The wide double doors can hold back the people, but they can’t hold back the sound inside of Greater King David Baptist Church, where traditional gospel music thrives.
As 225 details in a feature from its February issue, traditional tunes such as Bless the Lord, O My Soul and Come Lift Your Voice emanate from the church. On a Sunday after Christmas, the voice of Nancy Armstrong Holmes booms throughout the north Baton Rouge church while a crowd of a dozen or so people waited to enter.
Late attendees are held at the door and only allowed to enter between songs, so as not to distract attention from those giving praise and reaching a kind of ecstasy with the same breath.
“Gospel on a Sunday morning?” says Holmes, the church’s director of music ministry, when asked about the music’s appeal. “It’s hard to describe, because it’s so much a part of my life. This music is taking what we are feeling on the inside and letting it out. It’s about building up. It’s encouraging one another to be better.”
Anticipation builds as the song rallies to a flourishing finish. When it does, the white gloves of the ushers swing the doors wide and the stragglers walk in.
All eyes are on the choir at the front of the chapel. Clothed in black, their hands and bodies sway, moving and shouting to a swampy, almost tumbling-down-the-stairs sound that soars over the pews. Led by Holmes’ keyboard, a fluid electric guitar and a pounding drum kit, the choir is some 80 voices strong. Voices that become one solid sound. A joyful noise.
A 42-year-old New Orleans native, Holmes grew up in a family where a lot of her relatives played something, most of them sang something, and absolutely everyone went to church. Her grandfather was a cousin of Louis Armstrong, and her Sunday service stage debut came at age 3.
She began performing professionally at 15, and after graduating from Southern University, she took a series of choir-leading jobs in churches around New Orleans and Baton Rouge.
“I wanted to be an architect,” she says. “But I guess God had something else in mind.”
Read the full story, in which 225 features Holmes and Greater King David Baptist Church. Send your comments to editor@225batonrouge.com.
