When is a song not a song?

I’ve just come back from a fantastic week away on a song writing for voices course. During the week I came up with several ideas for songs which never really came to fruition since I couldn’t see any way of realising them. One was for solo voice and Indian drone instruments, one a ballad in a Scottish style, and another which required a swampy backing groove from a horn section. I don’t have an outlet for any of these songs really since I’m not a solo performer, don’t have a band and am not planning to make a CD!

My outlet for songs is acappella harmony groups, both large and small. Many times a choir member will come up to me and suggest a song for us. Often the song is simply not appropriate for an acappella arrangement or just won’t work with a large group. Many recorded songs these days have really important instrumental backing and if you take those familiar riffs away, there is often not much left of the song! Personally I am not a fan of those acappella arrangements where the voice impersonates an instrument or has too many “dum dums” in the backing. I recently heard a version of a song from Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. It was an amazing effort, using the voices to replicate instruments and almost sounded like the original. However, my reaction was: what’s the point? why bother? Apart from admiring the singers’ skills, I’m really not sure where the artistry and creativity is here. Why not just listen to the original? Or if there’s a trumpet needed, then simply play a trumpet. I just don’t get it. I’m really not a fan of showing off skills for skills’ sake. For me there needs to be some element of creativity or the adding of something extra to an existing song, or why bother? Particularly when the human voice is concerned – I want to hear the humanity shine through, not be convinced that actually I’m not listening to a human voice at all, but really a keyboard!

Then there are wonderful, delicate ballads with many verses telling an extraordinary story. However, if arranged for a large choir the delicacy can be destroyed and the story and words completely lost in the mix. So the question is: when is a song suitable for a purely vocal arrangement and when is it not? I guess some of that is down to taste, but I don’t think it’s true that anything can be adapted for just voices.

My point also extends to cover versions generally. If you’re going to cover an existing song, then you have to add something to the original or else there’s no point. Just reproducing the original is a waste of time!

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Choosing songs for a concert

Once again a concert is looming. Time to figure out what songs to sing. WorldSong has a repertoire of around 190 songs so it’s not as though we don’t have many to choose from! However, some of these are warm-up songs, some are songs we’ve not done for many years, some we’ve done too many times recently, and some are only known to a few long-serving members of the choir. To make things slightly easier, this next concert is our Christmas one, so we’ll need to include all our Christmas songs. To date we have learnt 10 Christmas songs in WorldSong, and plan to learn two more this term. That makes choosing songs slightly easier, but it still means there’s lots of space to fill and doesn’t help with the running order.

My normal method is to look at what songs we’ve sung in the last concert and try not to duplicate that entirely. I always put all the new songs we’ve learnt this term into the concert. This means that any new members can join in with at least six or so songs without having to tackle any of our vast back catalogue. I also try and keep in songs that are relatively new, perhaps all those learnt in the last two terms. However, I do like to ring the changes so if someone comes to several concerts in a row they don’t just keep hearing the same set. I also try and accommodate those people who perhaps only come to see us once a year at our Christmas or Spring concerts.

I keep good records of the songs we’ve sung in each concert, so I look up the last couple we’ve done, and the same time slot a year earlier. I cut out songs that we’ve done in both of the last two concerts, plus most of what we did the same time last year. I add all our new ones, and a few that we’ve not sung for a year or more. Then I look at the spread of genres and countries of origin and try to get a good cross-section. Finally I look at the mix of upbeat versus gentle songs and again try to find a balance.

I have rough timings of all the songs in our repertoire, and I reckon that as a rule of thumb, we need about 2/3 of song material to fill a concert. So, for a 90 minute concert (two 45 minute halves), we’ll need 60 minutes of song material. The rest of the time is taken up with my between song banter and singers getting into position. I find that this formula is pretty accurate and we usually come in on time.

Since most of our songs are very short, we tend to get through 30 or so in a 90 minute concert, so the next problem is to find some sensible kind of running order. There is no one way of doing this, and I may use a different method each time. And as I pointed out in an earlier post (Order, order!) I wonder if the audience notice any way!

I did start a trend a way back of joining songs together. These segue ways only work if I can force several songs into the same key, and seem to work best (for some reason) with African songs. I guess if I tried a little harder I could squeeze enough songs together into some kind of medley that we could fill up a complete concert!

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Moving on

After ten fantastic years with WorldSong, man and boy, I have decided the time has come to pass the choir on to other capable hands. From January 2008 the new musical director of WorldSong will be Una May Olomolaiye.

As you probably know by now, I am rather over-sensitive to complacency and habit (see Fighting Habit and Complacency)! I am always on the lookout for different ways of doing things, new challenges, ways of keeping people on their toes, possibilities for development and improvement, ways of raising the bar and stretching people (myself included!). Some people resist this and would be more than happy to continue doing the same thing week in, week out. Unfortunately, I’m the leader (of the gang, I am!) and if you sign up for my choir, you sign up to my vision and my way of working.

I really do believe that by constantly reviewing the way that I do things, finding new ways of approaching familiar material, having high expectations, taking people out of their comfort zone, etc. then the group improve their individual skills, the overall quality of the choir is better, and we constantly improve and move forwards. The upshot of this philosophy is that (inevitably) there will come a time for me to hand over to someone else.

I characterised this change by saying to the choir last week that it’s time to take the training wheels off! Inevitably, any group of people working as a team with a ‘leader’ might come to believe that they can only do what they do because of the particular person leading them. Obviously, the way that any particular group functions is highly influenced by the style and approach of their leader (conductor, director, coach – whatever). That person (if they’re any good!) helps to mould and shape the group, helps them to work as a team. But I believe that there comes a point where that person should try to remove themselves from the picture, to make the group realise their own strengths and capabilities. Strengths, talents and abilities that have now become independent of whoever happens to be leading them. In fact, in terms of being a musical director and/ or teacher, I believe that my job is truly finished when I have succeeded in making myself redundant!

