Now THAT’S what I call singing! Volume 3

Many moons ago I wrote a couple of posts to share the kind of songs I like from traditions all over the world.



I thought it was about time I added a few more!

Now THAT’S what I call singing! Volume 2

Last week in Now THAT’S what I call singing! Volume 1 I shared some of my favourite songs from Europe: Corsica, Georgia, Russian orthodox, gypsy, the Balkans and Bulgaria.



This week it’s the turn of the rest of the world!

Africa

I was at a residential theatre workshop in Wales many, many years ago and there were three black guys (from London I think) who taught me a song on the beach one day. They hadn’t got it quite right as it turned out, but it blew me away nonetheless. It was called Shosholoza. One of my favourite versions is by the The Drakensberg Boys Choir. In this video you can even learn all the separate parts!

Since then I have learnt songs (and dances!) from all across Africa and have over 80 in my repertoire. In a recent African weekend workshop I taught songs from the North African Bedouins, Cameroon, Ghana, Congo, Nigeria, Guinea, Gabon, Zimbabwe and South Africa.

Hard to choose a few, but here are some of my favourites: Koloi ya Elijah (South Africa):

Vamudara (Zimbabwe):

Noyana (South Africa):

Pacific islands

New Zealand Maori songs have always attracted me because of their harmonies that are rather jazz- or blues-like. One song that’s been in our repertoire for some time is Pokarekare ana. I originally arranged it for three equal voices (we didn’t have any blokes in the choir then!), but later added a bass part.

We also do songs from the Pacific islands including the Cook Islands (Te oonu) and Hawaii (Heke hau):

Gospel, spirituals and hymns

I don’t have a religious bone in my body, but there are gospel songs and spirituals out there which are just gorgeous. I love the energy, grace and beauty of a lot of these songs. One of the first such songs that I taught is called Bright morning star. It is reputed to be of Shaker origin, but there is no clear evidence for this. Many people think it is a Kentucky/ Ozark/ Appalachian hymn.

Hard to choose favourites, but here are some that I really like: My lord what a mourning

I’m gonna sing ‘til the spirit moves in my heart (great sentiment!):

 All my trials (from the Bahamas):

Sea shanties

I’m a sucker for the slow, gentle shanties that probably weren’t used on board ship to do heavy work. They are haunting and still send shivers up my spine no matter how many times I hear them.

Perhaps the most famous one in our repertoire is Shenandoah. It should maybe be titled ‘Rolling River’ or ‘Missouri’, since many versions don’t even mention Shenandoah! Our version speaks about the love of a geographical location (other versions talk about the love of a ‘redskin maiden’).

Lowlands away is one of the early songs I taught to my first choir WorldSong. For a change, I gave the melody to the men! Here is a version from The Corries:

I’m not averse to upbeat, loud shanties though! I taught Hanging Johnny to my Singing Safari for the Warwick Folk Festival a few years ago:

British Isles

And then there’s the home country. I’ve always been in love with what is called ‘world music’ and I’m definitely not a lyric person, so songs in English often leave me cold. The answer: sing in Welsh or Scottish Gaelic!

A haunting love song from Wales: Lisa lan:

and another from the Isle of Lewis: Fhir a bhata (it turns out that Gaelic is by far the hardest language we’ve ever had to learn!):

But all is not lost for you folkies out there. Personally I’m not drawn to English folk music, but I found a really interesting arrangement on a Northern Harmony CD and ‘borrowed’ it for Woven Chords: Searching for lambs. It makes it sound very eerie and almost Eastern European (hence my attraction!):

more songs

You can find more of my favourite songs in Volume 1 and Volume 3.

where can I hear more?

Both Woven Chords and WorldSong have now released two CDs with a total of 88 tracks between them. Many of the songs in these two posts feature on these CDs. You can find full track listings and information on how to buy them here:

• Woven Chords CDs
• WorldSong CDs

You can also buy arrangements of some of the songs from my website (Lowlands away, Shenandoah, Lisa lan and more).

Chris Rowbury's website: chrisrowbury.com

What is it that you do exactly?

Sometimes it’s easier to say what we don’t do!

This is what we DON'T DO
We don’t sing classical music (well, actually, we do sing the occasional “classical” song – like Plaisir d’Amour – but the bulk of our repertoire is not the typical Western classical canon).

We don’t sing pop songs (well, actually, I recently taught Bobby McFerrin’s “Don’t worry, be happy”, and I have tried versions of U2 and the Beatles, but it doesn’t make up the bulk of our repertoire).

We don’t sing folk songs (well, actually, we do sing some English folk songs, although not many – and usually the arrangements are a little unusual – and most of our foreign songs could be said to be “folk” or traditional).

We are not a gospel choir (well, actually, we do sing quite a few gospel and spiritual numbers although we are not a church choir).

We don’t sing close harmony or barbershop (I’m not even sure what “close harmony” means! But as soon as you use words like acappella – which simply means singing without instrumental accompaniment – people immediately assume we sing barbershop).

We aren’t a religious choir (well, actually, we do sing many religious songs – who said the devil has all the best tunes! – but we are definitely a secular choir).

We aren’t like the local choral society or parish singers (now that is true, especially in the sense that we don’t stand in neat rows identically dressed with books in our hands).

