Bling and Gospel Music and Oedipus

On this chilly and foggy Sunday afternoon, Freda and Susan and I went to Austin to see The Gospel At Colunus at the Zach Theatre. From the moment the black church choir members walked to stage through the aisles singing, I knew it was going to be good!

The women were dressed in bright yellow and blue church dresses with outlandishly wonderful hats and bling, the men in suits with colorful ties, the choir members (actual members of local black choirs) in choir robes, everybody clapping and Amen-ing to the preaching and fanning hard with cardboard fans.

The acting, dancing and music were dazzling--as Oedipus (of the Greek tragedy) winds up in a lively community of Pentecostals. An unlikely pairing of stories, but it works.

Oedipus was the one, as you recall, who married his mother and killed his father.  When he and his wife-mother realized what they had done, she hanged herself and Oedipus blinded himself. Blind Oedipus, wracked by guilt, became an exile whose two daughters (and sisters) had to lead him around for the rest of his life.

The play opens in what looks like a tent-revival setting, the preacher--spot on in his delivery style--reading "from the book of Oedipus" (as if it were an actual book in the Bible.)  From that point on, the play shows how he found forgiveness among the Pentecostals.

When we walked in, we were handed cardboard fans--which brought back memories of the summer nights of my childhood when we went to  revivals in the little churches in Georgia.  Those churches were steamy, both in temperature and sermon content--and from the piano bench (where I sat on nights I played) I could see the fans going a mile a minute in the congregation.

Southern gospel, black and white, is the trunk of the tree from which so much powerful storytelling and music sprouted--and it reminds me of a time when religious passion colored everything.  Going to this play was like going to Big Church.  The audience was clapping and fanning and humming along. If it had gone on much longer, I might have had to stand up and give my testimony!