Whenever there is a strong leader of a group or enterprise (artistic director of a theatre, conductor of an orchestra, curator of a gallery) it is very easy to think that any and all successes and achievements are down to that leader. It may well be the case that a particularly strong individual leader can dramatically improve a group or project, but we must also realise that the individuals making up the group are also of vital importance and help to create the overall ‘flavour’. After all, if it weren’t for the members, then the enterprise wouldn’t exist at all! I strongly believe that any such job should only be held for around five years, after which the leaders could perhaps rotate and move onto other similar organisations. Otherwise galleries or orchestras (or choirs) can become stale and too much a reflection of one particular individual’s vision.

So now it’s time for a big change, and the choir will move forward without me onto different (and hopefully bigger and better) things. I am very sad to be moving on, and will always have a very soft spot for WorldSong as it was the first choir that I formed and directed. However, I am also very excited to see the choir grow in the future and to see what further delights are in store for all concerned. I won’t be completely disappearing however, and will stay in very close contact with both the choir and the new musical director Una May. Here’s to the future!!!!!

(I will, of course, continue to write this blog and to lead Woven Chords)

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Dress to impress?

Many choirs dress identically when they perform. Some have a choir uniform, some choose a particular colour for a particular concert, some have specially made t-shirts. I get requests sometimes from my own choir members for some kind of uniform when we perform. Unfortunately for them, I really dislike identically dressed choirs!

For me, wearing the same uniform removes any sense of individuality. I can only assume that is why some choirs do it: they want everyone to look identical so there is an overall sameness. I presume that this is to create some kind of overall identity for the choir, to show that everyone belongs to the same unit, that they are all part of the same team. It gives a clear indication that this choir is different from other choirs, that the chosen colour or design is some kind of logo or aid to recognition. Perhaps it gives individual choir members a sense of belonging, a kind of banner or flag to unite them and under which they perform for the honour of the choir. Perhaps it avoids distractions for the audience so they can concentrate on the music.

On the other hand, what I see is a group of clones, an attempt to wipe out any sense of uniqueness and to promote the (false) impression that everyone is the same. This is also carried over into the sound that such choirs make. There is every attempt to arrive at a perfect ‘blend’ of sound so that no one individual voice stands out. There is no scope for individual expression, there is a conscious suppression of any kind of difference. For such choirs I imagine that the prospect of actually cloning their best singer would produce their perfect choir!

When I see such choirs performing I wonder why I am there. Why not simply listen to the choir on the radio or on CD? There is nothing to look at: everyone looks and sounds the same, they’re even encouraged to use the same mouth shape and facial expression. If there is something special about hearing the choir live, then simply hide them behind a backdrop or have them perform in the gallery or from behind the audience. Perhaps there could be some kind of film or video projection or dance performance to watch whilst we’re listening. To my mind it is very much like watching an orchestra: a sea of identically dressed violinists all bowing at exactly the same time, all focused on their music and paying us no attention whatsoever.

It seems that this is what most people think of when they see the word ‘choir’ used. It represents a passive experience sitting for a couple of hours in fixed seats watching nothing much happening and hearing some ‘perfect’ rendition of a particular piece of music. It doesn’t really compare well with a rock concert or a stage musical or son et lumière or River Dance. So why bother? And in fact many people don’t bother. It’s very old fashioned and rather unexciting. Which is perhaps why the average age of audiences at concerts is quite old. It’s rather safe and non-threatening. There is a sense of control and order (identical costume, identical voices, no quick movements, no surprises).

Maybe we need a different word for ‘choir’. Maybe we need a different form of performance to bring in younger audiences and audiences who wouldn’t normally go to a ‘concert’. If we do that, however, I don’t think we can get away with static rows of identically dressed singers. To my mind, aiming for uniformity destroys the humanity inherent in a group of human beings coming together to give voice. I want to hear the individual voices which have chosen to work together as a group, I want to hear the tiny errors and individual accents that make people who they are, I want to experience the rich texture and spine-tingling harmonies that result when a group of people choose to share their voices together.

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Not enough venues to go round

As I mentioned last time, a few of us sang at a friend’s wedding the other week. It was in a beautiful old village church with a wonderful acoustic. We managed to just about squeeze 18 people in front of fixed pews, next to a stone pulpit and between two tall pillars. (I chose not to sing from the choir stalls. Why on earth do they have these things? Don’t the two halves of the choir just end up singing to each other? I really can’t see the reasoning behind the design!). The organist reminded me that the main Woven Chords choir had sung there one Christmas and been very well received. Of course, those were the days when we had less than 40 members (and it was a tight squeeze even then!). He wondered why we hadn’t come back and I had to explain that it would be impossible to fit 80 singers into such a small church. In the early days we used to frequent such small village churches and hence manage six or so concerts each year. Those were the days!

It has always been difficult to find suitable venues for choirs. Churches are usually very welcoming (and often free!), but with their fixed architecture they can normally only accommodate small singing groups or choirs. Some of the more modern Methodist and Baptist churches have a more flexible layout and some even have stages, but not every town has one of these. Apart from large regional theatres (which tend not to take local community groups, or whose auditorium is just too large to fill), there are really not many venues available to us. Hence churches, which I now see more and more as a valuable community resource independent of any religious affiliation.

There are, however, certain small-minded individuals who think that, just because we perform in a church, that we must be a ‘church choir’, and since they’re not religious they wouldn’t want to come and see us would they? This is despite the many laudable local and rural music touring schemes (e.g. Music in Quiet Places) which see small instrumental and vocal ensembles regularly performing in churches. It’s a shame that these ‘certain people’ are so small minded, as they just don’t know what they’re missing!

