belting
01:14:54a D flat four. I, that's an eternity away from what we know of the human voice in our own bodily
01:15:05experience. So when I hear that, and I hear it coming from her body in a real space, in, in real time,
01:15:13and it hits me, like you were talking about Donald, sound waves are a physical experience
01:15:19that changes us on many other levels. I'm transported. I'm uplifted. I'm also reckoning with the fact that
01:15:31there's no reason to sing anything interesting if nobody wrote anything interesting. Part of why
01:15:36they're running is because helps of her harmonic rhythm, which is very swift. She will change chords
01:15:43four times in three beats. And many people, you know, you have a chord for four beats, and then you move
01:15:51to the next chord. And we know what chord it's going to be. We go from one to four to five. I'm sorry,
01:15:55this is for music. I'm speaking the language of music. But I think even if you don't know notation,
01:16:02you know that her songs sound different. And that difference is not just random. It is complex,
01:16:10and it is an expression of mastery. And so in writing something that would challenge and open up new
01:16:18space for a vocalist, she gave her sisters the gift of a venue for their voices. And I also would lastly
01:16:29say that family is the thing on which gospel turns. Because if my voice and your voice blend,
01:16:39that's beautiful. But if I have a sister, our voices are going to be more similar. If I have a mother
01:16:45and a sister, our voices are in a continuous line. That's genetic. And because we do teach music
01:16:53by generation, like the jelly of what we call griot in French, of Mali and Senegal and Gambia,
01:17:01we do that here in church. You don't just like the Church of God in Christ song. You don't join in,
01:17:07you're born in. You come to that thing because it was there before time. That's the same established
01:17:15before time kind of gift. And I think that they are one example. We know the Winans. We know some
01:17:22of the families have a highlight. But anybody who's been in church knows that the musicians'
01:17:27relatives are other musicians. Thank you. Thank you. Brilliant. Brilliant. Yes. Before we wrap up,
01:17:40I just had a thought how during this time that we're in self-isolation, quarantine, staying safe,
01:17:49staying in the stay safe, one thing that has been keeping a lot of people together has been the power
01:17:54of music. I don't know if you've been hearing about club quarantine and all these things, but I would love
01:18:01each of us, and we could start with Anja, just end with telling us what the power of music,
01:18:07particularly gospel music, or if you want to just speak specifically to the power of what the Clark
01:18:12Sisters music means to you, especially now in this time that we're in. Does it hit you a little
01:18:19differently as we all bond together to come out of this pandemic healthy?
01:18:30Well, it was interesting listening to Imani and her apologize for getting musical and talking about
01:18:39music notation, right? And I rebuke that. You don't need to apologize. You embrace that brilliance.
01:18:48You embrace that brilliance. That's true. And here's the thing, and this is why I wanted to do this,
01:18:53and this is what I was hoping to achieve, hoping we were trying to achieve, right, Donald,
01:19:01in telling this story, is not just give some behind-the-scenes story, some salacious,
01:19:08you know what I mean? Like gossip-mongering portrayal of what the Clark Sisters' lives were.
01:19:17What we wanted to do was honor the genius of Black women. We wanted to honor the genius of Black women
01:19:24and give it the consideration that it deserves. And I want to read this by this culture
01:19:32critic from Mississippi. His name is C. Lee McInnis, and he says,
01:19:36He says, unlike the Beatles or Bob Dylan, rarely are African-American songwriters studied for their
01:19:45intellectual value. When we deny, ignore, or marginalize African-American intellect, we deny,
01:19:53ignore, and marginalize African-American humanity, right? And so this whole idea of like,
01:20:02is my labor in vain? What I wake up in the morning and what I go to bed at night
01:20:08is knowing that Black women and our labor gets erased, it gets marginalized, it gets demonized
01:20:17at times. And so I'm living to correct that. I'm really, I'm living to correct that erasure,
01:20:23the labor of the Clark Sisters, the labor of Bishop Plunder. Because what y'all don't know,
01:20:28and what she's not telling y'all is she's saying the lead in one of the most important gospel songs
01:20:33of the 20th century. You understand what I'm saying? And I want to correct that erasure.
