How Can I Keep From Singing?

Jane Sapp is a nationally admired cultural worker, musician, educator, folklorist, and activist whose approach to social transformation is rooted in the African American musical, cultural, spiritual and human rights traditions. Through her singing, documenting local culture and stories, song-writing workshops, and other expressive work with diverse communities and youth, Jane actively engages people in creative cultural processes that help them understand and see not only the challenges faced by their communities, but their assets as well. Jane has many recordings and a book Let’s Make a Better World: Stories and Songs of Jane Sapp. She has sung all over the country and farther, and her influence reaches around the world. Among other things she is currently working to document her stories as a way to reflect on her own work and on the cultural history of the last fifty years.
 
https://www.janesapp.org/about

Paul Tinkerhess is a long time community singer and songwriter from Ann Arbor, Michigan. Our conversation explores the ways we risk vulnerability and move forward as singers and as a community.

Elise Witt’s concerts of Global, Local & Homemade Songs™ and her Impromptu Glorious Chorus™ workshops create and connect singing communities around the world. Born in Switzerland, raised in NC, and living in Atlanta since 1977, Elise speaks 5 languages fluently and sings in at least a dozen more. From 2009-2024, Elise served as Director of Music Programs at the Global Village Project, (GVP) a special purpose middle school for teenage refugee girls in Atlanta, Georgia. Imagine a Circle: The Global Village Songbook: Using Singing and Songwriting to Teach English for Multi-lingual Learners is a book of 55 songs written by, with, and for the GVP students.  The Elise Witt Choral Series features choral arrangements of Elise’s compositions, and she recently published All Singing, a songbook with 58 original songs for solo and community singing. More info at https://elisewitt.com

Kate Munger has been passionate about community singing since she was 8 years old at Girl Scout Camp and has led community singing now for over 45 years. In 2000 she founded the first of now 200 Threshold Choirs around the world. Today at 74 she is retired from running the Threshold Choir and has returned to her passions of writing songs for medicinal use and singing at the bedsides of people who are dying, in coma and with folks who are incarcerated. Kate knows that this work is deep and serious and she offers a fresh, lively, sometimes irreverent, always relevant perspective. 
for more information https://thresholdchoir.org/kate-munger/
 
Threshold: the choir who sing to the dying - documentaryhttps://www.theguardian.com/society/video/2025/dec/12/threshold-the-choir-who-sing-to-the-dying-documentary​

Mike Ross is the director of the Madison Youth Choirs. In this episode we discuss how group singing for children and young adults molds outlooks and understandings even as they engage in the joyful experience of being part of a choir.
https://www.madisonyouthchoirs.org/
 

Sandra Kerr has had had a long and distinguished career in Folk music. Trained by MacColl and Seeger in the controversial Critics Group, co- writer of the music for the much-loved cult TV series, Bagpuss, multi-instrumentalist, choir director , long time member of Sisters Unlimited, and much- respected lecturer and tutor on the Newcastle degree course in Folk and Traditional Music, Sandra has been awarded their highest accolade by EFDSS – the gold badge for ‘outstanding and unique contribution to the art of folk song.’ In each of those settings, bringing people together to sing in harmony has been a major feature of her work,  as an expression of her deeply held belief that group singing is a magical activity which binds people together, and helps us to understand each other and the world we live in. Sandra comes to us from northern England. 
https://www.sandrakerr.net/

Bonnie Lockhart and Nancy Schimmel have been singing at rallies and other political events for over sixty years. They discuss the challenges and joys of trying to rally people with music around a cause. Occupella is one iteration of their work, formed during the Occupy movement. More information at BonnieLockhart.com, NancySchimmel.com and the ever evolving Occupella songbook is available at occupella.org 
https://www.occupella.org/comprehensive.html
 
 

Jake Johnson is a cultural historian and author whose work focuses on the intersection of music, myth, and community in American life. His books—such as “Mormons, Musical Theater, and Belonging in America” and “Lying in the Middle: Musical Theater and Belief at the Heart of America”—explore how musical theater and storytelling enable people to shape identity, belief, and belonging outside major cultural centers. Jake Johnson examines the everyday role of music as a form of world-building and myth-making, drawing insights from diverse communities. Our conversation explores the role of music in Mormon culture but moves beyond that into realms of identity, memory, and belong. For more information go to www.JakeJohnsonPhd.com. 

Sally began her career as a full-time touring musician in 1979. Her travels since have taken her to Europe, China, Hungary and Poland, England and Scotland and all across the United States. Her songs are accessible to singers of all types, and she infuses a deep respect and appreciation for community, tradition, and the power of music to nurture social change. Our conversation includes a rather detailed explanation of how to encourage successful round singing.
more information at https://sallyrogers.com/

Stacy Horn is an author and singer who talks in this podcast about how singing in a community choir provided a bridge to wholeness and community. It's been a long term commitment. Although she considers herself an average singer, she urges anyone with an interest to try singing as a remedy that can help bring sanity to a difficult world.
More information about Stacy here.