The fact that we’re often performing in churches adds yet another stereotype image to what we do in addition to the word ‘choir’ which itself puts lots of people off. Which is why I’m more and more tempted to try and find theatrical rather than musical venues. I have a current bee in my bonnet about making singing performances more varied and interesting as I don’t think it’s enough these days for an audience to just see a static semi-circle of identically dressed singers standing on stage. More on this later!

Are there any other large choirs out there who have found a solution to finding suitable venues?

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Thank you, thank you – you’re too, too kind!

There have been several times when performing that it’s not been appropriate for the audience to show their appreciation. Once was at a funeral, and most recently, at a wedding. There was also a time when we did a concert in a church and the first song was met with silence. I subtly mentioned to the audience that they were allowed to clap if they chose to and from then on it was just like a normal concert. I guess people thought that since they were in a church it wasn’t appropriate to clap!

To be fair, at the recent wedding there was applause after we had finished our little set when the vicar thanked us for singing. Of course, at the funeral, it simply wasn’t fitting. I was singing at the funeral and it was then that I realised how much I had become used to applause after each song. It was very, very strange to perform a song and have no feedback whatsoever. It can be similar when performing outdoors in a public space and people are just passing by.

Why do we need the applause? After all, it’s pretty much a convention. It’s quite rare that people don’t applaud at all. Sometimes it may be more enthusiastic or longer, but usually there’s some kind of smattering. So it’s not as if we need approval since the audience will probably clap under most circumstances. Maybe it’s just for us to know that they’ve actually heard us, whether they’ve enjoyed it or not.

In many cultures the idea of the separation between audience and performers is an alien one. Everybody is a performer, and everyone is an audience at the same time. The ‘performers’ are not special in any way, they haven’t spent time rehearsing and polishing, they just perform – singing, dancing, whatever – because that’s what everybody does in that culture. So the notion of applause and appreciation is not relevant.

Sometimes applause can be a little embarrassing. Many of our songs are very, very short so we can get through up to 30 songs in any one concert. On those occasions it feels like we’re expecting the audience to clap every few minutes (which they do), but it does feel a little like overkill. Also, with a big choir like Woven Chords which has around 80 members, it can be a little awkward when we make our first entrance. As the first few singers enter onto the stage there is enthusiastic applause which slowly but surely begins to die out as the audience realise that there are many, many more choir members to appear yet

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The Natural Voice approach

What exactly is the Natural Voice (note the capital letters!) approach to singing and voice? It’s something we’re struggling with in the Natural Voice Practitioners’ Network as I mentioned in an earlier blog (The Natural Voice Practitioners’ Network). It may seem to many outsiders to be some kind of wishy-washy organic wholefood let-it-all-hang-out way of singing, but is in fact a very specific discipline or approach to voice work (not just singing by any means).

When practitioners join the network, they state on the membership form that their “approach to teaching voice and song is in harmony with the Philosophy and Working Principles of the Natural Voice Practitioners’ Network”. Which is all very well and we had hoped then to form a network of like-minded individuals who all approached voice work in a similar way. However, over the years as the network has grown, we have become a very broad church which includes practitioners who focus primarily on sound healing, running community choirs, spiritual chanting, working with pregnant mothers, using voice for therapy, singing contemporary compositions, etc. etc. Although many practitioners working in these areas do use a Natural Voice approach, there is a danger that the term itself is becoming a catch-all phrase of convenience which is beginning to lose its strict meaning.

I am currently helping to formulate a code of practice which encapsulates more accurately what it means to use the Natural Voice approach. It is far from complete, but I thought I’d mention some of the key points here in order to try and clarify for people what our approach to voice is.

Currently the code is divided into four main areas:

• physicality
• accessibility
• cultural context
• style and approach

Physicality
This is the foundation stone to the Natural Voice approach. It reminds us that the voice is connected to and rooted in the whole body, and that each person’s voice is unique. The whole body supports the voice and needs to find a subtle balance between relaxation and alertness. An understanding of the body, breath, emotion and sound connection is central to our approach and demands physical awareness and exercising.

Accessibility
Basically nobody should be excluded from music-making. Singing is our birthright and should be accessible to all. Hence we don’t assume any prior knowledge, try to steer clear of jargon, use a variety of teaching styles to maximise everyone’s involvement, and try to accommodate those with physical and other restrictions.

Cultural context
We often use material from other cultures than our own and wherever possible, we find out and explain the historical and cultural context of a song or piece and credit its composer or source. We also choose material for our work which will be culturally accessible to everyone in the group.

Style and approach
We approach our work in ways that are unlocking, freeing, allowing, releasing, non-judgmental, and encouraging.

This is only a first stab and will need a lot more work, but I think it’s a step in the right direction and should hopefully clarify a little what is meant by the Natural Voice.

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Preparing to sing

As a Natural Voice practitioner each workshop or choir session that I run begins with a physical and vocal warm up. I slowly prepare people’s voices for singing as well as making a strong connection between their voice and their body. This is something I do regularly so it has become second nature.

However, many people who have not worked with me before often comment on the warm ups: “That was fun and different!”, “I’m not used to doing a warm up like that”, and even “Why do you bother to do a warm up? We never do in my choir”. This has often set me to thinking about what kinds of warm ups other choirs do (I can’t imagine! Just scales perhaps?), but also why do I bother to do warm ups at all?

In my regular weekly sessions with choirs the warm up is also a vocal training session. Over the weeks I can help people improve their breathing for singing, help them to connect with their body, increase their vocal range, improve the richness of their voice, etc. But for one-off sessions it is simply a warm up. My angle is that most people don’t sing regularly and also lead fairly stressful, unnatural and sedentary daily working lives. They need to be eased into singing so they don’t hurt their throat, they need to relax from the muscle tensions and stresses of the day, they need to re-connect to their bodies, they need to become aware again of their physical presence. The warm up acts as a transition from daily life to that attentive, relaxed, listening state we need to be in when we sing with others.