01:20:39We have to celebrate our genius. And if we don't do it, we can't expect anybody else to do it. I have,
01:20:46I've no longer had the expectation that this country will ever do that in a correct way. So what I got to
01:20:52do is do that, is to do that work. And I don't forgot what your question was.
01:20:58No, but it's beautiful. No, that was beautiful. I love it. I love it. Thank you. Thank you.
01:21:05Thank you. May I add something? Just as a, in many ways, as a preacher who sings,
01:21:14there are singers who preach. And I know for a fact that I am in many ways a preacher,
01:21:22a theologian who sings. And Bishop Walter Hawkins often had to pull the singer out of me
01:21:28because of that. And he saw to it that I sang. Now, I come from a long line of singers, I must say,
01:21:35but not the way in which we sang when we sang in recording studios and in public venues. And I'm
01:21:44embracing being a singer publicly, but I've always been a singer privately.
01:21:50And I, and let me say what I mean when I say that. I say that because people forget sermons,
01:22:00but songs last forever. Most of the songs that I sing privately, I don't know who wrote them.
01:22:09It must be a gazillion songs that are inside my spirit, because there's a song attached to everything
01:22:15just about that I do. That's connecting some way to the way in which I was raised and informed.
01:22:23Altar songs, prayer songs, jubilation songs, lamentation songs, just all kinds of songs that
01:22:31are in my spirit. And they catch me all by myself, all alone. And I was singing a series of songs the
01:22:38other day about the grace of God. Grace, God's grace that is greater than all my sins, you know,
01:22:44those kinds of great songs. And one just flowed from one into another. I had no idea who wrote the
01:22:49song. It was one after another. My baby grandson was listening to me and he says, so grandma,
01:22:57what is grace? So I stopped for a minute. I said, well, grace is the way that God loves us,
01:23:04no matter who we are, no matter what we've done. The grace of God is the way in which God loves us,
01:23:11no matter what. He said, hmm. And he stopped for a minute. He said, you know what, grandma?
01:23:17He said, she does love us. In fact, grandma, she's loving us. And he went on to finish his Cheerios.
01:23:28Well, I was all for clip. And I went out of the room and trying to, you know, because I didn't want
01:23:35him to catch me, you know, because it sent me somewhere. And I said, and it's the power of music,
01:23:40first of all. Secondly, I realized that what we have embodied, back to your point, Angela,
01:23:47what we have embodied in so many ways before our children and before this generation
01:23:53is that God is bigger and greater than the narrow boxes that God has been forced into. And a lot of
01:24:03that we have done through our music, through our singing. Now, my baby had a whole theology that I
01:24:11didn't give him. He came to that all on his own. I said, well, that's pretty good. But hallelujah.
01:24:17There's a huge step that he made in that statement for a young man growing up in and around religion
01:24:24and faith. But it happened around music. Music is freeing us. And I'm becoming more and more aware
01:24:33that I need to do more, Donald, sometimes publicly than I do privately. I sing perpetually,
01:24:42privately from the rising of the sun, hit the grocery store, praise God, when I'm able to go
01:24:48with all my stuff on, masks and gloves and stuff. So that's going down to the same. My prayer life
01:24:55is a music life. I sing what I pray. That's how close it is to me. But that's because of what,
01:25:03where I came from, because of the people around me, who were so what they weren't just people who
01:25:10sang music, they were music. Everything was music. Everything was music. And the heart of the
01:25:17Church of God in Christ, when it took off, it took off with a praise. Yes. That's what did it. Yes.
01:25:24How simple is that? Yes. And it's a signature song born out of a revival called the Great Refreshing
01:25:34in the Church of God in Christ. But it's known by a song. How wonderful is that? That is our connection
01:25:42to music. Anyway, that's the flunder, isn't it? I want to say this right quick. I just want to say
01:25:48this one thing right quick, because I mean, we're all experiencing, experiencing alienation, right?
