Phillip Blanchett didn’t really sing in front of others as a kid. He had allergies, and breathing was difficult. He remembers doing a solo at his church once and, well, “I try not to say that it was traumatizing,” he says and laughs, “but it was humbling, let’s just say that.”
But once, when he was 19, he found himself singing praise music in Oakland as part of an enormous choir at a national conference for his denomination, the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. Something shifted inside him.
“It was so incredible,”…