To demonstrate this quite clearly, I sometimes skip the warm up entirely and launch straight into a song. Then afterwards I do our usual warm up and then sing the same song again, asking if people notice any difference. Usually everyone notices something significant and enthusiastically join in with the warm up for the next few weeks!

In the late 1980s two Georgian ethnomusicologists (Edisher Garakanidze and Josef Jordania) came over to work with a group of singers in Cardiff for a week. After a couple of days of singing together, somebody asked if we could perhaps do a warm up before we launched into the songs each day. Both Georgians were rather confused, didn’t know what a warm up was, but said it was fine to go ahead. They watched in some amusement as we went through our paces! Which leads me to the following heresy: I don’t think you need to warm up every time you sing. If you sing regularly, every day perhaps, as people do in many cultures, then there is probably no need unless you want to access the limits of your vocal range.

Of course, the easiest way to find out whether you need a warm up or not is just to try without one next time and see what difference it makes. Me, I enjoy them!

Next week I’ll be writing in more detail about the Natural Voice approach to singing (The Natural Voice approach).

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Sing it like you mean it

I have to admit that I’m not really a lyric person. I might have been listening to a particular pop song in English for years when I suddenly realise what it’s actually about! Or someone might point out the really obvious meaning to me, which until that point has totally gone over my head.

I’ve read quite a few books on working with choirs and singing in general, and without exception they all talk about how to convey the meaning of the song and how the meaning affects the vocal delivery. I have one such book in front of me now: Choral Charisma: singing with expression by Tom Carter (I’m not singling this book out, just that it’s fairly typical of its type). There is page upon page of stuff like “Connecting to the meaning”, “Analysing the text”, “Plot and character”, “Making an authentic personal connection with the text”, “Matching music and meaning”. There is just one paragraph in the whole book called “When the language is foreign”. The author says: “The dilemma for singers in such situations is clear. If they want to connect to the texts, they need to know their meanings”.

Many of the songs in our repertoire come from traditions where the expression and communication is mainly through the music rather than the words. Often cultures with rich harmony traditions have songs with very simple – even banal – words. In contrast, traditions where the lyrics are important – such as ballads and storytelling songs – the song text is not complicated by harmonies or complex musical accompaniment. Some of the songs we sing don’t make much sense, even if we do have a translation! So how do we go about singing such songs?

For example, the following are rough translations of a few love songs that we have in our repertoire:

“My sweetheart is wearing a red fez.” Crven fesić (Bosnia)

“Oh, Dobric, your cool waters flow to three towns. There, gather the young boys and girls of Sibenik.” Oj Dobriću (Croatia)

“Girl with the black eyes, come here and marry me or give me a knife.” (the implication being so he can kill himself). Gogo shavtala (Georgia)

“As my own I graze you, and you are dragging yourself behind me, little doll.” (to a sheep!) Ja Helo (Helokane) (Czechoslovakia)

“There’s a handkerchief on the road where my dear one passes. He made a new cart with two horses and no driver.” Maramica na stazi (Croatia)

Maybe something of the poetic nature of the lyrics has been lost in the translation, but I personally don’t find that these English translations help me to sing the song! In any case, there are often cultural differences. What to our ears might sound rather like a military march, or a dirge, or an upbeat dance song might just as easily be a love song or a song of loss and grief.

Some people say that as long as you stay true to the spirit of the meaning of a song, then it’s OK. But I believe that every song has its own unique feel which cuts across cultures. I believe that as long as you stay true to the music of the song, then you can’t go far wrong. The sound of the lyrics (even if you don’t understand them), the melody and the harmonies all go to make up a whole which suggests a mood or feeling, regardless of what the song means (if it’s a well-written song!). Sometimes it’s even useful to do this with a song that you can understand. Why not try singing a song with English lyrics using nonsense syllables and try to find the underlying musicality of the song? Sometimes the music can get lost beneath the words and the desire to communicate the meaning of the lyrics.

Even though I’m not a lyric person, I try very hard to never teach a song unless I know what the lyrics mean and have some sense of the background and cultural context to a song. We may not use the meaning to help us sing, but it’s important that we respect the tradition that the song has come from.

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Fitting into the right musical box

I regularly get emails out of the blue from various singing groups scattered across the globe. Only yesterday I had one from a Russian ensemble, and a few weeks ago I had one from a women’s group in the US. They all ask if I can help them to set up a tour in the UK. I’m afraid that I almost always turn down their offer. I’m not a producer, I don’t have any particular connection with any venues, and besides which, I really don’t know whether this kind of stuff goes down well in the UK.

The US has several well-known “world music” singing groups, for instance Kitka, Northern Harmony and Libana. They regularly gig in the US, have a large following and release CDs on a frequent basis. Northern Harmony has toured the UK several times, but even though their gigs are well-attended, they’re usually off the beaten track, often in churches and small village halls. I was once told by a local rural touring producer that “acappella just doesn’t sell”. So not only is it hard for groups such as Artisan and Coope, Boyes and Simpson from the folk world to get gigs, but virtually impossible for any groups who sing so-called “world music”.

There may well be audiences in London for specialist groups like the London Bulgarian Choir and Maspindzeli, but elsewhere groups like this are few and far between and seldom seen at gigs or festivals. I once approached a big summer festival only to be told that they want “music that people can dance to”. i.e. loud and boppy. So is there no room for those gorgeous unaccompanied harmonies from Georgia, Bulgaria, Russia and beyond? Do African songs always need big dances and accompaniment, or can we do the occasional Zimbabwean lullaby?