We don’t do songs from the shows or easy listening music (that’s true too – mainly because I don’t like musicals!).

And this is what we DO do
So what is it that we do do, and why is it important?

We sing unaccompanied songs in harmony. That is, we don’t involve musical instruments, and most of the time we’re not all singing the tune in unison.

We sing songs from all around the world (in the original foreign language!), usually from cultures and traditions where there is a strong harmony tradition like Eastern Europe, New Zealand, USA, South Africa. That is why we hardly ever do songs from Asia or South America: they simply don’t have a harmony singing tradition. That’s also why we don’t often do British or Irish folk songs. Although there is a harmony singing tradition in this country, songs are often delicate and story-driven so don’t really work (in my opinion) with a large choir. Same with pop songs.

Now we know what we do, the trouble is it’s hard to explain it to potential audience members for our concerts, or participants in our workshops. I’ve tried many different ways over the years, but we still get audience members saying things like: “Oh, that’s what you do ! I really enjoyed it”. How come they were surprised? Hadn't we explained what we do before they came? We know by now that if we just get people along to our workshops or concerts that (usually) they really enjoy themselves. The hard bit is just getting them through the door.

Most people just don’t have the reference points for phrases like world music or acappella or unaccompanied harmony singing. There was a point when we could refer to adverts on television. At one point Ladysmith Black Mambazo (male South African singers, sung with Paul Simon) were used to advertise Heinz baked beans, and the Bulgarian state women’s choir (made a famous CD called Les Mysteres des Voix Bulgares) were used on a car advert. But it’s not happened recently.

So for concerts we rely a lot on word of mouth and friends bringing people along. For workshops, I went through a period of designing several more popular, accessible workshops just to get people singing in harmony (e.g. ABBA, Beatles, gospel, Paul Simon – see our workshops page for more details. Shameless plug: I will be running a residential weekend version of my Paul Simon Songbook workshop in September in the Cotswolds). Having got people along and introduced them to the joys of harmony singing, I can then slip in the odd Balkan song without them noticing!

go to Chris Rowbury's website

Where are all the male singers?

I ran a gospel workshop yesterday and unexpectedly there was a good show of men. Must have been around 15 men in a group of nearly 50. We did a song which I got from the Soweto Gospel Choir and it made such a wonderful difference to the sound having those strong bass voices on the bottom!

Most of the time in my one-day workshops, men are in the minority (I’ve had just the one before now!) so I always make sure that the “tenor” part is in the women’s range. But every now and then I get caught out. I did a Beatles workshop in Coventry a while back and ended up with 20 men in a group of 40 – I had to very quickly adapt the tenor part!

Why is it that more men don’t come to singing workshops? Even in the regular mixed-voice choirs that I run the blokes are in a small minority. It has taken many years to build the bass sections up to a reasonable size so that the male and female voices balance. And even when we do manage to recruit some keen blokes, they often don’t stay for very long!

Three years ago I decided to run an annual men-only harmony singing workshop. I figured that maybe some blokes might find it intimidating to come into a mixed group where they would be in the minority, but might feel more comfortable with just other men. I hoped that I could get more men interested in singing in general, partly so that I could recruit for my own choirs, but also just to get more men singing. One year I publicised the workshop on two local BBC radio stations, sent a mail shot to all the local choirs in the East Midlands region, sent press releases to the local press in five separate towns, used word of mouth through relevant choir members, but still didn’t get a single ‘outsider’ – all the men who came were already in choirs or singing groups. So although the workshop itself gets more popular each year and I’m getting at least 25 men each time, I’ve given up trying to recruit men who might not have sung before in a group.

Why is it so hard to get men interested in singing? I thought it might be that men didn’t like being vulnerable in front of women (hence the men-only workshop), but lots of male voice choirs are having recruitment problems too, and many of them have an average age of 70+. I thought maybe that some of the stuff I do was a bit too esoteric (Georgian and Balkan singing), but I still got hardly any ‘regular’ blokes coming to the Beatles or ABBA workshops that I run. I thought maybe singing wasn’t cool and there weren’t any role models for young men, but we have bands like G4, Westlife, Take That and others, all featuring close harmony singing. There are plenty of men-only groups in other cultures with a healthy mix of ages, so is it just a British thing?

As we all know, there are so many fantastic benefits to singing, not least the stress­ busting and health side-effects. You’d think this would apply to many men in high pressure jobs. I also know that if a man can actually be persuaded to come along to a workshop, he usually ends up enjoying it. One man joined Global Harmony who hadn’t sung before in his life, and had been dragged along by a mate. He now finds himself singing glorious tenor parts in Balkan songs and having the time of his life.

This lack of men is not restricted to punters, it also applies to choir leaders. Of 220+ members of the Natural Voice Practitioners Network, only around 30 are men. I imagine it would be more comfortable for some men if the workshop leader was also a man, so perhaps there are simply not enough opportunities or role models.

In 2003, Community Music Victoria in Australia hosted a gathering to examine why singing isn't an everyday part of the male experience. 20 men and Fay White sang and talked the day away. The results of some of their discussion can be found on the CMV website.

How can we get more men involved in singing? All ideas welcome!!

go to Chris Rowbury's website