Nancy Armstrong Holmes, director of music ministry at Greater King David Baptist Church, leads the gospel choir in song on a Sunday morning in December. (Photos by Collin Richie)
Greater King David Baptist Church keeps gospel music tradition alive on Sundays
The wide double doors can hold back the people, but they can’t hold back the sound.
A crowd of a dozen or so are waiting to enter this north Baton Rouge church. There is a middle-aged man helping his mother with her cane, more than a few ladies in traditional pillbox hats and a boy in a starched white button-down three sizes too big, as if it’s anticipating the man he’ll become.
They stand before a small battalion of ushers holding them back while the low rumble of the gospel choir echoes from the sanctuary beyond the doors.
It’s the traditional tune “Bless the Lord, O My Soul,” and once inside the doors, the sound booms.
A shout spills into the hallway—“Come lift your voice!”
Holmes also sang “The Star-Spangled Banner” at Gov. John Bel Edwards’ inauguration ceremony.
It’s the voice of Nancy Armstrong Holmes, and it is the Sunday after Christmas at Greater King David Baptist Church. 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.”
The anticipation builds as the song rallies to a flourishing finish. When it does, the white gloves of the ushers swing wide the doors and the stragglers walk in. All eyes are on the choir at the front of the chapel. Clothed in black, there are swaying bodies and hands, 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 voice, 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.
About 80 performers make up the choir at Greater King David Baptist Church.
“I wanted to be an architect,” she says. “But I guess God had something else in mind.”
Now a recording artist, vocal coach, wife and mother of two, Holmes joined the Greater King David leadership team last August. In January she sang a worthy rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” at Gov. John Bel Edwards’ inauguration.
Her vision for the church’s multiple choirs is equally grand. She wants to bring her choirs to more events outside of their own Sunday worship, and she would also like them to record a ton of music.
“Some people say Baton Rouge is ‘kinda country.’ Well, we’re going to show we can bring ‘big church’ to the country,” she says.
No matter how well Holmes and her team can sing, the message is most important.
“Sometimes the music is the only sermon people hear,” Holmes says. “It has to mean something. I make sure it does, because what comes from the heart reaches the heart. I believe that.”greaterkingdavid.org