How come there are more groups in the US and they get regular audiences? Is it because they have a bigger imigrant populations from harmony singing countries like Croatia and Macedonia, for example?

I always used to think that the sort of choirs that I run are unique in their repertoire, and hence something special and different. That may well be the case, but instead of that being a selling point, it seems to be a drawback because nobody knows exactly which ‘box’ we fit into. I use the tag “world music choir”, but either people don’t know what the phrase “world music” is or think it has to involve guitar playing from Mali. I get loads of requests from people wanting a choir for their wedding and I think we offer a really interesting alternative: South African wedding songs, church songs from Georgia – all to make your day special and unique. But when I write back, I never get a reply because most people want the standard Ave Maria or the gospel singers that they saw in the movie Sister Act. (We are, however, doing a wedding in the near future for a choir member who really appreciates what we do!).

Hence I say that I can’t help these groups from abroad looking for gigs. I simply don’t know who to approach, which venues or producers may be interested. It’s taken WorldSong 10 long years to build up a half-way decent following in our own back yard, I just hope that there are enough similar groups out there that we can build awareness across the whole UK and get to see more “world music” singing. Spread the word!

Of course, this presupposes that we can clearly describe exactly what it is that we do do. Many people aren't familiar with terms such as “world music” or “roots music”. This was the subject of an earlier post: What is it that you do exactly?

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Hidden culture

I’ve just spent the last two weeks travelling through the Baltic States: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. I was really looking forward to catching some traditional singing since I had been told that all three countries have a rich and well-preserved history of song.

The Lonely Planet Guide said: “Song is the soul of the Balts. And nowhere is this expressed more eloquently than in the national song festivals that unite Estonia, Latvia and Lithuanians worldwide in a spellbinding performance of song. The crescendo is a choir of up to 30,000 voices, singing its heart out to an audience of 100,000 or more, while scores of folk dancers in traditional dress throw a bewitching kaleidoscope of patterns across the vast, open-air stage”.

And the Rough Guide said: “The characteristic Baltic singing festivals – hugely popular events – played a major role in expressing the national identities of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania during their move to independence.”

Unfortunately most of the big folk song festivals had already happened earlier in the year!

In the 19^th century, great collections of folk lyrics and tunes were made: over 1.4 million folk lyrics and 30,000 tunes have been written down in Latvia and the largest archive in Lithuanian folklore alone contains over 400,000 collected songs.

I also read in a local guide book that if you ask a Lithuanian about his country’s traditional culture, you would most likely hear about Lithuanian songs and love of singing. Apparently, only a few decades ago, most women of the Dzukija region still knew a hundred songs; the most accomplished singers remembered as many as four hundred. Often, people sang more than they spoke!

The choral folk and runo-song arrangements of Estonian composer Veljo Tormis are very popular, having influence as far away as the Estonian community in Australia! And it’s not just old, dyed-in-the-wool folk fans who follow the traditional songs, the annual Viljandi folk festival in Estonia each July attracts a young audience to see a variety of roots bands.

So how come in the restaurants and shops the music was Russian pop or Bob Marley or classical muzak, and the new Baltic MTV was full of Baltic rock of the bad 1970s kind? Where was this vibrant traditional culture that I’d been reading so much about?

I was also yearning to see some kind of authentic folk craft in the shops rather than the usual watered-down tourist rubbish (is that what people really want, or do we buy it because it’s the only thing on offer?).

It got me thinking about how visible so-called traditional culture is in any particular society. There is clearly a rich and vibrant folk tradition in the Baltics in both music and applied arts, yet on an everyday level it is invisible. What happens to all those thousands of people who join in the song festivals the rest of the year? Do they simply stop singing? What is a culture’s folk tradition any way? I guess you could say that the derivative Baltic pop music on the radio, and the buying of cheap Russian clothes imports in the markets is an expression of today’s traditional culture. Yet my background reading suggests that there is a lively, current interest in songs and music that has been handed down over generations – songs for every occasion: weddings, rye harvest, summer solstice, funerals. It is an integral part of Baltic society and runs deep. So why did I have to go hunting in modern record shops to try and find recordings of folk music hidden amongst the stacks of death metal and American pop?

What would a foreigner’s impression of our folk traditions be if she arrived at Heathrow, took the tube into London and wandered down Oxford Street? Sure we have many lively and well-attended folk clubs throughout the country, but they’re not that visible at first glance.

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Holiday time!

No blog this week as I'm off sunning myself in 30°C temperatures in the Baltic states! Stay tuned for more next week.

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It does exactly what it says in the blurb – or not!

Just a quick one this week as I’m just about to leave for two weeks travelling in the Baltic states: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. It’s supposed to be a holiday, but I’m hoping to pick up some songs for future use! I won’t be posting next week as I will be somewhere in the middle of a Latvian national park and I’m not taking any technology with me. Normal service will be resumed on Sunday 19^th August.

Last week I ran an open workshop for the Warwick Folk Festival. It was billed as “World Songs” with a sub-heading “community choirs”. Rather an odd way of describing what I do, but nevertheless we had a healthy 40+ people turn up and they seemed to enjoy themselves. I’m always very nervous before a workshop, no matter how many times I’ve done them, especially when there are no advance bookings. I had absolutely no idea how many people would turn up, and convinced myself I would be happy with just six or so. Hence I was very pleasantly surprised by the turnout, even attracting about eight blokes.

As is often the case, the first few people through the door were a bit hesitant as they too did not know what to expect. I always try to put people at ease and usually ask: “Have you come to sing?” (just in case they had expected to attend a ceramics class and had wandered into the wrong room by mistake). I get many responses to this question. Often: “Oh, no, I’m just here with my friend. I can’t sing”. More often than not I persuade them to join in and they end up having a good sing by the end of the workshop. This time a couple of women looked especially hesitant and said something like: “Yes, I think so, but it depends what it’s going to be like”. They went on to say that the day before they had been on a ballad workshop and had been made to feel rather inferior and left out as they didn’t know all 30 verses of a particular song!

