By Aaron Allen, The Seattle Medium
Last Saturday, October 28th, The Total Experience Gospel Choir celebrated its 50th anniversary at Mt. Zion Baptist Church and commemorated the life’s work of its leader and choir director, Patrinell “Pat” Wright. The event was filled with emotional testimonies, ministry, and of course, excellent gospel music as past and present choir members, community members, and leaders all paid tribute to the choir and its legendary director.
Hosted by Stephanie Allen-Hodge, Total Experience class of ’73, the event had a down-south, energetic, and enthusiastic ambiance to the program that got the energy of those in attendance vibrant and flowing. “This was important to do,” says Allen-Hodge. “When Pat transitioned from earth to heaven and her family decided to do a more private life celebration for her, that left so many of us who really knew and loved her and even the general public out of an opportunity to celebrate her life, her accomplishment, and the accomplishments of the choir, and so, the bringing together and the putting together of this particular program provided that opportunity.”
“For many, and there were many, who were not able to attend but attended via live stream, it gave us the opportunity to celebrate, to embrace each other, to remember, to heal from her loss,” Allen-Hodge adds.
Patricia Oliver-Bailey, one of the coordinators of the event, also expressed the importance of this remembrance. “This was really important to happen today because most of us didn’t really have an opportunity to really have a formal saying goodbye or closing of the passing of Pat,” says Patricia Oliver-Bailey, one of the coordinators of the celebration. “As a choir member that started with the choir back in 1974, it was just so momentous for us to have it on this day for the 50th anniversary because it just culminates everything in this moment.”
Wright, a transplant from Texas and the daughter of a Baptist preacher, was the piano-playing owner of a soulful four-octave voice who began leading her father’s church choirs by age 14. Her husband Ben Wright was a teacher at Franklin High School and later became a minister. For Wright, being a choir leader was more than a job; it was her life’s calling. She later told a reporter: “At first, it wasn’t my intention to mother all of these children. I had no intention of loving them all like I do. But they needed the choir. For some, it was all they had. I can’t stand to see children hurting.”
During the 1970s, the Seattle School District hired Wright to lead the Franklin High School Gospel Choir. In that same period, the Black Experience Gospel Choir was based at Seattle’s Roosevelt High School and was overseen by school counselor Sharon Williams. Wright and Williams combined the two choirs and began rehearsing them at Mount Zion Baptist Church. In April 1973, the 57 African American students that they had assembled began coalescing, and by September, the group was renamed as the Total Experience Gospel Choir. Williams recalls the choir’s journey to prominence in securing Mt. Zion Baptist Church as a rehearsal destination.
“The choir at Roosevelt, in the beginning, only performed at the white churches in the north Seattle area or the churches of Roosevelt’s staff,” said Williams. “When we combined Franklin and Roosevelt’s choirs and became the Total Experience, the community began taking notice, the popularity shot up, and the community couldn’t get enough.”
In the following years, the Total Experience would open its doors to the children of the community and became a community choir. In 1973, Wright selected nine children from the Mt. Zion Junior Choir and on a Tuesday night, introduced them to the veteran high schoolers. Apprehensive about the skill set of the young choir members, the high schoolers sat and listened. The talent that came out of the mouths of the young members shocked the original members. But of course, why wouldn’t they have talent? The young children were mentored by none other than Wright.
Cheri Willoughby, one of the original members of the Mt. Zion Junior Choir that displayed her singing talents on that Tuesday, reflects on how that day impacted her life. “I joined the choir in 1973,” recalls Willoughby during the celebration. “So literally 50 years ago, downstairs in the fellowship hall of Mt. Zion Baptist Church, me and eight others, nine of us who came from Pat’s Junior Choir, and at the core of this, this choir was very much a part of our upbringings, our beginnings, our spiritual beginnings.”
“So, this is a pleasure to be here, to come back to Mt. Zion where it all started,” Willoughby continued.
From performing at the 1974 World’s Fair in Eastern Washington, to crisscrossing the United States and performing at various churches throughout the union, to traveling the globe, the Total Experience Gospel Choir has helped shape the lives of so many young people as they developed into the wonderful human beings that they are today.
“The choir’s first trip abroad was in Vancouver BC,” Williams remembers. “My mother, who was a Canadian citizen living in Vancouver, invited them to Vancouver, and I remember families [in the area] housed some of our members as well as my mother accommodated the younger children of the choir.”
In the choir’s history, they recorded albums, raised money for the community and peoples both locally and nationally, while providing ministry in the oral traditions of the Black church. During Hurricane Katrina, Wright made it her and the Total Experience’s mission to provide the citizens of Louisiana with the necessary aid needed to help them heal.
The Total Experience was the mentorship home for generations of young Black in Seattle. When the choir transitioned from a high school choir to a community choir, young people joined the famed choir in droves, sustaining its ministry for generations.
“Celebrating Pat’s legacy and then also the experience of this choir, I just really feel that Pat was a gift to us and this earth,” says Oliver-Bailey. “She left a gift to all of these choir members who’ve had wonderful experiences and the wonderful things that she taught us, and so what you are experiencing today, in this moment, is just an example of what she put into us.”
