I was in New Orleans this spring, and had the chance to attend one day of the annual New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, aka Jazzfest. It. Was. Awesome.

We saw bluegrass and New Orleans jazz and funk and reggae and African dancers. The day was gorgeous and breezy and uncharacteristically, blessedly, not steamy. There were crowds, but everyone seemed to be in a festival mood, and the mass of humanity did not feel oppressive. The whole thing was just grand.

And friends, I discovered gospel music. We initially made our way to the gospel tent just to see what there might be to see, and I was so entranced I spent hours there. Now, I’m the Whitest of White Girls, but even I had heard gospel before, even live at an AME church. But the power of these massive gospel groups in New Orleans—groups of kids, groups of adults, all-female groups, all-male groups, mixes of age and gender—it was something special. I found tears streaming down my face from the sheer joy of the sound. Make a joyful noise, indeed.

There’s something about the communal, powerful sound of church singing that I find affecting me more and more in the last couple of years, and I’m not completely sure where that comes from. This past Christmas I was in the car and “Silent Night” came on the radio; I started to sing along, and almost immediately began to weep. A week or so later I went to a Christmas Eve service with some of my family, and the same thing happened. I have not felt overwhelmingly sad or joyful in these instances, I’ve just responded in a completely raw, untethered way.

I wonder if it might be the communal aspect of the music. I did have, for so much of my life, the enveloping goodness of the choir at my small-town church on Sundays, and endless singing at church camp in the summer. I did not then, and have not as an adult, thought much about what that music and spirit meant to me, but I think it must have meant something. And that something is missing in my present life. Must rectify that.

Oh yeah: Song for the day is “Higher Ground,” Red Hot Chili Peppers version. I could have told a story about how it’s one of the songs burned into my brain from my one awful experience with aerobics (PE credit in college), but that story consists of little more than “OMG I HATED AEROBICS IN COLLEGE.” Pluswhich Mama Kitt has already told a far better aerobics tale.

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