I tried to put their minds at ease, and very soon they were smiling and joining in wholeheartedly with the African songs. It made me realise that there were still people out there who somehow managed to put people off singing, even when those people had made the effort to turn up to a workshop and were looking forward to sing. I wonder what would have happened to those two women’s confidence if they had not come to my workshop, but just left the festival with their first experience to take away with them.

It also made me think that it’s very important to try and explain exactly what a workshop is going to be. To try and give it an appropriate name and a bit of blurb so that people know what to expect. Sometimes that’s hard as people perhaps don’t have any reference points to the subject you’re going to be covering, but you should at least make the attempt to be clear.

I ran a Beatles workshop a while ago. I advertised it as Beatles acappella and had some blurb explaining that I would be teaching some well-known Beatles songs in three and four part harmony. A couple of young women came along, but only stayed for the morning. They explained that they had quite enjoyed themselves, but it wasn’t really what they had expected! I really don’t know how to be any clearer with that one!!

On another occasion I ran a workshop called The Paul Simon Songbook. Again, explaining that I would be teaching well-known Paul Simon songs in three and four part harmony. During the warm-up I made a joke that Paul Simon was stuck on the M6 and he had phoned me to ask me to carry on with the workshop until he arrived. Everyone laughed. Except – I later realised – for two women who thought I was serious and complained to the box office when Mr. Simon hadn’t arrived by lunchtime! So we can always try to describe what to expect, but we’ll never get it exactly right!

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Where does the music reside?

I met a painter in a gallery today and he asked me if I was an artist or had any interest in fine art. I told him that I didn’t paint, but that I worked with music and that I was also fascinated by the creative process. He then asked me: “Where do you think the music resides? Is it in the written score?”. I was rather lost for words at that moment and didn’t really understand the question. Finally I answered: “I believe that music resides in the humanity of the people creating it”.

We went on to talk about how some people are attracted to the purity of the written score and the idea of the perfect realisation of it in practice. Of course, one can never perfectly realise a written piece of music (not least because music notation is not an exact system) because the people who create the music are error-prone and not perfect creatures. But even if we could do that, wouldn’t that be rather like machine-produced music? I for one don’t really enjoy choral concerts where the singing is so, so, ever so precise. The enunciation is perfect, as is the blend of voices – so much so that it can sometimes sound like a single voice singing. No! Give me some humanity! I love the different textures of all the individuals in the choir, I appreciate everyone’s unique contribution to the overall sound. I enjoy it when not everyone is singing exactly the same pitch – that is where the harmonics, overtones and fullness of the sound come from. I adore it when each person’s timing is slightly different, when small errors are made. In short, I love it when all the imperfections that we human beings are made up of are fully expressed through the singing.

I have heard singers who have ‘beautiful’ voices, who sing perfectly in tune, whose technique and talent are remarkable, and yet they leave me unmoved. However, I can hear some rusty old recording of a group of elderly villagers in the Balkans giving voice to an age-old traditional song, and I can be almost moved to tears. They are communicating with me, they are telling me the story, they are working as one to express their humanity and their joy, and I in turn am moved.

This weekend I was in the rare position of running three entirely different workshops in three different places with three different sets of participants. It reinforced for me what happens in workshops. All three were open access, no experience necessary, no musical scores in sight, no real expectations (except to have fun!), and yet they all produced the most wonderful, magical sounds. The whole experience was uplifting both for me and the participants. It reminded me how universal singing is, and how egalitarian and levelling singing harmony together can be. I had no idea who these people were, what they did for a living, or if they had had any singing training or experience. The only instruction was to sing a part that they felt was comfortably within their own range. People ended up standing next to strangers who they had only just met, and yet they worked as a team helping to create an overall sound. Nobody was really worried about whether they had a ‘beautiful’ voice or not as they were soon taken over by the music itself. And I just stood back and listened to the most beautiful harmony singing and was moved once more by the power of the music. And where did the music reside at that moment? In the hearts and souls of every single person who made up the group.

Yet still – unfortunately – people believe that they can’t ‘sing’ or that music-making is not meant for them. One of the workshop participants wrote to me: “I’m completely new to this kind of thing, having believed all my life that singing in choirs was something that ‘other people’ do.” Luckily he realised that singing is open to all of us and has now joined a local choir.

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Who is our audience?

WorldSong’s 10^th anniversary concert last Saturday was a triumph — even if I do say so myself! At least in our terms it was a huge success and a big leap forward.

• we had an audience three times our normal size (which made our 650-seat theatre look comfortably full)
• we ended up with the biggest choir we’ve ever had on stage (all but two of the choir managed to be at the concert: two members volunteered to help front of house, whilst two others had already booked holidays)
• we had a wide range of different configurations on stage (solos, men-only, women-only, conductorless, small groups, a big group filling the stage)
• the vast majority of choir members had risen to the challenge and learnt the words to pretty much all of the 33 songs that we sang (the Welsh one was quite hard!)
• we pulled off several challenging moves (entering from the back of the auditorium whilst singing, dancing to South African songs, being accompanied by drums)
• several songs were sung without me having to conduct them

We had a varied and mixed audience including quite a few ex-choir members, and a few singers from our sister choirs Woven Chords and Global Harmony. In the interval I met some people from Swaziland, Slovakia and Uganda, and I know there were audience members from Poland, Lithuania and South Africa.

