Through gospel, a break from war

In a place where fighter jets scream through the sound barrier and Blackhawk and Chinook blades slap the night air without mercy — the sound of singing is almost ethereal in its beauty and incongruous in its setting.

The distinct and complex gospel harmonies, sung by men in the dark of night in front of a small chapel on Kandahar Airfield, seems to make everything else just disappear.

They come from different services and from different parts of the world. But when they meet, it’s as if they’ve been singing together all their lives.

Randy Whipple of Dublin, Georgia is in the U.S. Air Force. Chicago native Sam Stidwell works for government contractor DynCorp. Jeffrey Brown is from Sallis, Mississippi and serving in the U.S. Navy.

Eledrick Veal works for WGI, a private security firm and is from Montego Bay, Jamaica. Darrell Ramey, also in the Air Force, grew up in Boston.

While the men sing together in the base’s Gospel Choir — they’re also prone to impromptu jam sessions, like this night, focusing on the old spirituals they all grew up with regardless of their hometowns. For most of them, the music is a deep part of their identity.

While there’s little light on this part of the base, the men are given shape by passing headlights — silhouetted in patterns reminiscent of iPod billboards. But they’re seemingly oblivious to all but the music, moving from song to song without stopping — “Chilly Wind, “Mary Don’t You Weep,” and others. For the uninitiated, it’s difficult to tell where one begins and another ends, but that seems to be the point. Just as spirituals helped enslaved men and women forget momentarily the burden of captive lives, so too — all these years later — do these songs seem to free men, temporarily, of the burden of war.