“The healing power of music is incredible,” Mark Jackson told me over breakfast at the bustling Pinecrest Diner on Geary Street near Union Square.
It was a chilly, rainy morning in early January, and Jackson paused over his breakfast of oatmeal and bananas before saying something about music that struck a chord for me as a veteran reporter and longtime singer: “Someone could be in almost a catatonic state, like in a nursing home, but if they hear a song that reminds them of something they sang as a young boy or girl, they could start singing.”
Jackson, a tenor, is a member of San Francisco’s Singers of the Street, a choir composed of homeless people, the formerly homeless, and homeless advocates.
Singers of the Street, or S.O.S., started in 2010 under the leadership of Kathleen McGuire, who previously had been the artistic director and conductor of the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus. Now led by Sally Ann Ryan, the chorus gathers every Monday morning for rehearsal at the Saint Paulus Lutheran Church on Polk Street. Afterwards the members share a hot meal prepared the night before by Ryan.
The word homeless is used to describe a wide variety of people, including those who actually live rough on the streets and those who cycle in and out of single-resident occupancy hotels. “Often people think of the lowest common denominator, the guy out on the street, and I know people who have doctorates and are homeless, so it really runs the gamut,” said Jackson, who himself has a bachelor’s degree in music.
Ryan doesn’t ask choir members for the details of their accommodations, but she knows one sleeps in a storefront near the group’s rehearsal space. Another recently lived in his car for a while.
“When they want to tell me a story, they will,” she added.
Jackson, 53, has a story to tell. He is a former member of the Gay Men’s Chorus. He hooked up with S.O.S. years ago through his connection with McGuire, the original director. Jackson’s parents were both musicians. His dad had been a choir director. “The Beatles and choral music were what I heard as a little kid. That helped improve my inner ear from a very young age,” he said. Seeing the 1968 musical film “Oliver” on TV as a kid helped, too. Jackson memorized all the parts and realized he wanted to be a performer. “That lit a fire.”
Sounds and song for the voiceless
I met with Jackson in January because, as a jazz and blues vocalist, I’m always interested in the power of music, and the S.O.S. choir gives voice to people, generally whether they have power or not. I first heard about the choir from my accompanist James Campbell when we were playing a jazz gig at an upscale hotel downtown. James is the choir’s regular piano player.
James was describing homelessness as the great social issue of our times. At his urging, I joined the Dec. 21 interfaith vigil for the more than 240 people who perished in 2018 on the streets of San Francisco. The S.O.S. choir was singing:
Let there be peace on Earth, and let it begin with me …
The vigil organizers stressed that their event, held annually, is not political, it’s about paying tribute to each person. “Do we have a goal in mind, like ‘This is going to change the problem of homelessness or housing in the city’? No. But it may open some people’s eyes and hearts a little more,” said Reverend Monique Ortiz, pastor of Santa Maria y Santa Marta Lutheran Church.
As part of the ceremony, the names of the dead and ages, if known, were read aloud. With each name came the soothing peal of a bell, the kind that might signal the start of a meditation session. The single sound, simply repeated, stood in for the voices of those who no longer could speak.
“Philip, 58.”
<Ring>
“Jessica, 31.”
<Ring>
My friend James held one of many signs embroidered with the names of the dead. It was someone he had known. James had just learned that night of his passing.
This side of crazy
Jackson has been homeless or, as he said, “house-less,” off and on since 2002. He and his partner now each get about $1,100 per month in Social Security payments, but it’s not enough to cover rent. Capricious evictions are common for those with unstable housing, he said, and the pair now alternate between staying with family and staying temporarily at hotels.
With rents so high in San Francisco, this idea of having a place and being housed and having a place is “getting farther and farther from our grasp,” he told me.
Why does he qualify for Social Security benefits? Because I am crazy, he said, half-jokingly.
“You don’t look crazy,” I replied.
“Well,” he said, “you should be on this side of it.”
Jackson explained that he has post-traumatic stress disorder and Bell’s palsy, which causes paralysis on one side of the face. His conditions mean he doesn’t function that well, though he can handle some part-time paid work as a musician.
Rags To riches
The day after our breakfast, I reported bright and early to my regular job. I’m a full-time journalist who writes about the big-bucks, high-stakes pharmaceutical industry. I was covering the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, held every January at the Westin St. Francis hotel in Union Square. It’s the big event of the year for biotech business, drawing 9,000 official attendees and tens of thousands more to the surrounding events and meetings. Every crevice of the surrounding neighborhood becomes a potential place for wheeling and dealing.
Prices for everything shoot sky-high during “JPM Week.” A hotel room can cost $1,000 or more per night. Prices for just about everything else, from coffee to meeting spaces, are also exorbitant, as attendees and journalists have reported. The logo of the 2019 meeting was a golden pill. That seemed in poor taste given all the national attention on high drug prices, such as stories of folks rationing their insulin because they can’t afford full doses.
At one session inside the St. Francis, a biotech CEO told investors that his company planned to charge $2.1 million for its gene therapy, a product meant to be a cure, and he laid out its plan for mortgage-style payments to make it happen.