However, the most noticeable thing for me when the house lights went up at the end of the concert (I taught the audience a song as usual) was that the vast majority of the audience seemed to be well over 60 and mostly women! This is quite common and is often reflected in the choir itself and in the workshops that I run. Several of the choir had managed to persuade their children to come along, and almost without exception, they thoroughly enjoyed themselves. So why can’t we attract a younger audience? There’s nothing wrong, of course, with having an older audience, but it would be nice to have a wide spread of ages, genders and nationalities. (This also applies to the choir and workshops: we sing songs from many different countries and cultures, and yet we attract mainly white, British singers).

Is it perhaps the words “choir” or “concert” which put younger people off? Do they simply have something better to do on a Saturday night? Is the make-up of our audience simply a reflection of the make-up of the choir? In which case, why can’t the choir attract younger people and people from different cultural and ethnic backgrounds?

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It's just a bit of hand waving

Sometimes I describe my job as simply being the guy who stands at the front of the choir and waves his arms about. “I point, you sing” is what I often tell the choir. That is basically what the job entails when we’re performing for the public, but it can all too often go wrong. There was a point in our concert last Saturday when I made a gesture which was misinterpreted and suddenly only one part was singing! We managed to recover quite well, and I’m sure the audience didn’t notice anything amiss, but it reminded me how important it is that the choir know exactly what I mean at any point.

Sometimes after a whole bunch of new people have joined the choir, I run through some of my basic hand gestures and tell them what they mean. When I first began conducting choirs, I thought that all my gestures were self-evident and that most conductors would use similar hand movements. How wrong I was! So since then I have regularly double-checked that the choir know what I intend.

As choral directors, we all do things differently, but the common point is that we need to be clearly understood by our choir. I use one gesture which I have been told is a real no-no, but which seems to work for me and the choirs that I lead. It is to raise my two index fingers vertically (as if pointing to the sky) which is a signal that something is about to happen. It’s a kind of “heads up” to people that they should pay attention because we’ll be doing something significant in a moment like coming to the end of the song, or repeating the last section, or speeding up. I have been told that this gesture is too subtle and vague to be useful. However I find it to be very effective, but only after you have rehearsed the song properly so that the choir know what to expect. It means that I can often dispense with counting in a performance (“how many times do we repeat that section?”) so everyone can really be in the moment, repeating parts as many times as it feels right to do them in any given concert.

I now realise that when I began this work I used to assume quite a lot. Now I work very hard to try and be aware of when I’m making assumptions. For example, when I’m teaching a song by ear I signal where the tune goes up and down by raising and lowering my horizontal hand. This is just a rough map of course, but it helps people when they’re learning. I can be slightly more subtle too by indicating big jumps in notes, and sometimes angling my hand slightly to indicate semi-tones.

Once I was running a workshop and a French guy asked my why I was moving my hand up and down in the air whilst teaching the song. I explained that as my hand moved higher it meant the notes were higher, and when I moved it lower it meant that the notes were lower. Then he asked what “higher” and “lower” meant! It was then that I realised that this is not innate knowledge but just a convention. If someone is familiar with a piano, then we could equally well describe notes as being more “left” or more “right”. It has become a convention (related to sound frequency) to talk about “higher” and “lower”, but we cannot assume that everyone knows what this means!

It’s good then to re-assess every now and then and to make sure that you are communicating with your choir members as clearly and accurately as you can. Do not assume that they always know what you mean!

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Order, order!

It’s that time of year when summer concerts come around and I have to think of a programme of songs. Selecting the songs is not too difficult as I always include all the new songs we’ve learnt this term (so new people can join in the performance), several that are relatively new to the choir (songs that we’ve learnt over the last year or so), some golden oldies which I revive from the past, and some choir and audience favourites.

However, I try and keep in mind audience members who perhaps have been to our last few concerts or maybe come just once a year to our summer concert. I don’t ever want an audience to feel that they come to the same concert each time so I try and keep ‘repeats’ to a minimum, but also balance that with the fact that it’s always nice to hear a few familiar songs. I like to think that I’ve got the balance right, but I haven’t ever had any specific feedback from audience members. I reckon that as long as there’s sufficient variety (and we do have lots of songs to choose from!) then there should be something to please everybody.

Also, WorldSong are about to release a new live CD so I’ve had to choose the songs for that. That wasn’t too difficult either as I was limited mainly by the quality of any recordings that we had (and, of course, whether we were singing in tune on that day!).

What I find harder though, having chosen the songs, is to find a suitable running order. There are many schools of thought: some people group songs from the same country or style, whilst others sprinkle the different genres throughout the concert or CD and focus on aspects such as the dynamics of a particular song, whether it is anthemic or gentle, smooth or rhythmic. I am of this latter school, although I do sometimes put two songs together if they are from the same part of the world, and maybe stick in a song with English lyrics if I feel there’s been a run of foreign ones.

I often wonder how much this matters. I spend a long time thinking of the running order for each of our concerts, and I’ve spent even longer on the new CD. But does it really matter to audiences? Do they notice the ‘journey’ through a concert, or do they just take the songs one at a time? And with the CD, people can jump about and play tracks in any order they choose, so is the running order of any importance at all? I guess I hang on to the fact that nobody has ever commented on the running order, and being the optimist that I am, I assume that means that I’m doing it right since it’s not noticeable!

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What a performance!

None of the choirs or singing groups that I run were formed as performing groups. I’ve always made it clear that our main priority is simply to have fun and to sing together. However, life being what it is, performance opportunities arise and people like to perform! I make sure that everyone understands that performance is an added bonus and is totally optional and in no way compulsory. Yet almost all choir members always want to perform! That is the way of the world. I guess having put all that hard work into learning and perfecting songs, it’s inevitable that people want to share them with others.