01:25:55And I think that's one of the genius, the genius of Twinkie Clark is that she spoke to alienation
01:26:00better than anybody, better than anybody. And the reason why I say that she did it better than
01:26:06anybody is she did it. She spoke to alienation bravely, brazenly in a culture that, that, that
01:26:14frowned, that frowned on being an individual, that frowned on doing things. If you are a woman, if you are
01:26:21same sex, whatever that is, but frowned on all of that. We always had to be unified. But here was this
01:26:27lone voice speaking to alienation. And so, you know, we all feel alienated. And Twinkie Clark,
01:26:34if no one else speaks to this moment, I just have to say that right quick.
01:26:36She does.
01:26:37Oh, thank you for that.
01:26:38Unified. We had to be unified. That's right. Or we had to lie. One to two.
01:26:42Yeah. Unified.
01:26:44Absolutely. Or lying. Either lying or unified. Thank you for that.
01:26:50Right. That's great.
01:26:52Oh my God.
01:26:52That's really, really great.
01:26:53Thank you all. Thank you all so much. This conversation has been so rich, so beautiful,
01:26:59and a definite testament to the beauty and genius of Twinkie Clark and her, and the Clark sisters,
01:27:05Dr. Maddie Mass. Clark. I want to thank you all. Thank you, Imani Wilson. Thank you, Bishop Yvette
01:27:10Plunder, Donald Morris. Thank you so much. Thank you.
01:27:14So much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Corey. Thank you.
01:27:17Thank you. No, thank you guys.
01:27:18Thank you so much, Corey.
01:27:19Oh, that's good stuff.
01:27:22It's some really, really good stuff. And I don't know why you don't sing more.
01:27:26I thank Walter Hawkins for making you sing, because you got one of the most classic voices.
01:27:32Your voice is like, as soon as we hear it, we know it. I can't believe you didn't want to sing, Bishop
01:27:37for London. Like, you got one. Your voice will be remembered for tragedy. Listen, tragedy on that,
01:27:43that song in your voice is a perfect match. Time and place. That's it. That's it.
01:27:46Listen, it's in the stone that you ever not sing. Like, really. Thank you all. Thank you so much for
01:27:54having me as well. God bless you all. And for me, music is a memory map. So what's happening now,
01:28:00I'm just watching all these people playing these old songs. It's just taking people back to good times,
01:28:05because music leaves, neurologically, music leaves these memory maps. And when you play something,
01:28:09it just takes you back to a good time. And I see that. That's what I really see happening so much
01:28:14now. I see people playing so much nostalgia music, even in gospel. I just watched them go back to the
01:28:1990s and to the 80s. And it just takes us all back to a time that we remember and that we love.
01:28:25And I think that's what you were saying when you were speaking about the songs that you hear
01:28:29home that take you back to your grandmother and all of that. It's just what music does to our brain,
01:28:33you know, because these traces. It's all true. It's all true. I'm going to do better, Donald.
01:28:39I got some folks pulling on me. You need to. We'll be in touch. Yes.
01:28:42I know. I know. I know. I'm listening. I'm listening. Thank you, everyone.
01:29:03Thank you, everyone.
01:29:12Thank you, everyone.
01:29:16Thank you, everyone.
01:29:24Thank you, everyone.
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Get In The Field: A Deep Dive into Sports & Culture
Essence Virtual Events
4 days ago
Healthy Food, Healthy Eating: It’s More Than Looks — Using Food as Medicine 2025-07-04 at 19:15
Essence Virtual Events
4 days ago
Standing Together for Our Health - It's About Time! Community Organizing, Coalition Building and Advocacy 2025-07-04 at 18:04
Essence Virtual Events
4 days ago
Plain Jayne: Fireside Chat with Jayne Kennedy
Essence Virtual Events
4 days ago
SOKO Monitor Feed 2025-07-04 at 15:34
Essence Virtual Events
4 days ago
Financial Literacy & the Power to Prosper: Teaching Wealth-Building from the Ground Up 2025-07-04 at 16:29
Essence Virtual Events
4 days ago