Becoming the Music

I’m surprised I was so surprised.

It was the 1970s and I was on a New York City bus sitting beside an East Asian man who was gawking out the window at the parade of LGBTQ people converging for a gay pride celebration and he was near tears. Trembling, he turned to me. “All of these people are homosexual?” he asked. “Uh huh,” I answered, blasé in my tired New York way. “All these people!” he exclaimed. I smiled and nodded.

I can guess at his story. He was from a place where you could be killed if you exposed your homosexuality and, here, people not only exposed it, but they were celebrating it . . . and New Yorkers like me thought nothing of it.

I’m thinking about that this morning after attending a Singing Resistance event at interdenominational landmarked Riverside Church, a breathtakingly beautiful structure with a long history of social activism. It’s up on 120^th Street. Because I wake at an absurdly early predawn hour, I was tired when I got on the bus at 6 pm. I was tired when I found an aisle seat next to a group of people who seemed to know one another and were saving the seat between me and them for a person who never came. I was so tired waiting for the program to start that I almost fell asleep.

Lethargy can be a symptom of fear, and this morning as I spontaneously flash to that ecstatic man on the bus, I think I was probably afraid. That fear could so easily be instilled in me after just one short bad experience of being in a crowd of people on all sides of me parroting antisemitic chants as part of the last anti-war rally I attended astounds me. But in retrospect, that must’ve been what I was feeling, because of the instant joy and relief that erupted in me as soon as it was quite clear this group was the opposite of that.

The leaders of the Singing Resistance came in all races, religions, ethnicities, and countries of origin. And they were so cohesive, joyful, and welcoming that I popped—just like that man on the bus. I went from near-comatose observer of the people around me to part of them. I sang. We all sang.

Leaders told stories of their experiences. A woman from Minneapolis, blown away by hearing her songs in a New York City church, told of marching and singing to protect her neighbors who were locked inside their houses but blowing kisses through their windows. A young Hispanic mother from the Bronx told of how, during Trump 1.0, she was afraid to walk her babies in their stroller, terrified of being ripped away from them, and how it was when it finally happened because she had neglected to file one form in her immigration case . . . and there was no support, “But now there is this!” she exclaimed, gesturing to all of us.

We sang in Creole, Spanish, and English.

We were led by Christians, a Jew, a Muslim, men who danced in the aisle with tambourines, everyone smiling, and finally ending in our group of 700 New Yorkers as diverse as the world breaking into 5-part harmony.

The organization of this Resistance is so efficient and smooth you could almost not notice the genius behind it.

I left the church transformed. I waited at a bus stop with a young Queer woman who asked if I’d come from the singing. “Yes,” I told her. “It was like balm,” they said, rubbing their heart. A bus came within seconds and gallantly, this person I didn’t know gestured for me to get on first.

By the time I got home there was an email asking how the event had been for me and inviting me to sign up for a pre-No Kings March on the 28^th for singers to meet at Lincoln Center before going together, singing and inviting others to join us. I signed up. And this morning, there was an email welcoming me to the party!

Welcome to the party! We’re very glad to have you joining us at the singers meetup for No Kings on March 28.

We have been coordinating with a dozen other choirs. We expect a sizable collection of singers, and we’re all very excited to take this march to the next level. Bring friends!

We have prepared lyric sheets of our singalong songs that we use for SING OUT! actions. Print your own and make a few extras if you can.

There is also another songbook by Hands Off with more songs that we will learn and sing together.

If you are a member of another choir, they may have their own songbook.

If you’d like to be added to the SING OUT! email list, please reply YES.

Robert Hornsby & Gary Baker
Co-founders, SING OUT! a project of New York Sings Along
See NYSA on Facebook or NYSA Instagram

From HandsoffNYC, a group of 200 unions, faith leaders, and community groups, standing together in nonviolent resistance to protect NYC from ICE and other Federal attacks:

Hear song at link.

Yes, it’s really true. All these people want peace! All of us!

---

Betsy Robinson is an editor, fiction writer, journalist, and playwright (also a former actor). She has written about books for Publishers Weekly, Lithub, Oh Reader, and many other publications. Her novels Cats on a Pole and The Spectators were published by Kano Press in 2024. She writes funny stories about flawed people and examines our herd culture. www.BetsyRobinson-writer.com.