So we perform. And we do – even if I do say it myself – perform to a high standard. We often sell out many of our regular local gigs, and have a strong following amongst our audience. But this brings its own problems. Whilst each week the emphasis is on learning new songs and having fun singing them, plus reviving a few “oldies”, there has to come a time when we “rehearse” for our upcoming concert.

Many other choirs are performing choirs and can have a dozen or more concerts each year. This means that their emphasis is very different from ours: each week’s session is a rehearsal for the next concert, always brushing up performance skills and honing songs drawn from a relatively small repertoire. We, however, have a repertoire well in excess of 150 songs to draw upon (not all of which are up to speed at any given time) and we perform usually only three times a year.

The skill then is to balance fun singing sessions with the more serious business of getting songs ready for the next concert. The usual plan is to introduce a bunch of new songs at the beginning of each term (roughly 12 weeks), whilst going over some golden oldies at the end of each session. As the concert approaches, I stop introducing new material and just focus on polishing the old stuff up. Two weeks before the concert we spend one session running through the first half of the concert and the next weekly session running the second half. On the day of the concert we have a full rehearsal in the afternoon running the whole concert in order.

Since many of our songs are relatively short (between one and three minutes long) it means we use up a lot of repertoire in a concert! Our usual concerts are two halves of 45 minutes each, which may mean we get through up to 30 songs – most of which are in foreign languages. That’s a lot of material to get through in a term whilst still trying to have fun!

There is always a slight frustration that if only we had a little more time to work on the songs, then the concert would be even better. And if we were a proper performance choir then we could work on performance skills each week and really get good! But I think we’ve got the balance right.

If we never performed, there would never be a need to really hone in on a song, get the subtleties right, play with the dynamics, find the right voice for it, really get to grips with the strange words, find the joy of actually singing the song rather than feeling that you never quite know it properly.

Yet if we performed all the time we would lose a lot of the fun from our weekly sessions, there would be more pressure to “get it right”, our performances might end up just that little bit too slick (our audiences really like our laid-back informal approach coupled with accomplished singing ability), we wouldn’t be able to keep adding fabulous songs to our repertoire, we couldn’t afford to experiment and play around with songs or to try to learn something really complex without the pressure of having to deliver at a certain time.

Why not come along to one of our gigs and see for yourself? Woven Chords annual summer concert at Grimsthorpe Castle on 14th July is sold out I’m afraid, but you can come and celebrate WorldSong’s 10^th anniversary by helping us to fill a 650-seat theatre in Coventry on 21^st July!

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Making a song and dance of it

From my experience with choirs and singing groups it appears on the face of it that we are a rhythmically challenged nation!

I often try to introduce a bit of clapping or steps or syncopation into our warm-ups and songs and am always amazed at the apparent lack of co-ordination and body-awareness amongst the group. As soon as I begin teaching some simple dance steps, or try to clap a simple rhythm that is not on the beat, several people just sit out and don’t even bother to try because they “know” they can’t do it. And some people sit out because “I’ve come here to sing, not dance!”

But of course, we do all have a good sense of rhythm, it’s just that we don’t practice it very often. Rather like people who think they can’t “sing” because they can’t immediately pick up a tune – they are simply out of practice with their listening skills.

It seems to me that this is a cultural phenomenon. Ours has become a very visual and rational/ mental culture. We use our eyes and thinking brains far more than our ears and bodies. Once people have sung in a choir for some time, they get in contact again with their innate listening abilities. They learn to trust their ears and not just their eyes. Similarly, given time and patience, I believe that people can re-discover their innate sense of rhythm and body-awareness.

In this culture we tend to compartmentalise different activities. So, for example, when we’re singing we’re singing, we’re not dancing, so we don’t need to pay any attention to our bodies. And when we’re dancing or clapping out a rhythm, we don’t need our voices. I came across this time and time again when I used to teach at drama school. The lessons themselves were compartmentalised: a movement class followed by a voice class followed by a tap class. When I arrived and tried to teach everything at the same time, there were a lot of confused students!

However, in many other cultures – notably many African cultures – there is very little if any separation between dance, vocal melody and rhythm. You only have to see a group of South Africans for instance singing a song and you cannot see where the dance ends and the song begins – it is all the same thing. So when teaching songs from these cultures, we often find it difficult. It is no good trying to count some complex off-beat rhythm in your head using your conscious brain, it’s just too hard. You have to let your body “dance” the rhythm and then the song’s timing will come automatically. Similarly with the complex 7/8 rhythms common in the Balkans – just learn the dance at the same time and it comes easy!

Often we have found ourselves carrying out a complex task such as patting our head whilst rubbing our tummy and find that sweet moment when it all falls into place. But then as soon as we begin to think (“great, it’s working” or “I hope I’m getting it right”) it all goes disastrously wrong! We need to trust our intuition, our body intelligence, our non-rational brain which is just getting on with the task quite nicely thank you.

The Natural Voice approach to singing which I follow places the relationship between breath, body and voice at its heart. We believe that you simply can’t separate these components to be fully in the song. And it’s no coincidence that much of our repertoire comes from cultures which don’t make these separations.

I once met an instrumentalist who wouldn’t even begin to learn tunes from another culture until she’d been to a few dance classes from that culture. She needed to embed the culture’s “dance” into her body before she even picked up her instrument.

A few years back I was taught an amazing Ysaye Barnwell gospel-like song called Lawd it’s midnight. This is an amazing song with some quite tricky rhythms. We learnt it by having the sheet music in our hands and it took a long time to get it right. Most of the difficulties were to do with the cross rhythms. It occurred to me afterwards that we probably would have learnt it a lot faster if we had put the music down and simply let the rhythms into our bodies!

So next time somebody asks you to move or dance at the same time as you're singing, they're not trying to make life difficult for you, they're actually making it easier for you to learn the song. Just go with it!

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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!

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