Growing up with the Sunday School version of This Little Light of Mine, it’s been funny in my life to gradually realize what a powerful song it’s been for our nation for purposes outside of Sunday School and how great it sounds when you have a large group of people singing it together for a reason. It’s great when you have a song that’s so malleable like that.

As a child, starting to recognize the power of singing in large groups: for me, this started with singing at church or at national church meetings with a few thousand people all singing together. It’s at the same time awesome and scary. In a group situation like that you can feel that mob power and realize that it can be used for good or evil. Outside of a church situation, I encountered the large-group singing at folk concerts or video versions of large-scale protests. As I’ve grown older, I’ve realized that working with groups of singers is important.