Annie O'Neill, Post-Gazette photos Raheem Perry, 10, right, Dante Meadows-Patterson, James Johnson III and Ben-Sovren Gray are part of the Afro-American Music Institute Boys' Choir. It was started at the Afro-American Music Institute in Homewood as part of a Father's Day celebration almost 20 years ago.

By Ervin Dyer
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette In his crumpled khakis, Ben-Sovren Gray is one of eight young men who rehearses for an hour on a cool Tuesday night in Homewood.

They sit in a semicircle in a square white room where the ancestors, Miles Davis and Louis Armstrong, look down upon the boys.

Before the session mellows into song, it is a raucous, bouncing gathering of man-children.

They run. They fidget with their glasses. They squirm. They slouch.

They call Choirmaster James Johnson "Uncle James," but he is more like Master Sgt. He restores order.

	James Johnson directs the Afro-American Music Institute's Boys' Choir. Click photo for larger image. Video: Video: Afro-American Music Institute Boys' Choir

"Sit down. Shut up," he yells to the sons of bankers, nurses and people who don't have jobs.

If that does not work, he doles out push-ups. On some weeks, he makes the choir's Billy Eckstines and Erroll Garners of the future duck walk down the hall.

In rehearsal, the young men stretch their voices and their minds.

"Stand up straight," Pam Johnson said, gently placing her hand on the shoulder of Ben-Sovren. He pushes his chest forward, sings louder.

"Our African-American boys, when they first come, it's very hard for them to stand up straight," she said.

But then, something happens.

The closer the boys get to a performance, a pride fills them up.

"They stop fidgeting. They get turned on."

The Johnsons believe that, if you put spirit in, spirit comes out.

Lift every voice

Seventeen years ago, Mrs. Johnson hand-picked a rag-tag group of African-American young men and told them to lift every voice and sing.

Sing, she said, for your fathers, as she prepped them to perform for an inaugural Father's Day concert.

Sing, she said, for yourselves. It will put joy in your heart and pride in your step.

Sing, she said, because you're free.

Most of the young men she initially recruited have left the group. The responsibilities of life have lured them away.

Three of the originals remain and are still singing.

The group continues on, too, having solidified into the Afro-American Music Institute Boys Choir.

Now, as it was then, the choir remains a place to learn spirituals, blues and hip-hop.

It remains a place that lifts voices and spirits. For many of the young men, the choir is the glue that binds disparate lives into one family.

Along the way, the boys learn respect, self-esteem and how to be friends.

What they've been taught, they teach.

The choir's sons have marched into college and into successful careers.

Mrs. Johnson and her husband, Dr. Johnson, a music professor at the University of Pittsburgh, preach to the young men that no man is a solo. One generation is expected to mentor the next.

"Once we get them," Mrs. Johnson said, "we don't let them go." In the case of their son, James, a master drummer who's performed with Ahmal Jamal, "he's really stuck," she said. "We won't let him go."

Since its birth in the sanctuary of St. James African Methodist Episcopal Church in Lincoln in 1977, the institute has made its home in Homewood.

Some have asked, even encouraged, the Johnsons to leave the neighborhood, which, in many ways, has crumbled around them.

Instead, they remain, clinging to the hope of the old Negro spiritual:

"Ain't gon' let nobody turn me around."

Children of the church

James and Pam Johnson are children of the church.

They were two young souls when they met in an African Methodist Episcopal sanctuary in Shreveport, La. His father was the preacher. She sang in the choir. He directed the choir.

Music was as much in their heart as it was in their blood.

His mom, Dayse Johnson, was an accomplished pianist and violinist who performed for President Harry S. Truman when he visited the Y in Kansas City. After football practice, his father made him hustle directly to choir practice. In Shreveport, he founded a male choir of truck drivers and football coaches. People laughed. But the choir toured the state to ovations.

Her mom and grandmother played classical keyboards and gospel. She was the little girl with the voice of an angel. They took her around the state performing.

Teenage sweethearts, they've also sung of faith and of hope.

He holds a doctorate in music. Serious and studious, he is the Captain. She left college after a couple of years. Quick to laugh and funny, she is Tennille. The couple have been married for 35 years.

They came North in 1977 after Nathan Davis, a music professor at the University of Pittsburgh, met Mr. Johnson at a Grambling State College music conference and told him to come to Pittsburgh.

From the sanctuary of St. James AME, the couple launched their music institute.

We knew it could work, said Dr. Johnson, 57, because music has been the center of the black experience.

Black folks sang when they built the pyramids. They sang to be integrated into society. They sang to prepare for battle.

When it comes to using music to educate, the Johnsons said, ain't nobody gonna turn them around.

Rounded up and coached

Many of the boys who first came to the choir couldn't sing, or didn't think they could. That didn't matter to the Johnsons.

If they were male and had a voice, they were rounded up and coached to let their rejoicing rise.

Along the way, they performed on television and traveled, visiting Canada, Georgia and Wisconsin.

Ryan Tedder came to the Afro-American Music Institute at 7. He wanted to play piano and bang the drums.

Today, he's 17, a high school senior who drives in from McKeesport to get to the free sessions.

Coming here, Ryan said, has taught him patience, dedication.

"Music has become what I am." In the fall, he hopes to attend Berklee School of Music.

In the fuzzy photo from 1982, Derrick Germany is the round-faced lad in the too-short pants and white socks. Now 25, he came to the institute for piano and voice lessons. Yet with a steady beat, despite his weary feet, his godparents made him do the choir. He never left and now, as a flight attendant after attending Mercyhurst College, he's glad.

The choir became an anchor, exposing him to jazz, gospel and classical.

The music, Mr. Germany said, has taught him about his roots and given him a deeper commitment to himself and to the group.

"It has been a healing," he said, and he's glad he didn't let nobody turn him around.

For more information on how to join the choir or to buy the CD "Hamilton Street Blues," call 412-241-6775 or visit www.aamipittsburgh.org.