‘When you start seeing people as individuals who have talents and abilities, I think it does a lot to further the compassion in the world.’ —Mark Jackson
As I made my way with difficulty and discomfort through the crowded hallways of the St. Francis, complaints about San Francisco were piling up. There was plenty of grousing about the high costs. But many attendees expressed squeamishness about the state of our streets as well. As one Twitter user put it, “plenty of homeless using the sidewalks/streets as toilets too.” People asked: after nearly four decades should JPM move to another town? There was even a hashtag: #MoveJPM.
It seemed a bit rich that the health-care capitalists in town couldn’t stomach the market-rate prices. And for those who didn’t like the inconvenience of human suffering on the streets, there was a chance to put money down instead of complaints. Journalists at the biotech publication Stat started a GoFundMe campaign for the local LavaMae program, which provides mobile showers and bathrooms for the homeless. The effort targeted $2,500 and brought in $12,635.
Pick yourself up, dust yourself off
I was singing the blues to myself to get through the week of rainstorms, wall-to-wall meetings, and even a skinned knee after I slipped on a wet sidewalk rushing to a meeting.
I was ready for something more uplifting, and I got it on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. The sun was shining, my knee felt better, and I walked into Saint Paulus, for an S.O.S. choir rehearsal.
‘Attitude. Attitude. Attitude. You are good. Let them know it.’ —Sally Ann Ryan, choir director
They were preparing for the coming weekend and a ceremony in honor of a new high-rise to be built on the former historic grounds of Saint Paulus, on Gough Street at Eddy. It was erected in the 1890s and was one of the locations in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 thriller Vertigo, but it burned down in 1995. (The developer is slated to build 95 units, 11 of them to be deemed affordable. Two floors of the site will serve as a new home for Saint Paulus.)
After the warmups, James the pianist asked me to sing a solo; I could pick any song as long as it had a positive message. I selected Bob Dylan’s 1997 Grammy-award winning “Make You Feel My Love.”
When the rain is blowing in your face and the whole world is on your case
I could offer you a warm embrace, to make you feel my love
When the shadows and the stars appear and there is no one there to dry your tears
I could hold you for a million years, to make you feel my love …
The choir then shifted into the Depression-era swing tune “Pick Yourself Up,” by Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields:
Now nothing’s impossible
I’ve found for when my chin is on the ground
I pick myself up, dust myself off, and start all over again.
For the occasion, director Ryan took a hymn and wrote new lyrics about the Saint Paulus church fire and its upcoming reincarnation:
Up from the ashes our church will rise!
“What is the most important part of the song? Enthusiasm!” Ryan encouraged the choir. “Attitude. Attitude. Attitude. You are good. Let them know it.”
Over the years, the group has done a wide range of tunes. Carly Simon’s “Let the River Run,” the often-recorded “You Raise Me Up,” Eric Clapton’s “Tears in Heaven,” and Simon and Garfunkel’s “Sounds of Silence” are some of the most memorable, according to longtime member Jasmine Gee. “We have this closeness because we have been together, and we work out whatever quirks we have,” Gee said.
Another S.O.S. favorite is the hymn “In This Very Room” by Ron and Carol Harris.
In this very room, there’s quite enough love for one like me …
In this very room, there’s quite enough love for all of us.
Choir member Jimmy Flowers tells me he has been singing his whole life. “I think music is vital to everybody. It uplifts them,” he said.
Flowers is a local artist who has created street memorials to many musical legends, including Muddy Waters, Prince, David Bowie, Jimi Hendrix, and Amy Winehouse.
Flowers works as a gardener and lives in a hotel. Since the 1970s, he has fed the homeless with leftover food at the end of the night from the city’s restaurants. (Tartine had “nice beautiful loaves of bread, only a few hours old.”) He sometimes throws in a song or a magic trick. “I go out and entertain people and try to lift up their spirits, because these are really hard times for everybody,” Flowers said.
Since the beginning, one of the purposes of the S.O.S. choir has been to give homeless people a sense of belonging. A place to be, said Jackson. “I can see people in the choir becoming involved again and plugging back into life.”
The choir members are also like ambassadors. The people watching a performance might see the homeless population in a different light, with less fear. “When you see homelessness as an entity, it’s this kind of dark, ugly, smelly thing. When you start seeing people as individuals who have talents and abilities, I think it does a lot to further the compassion in the world,” Jackson told me.
When he said that, I thought of the people on the sidewalk I walk past every day and in the moments previously, on my way to the diner, including some people who had looked at me and said, “Happy New Year.” Voices I had ignored. I wondered how many times I hadn’t responded in kind.
As I left Saint Paulus on Martin Luther King Day, heading down Van Ness, I hummed one of the tunes from the session that day: Curtis Mayfield’s classic and often-covered “People Get Ready.”
People get ready, there’s a train a-comin’
You don’t you need no ticket, you just jump on board
All you need is faith to hear the diesels humming
Don’t need no ticket, you just thank the Lord…
Have pity on those whose chances are thinner
’Cause there’s no hiding place from the kingdom’s throne
So people get ready for the train a-comin’
You don’t need no ticket you just get on board.
Emily Hayes is a San Francisco-based journalist and vocalist. Photos are by the author unless otherwise noted.
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