VOCA

I had just returned home from our Christmas choir social, where I was presented with a huge box of beautiful artisanal local cheeses, wine, chocolate and more. “You do realise you pay me for choir, don’t you?” I quipped, feeling slightly undeserving of such a beautiful gift. The truth is that whichever way the money flows, something else had been flowing in all directions, the pure blissful joy of singing together as a choir is something I have known before, but never from this perspective, and I am so grateful for it.

In early 2021 I had an eight month old daughter and a two and half year old son. A friend of my mother’s had asked for someone to lead a choir, and was I interested? After 10+ years of teaching children, and then having two myself, I had basically run out of patience for anyone else’s children. I was yearning to find something else that had the collective and community spirit that teaching big groups of children had once held for me, and I had flirted with the idea of starting a choir but plans didn’t form. So when I was invited, (because I often need to be invited in order to do the things I want to do), I decided to go for it. After a few uneventful back and forths with the elected spokesperson of the leaderless choir group, one day I just picked a date and asked my mum for a list of the people who wanted to join.

Those first few months were slow in numbers, swaying from 12 to 8 to 10 to 4 members turning up to rehearsals, but absolutely full of belly-laughing and fun. I didn’t yet know what I wanted it to become, I had piggybacked on to the arrangements and patterns I had from teaching young people and it seemed to work initially. There were things I knew were important to me - no lyric sheets because I can’t see everyone’s eyes and people don’t actually learn the words if they’re reading them. No auditions- this had to be fun, not exposing or scary or intimidating. Singing is something that in my opinion has long lost its purpose in society (more on that another time). Joy is enough of a justification to do anything, assuming no one is harmed in the process, this is something I have always believed in, in all aspects of my life, but I’m still astonished in how life changing joy can be, even though we have scientific understanding of the mechanisms behind it.

Slowly and organically the choir has grown to where it is now at more than 50 members in Brighton. Most of those have joined us after direct recommendation from a friend or family member. The ecosystem which has resulted from this type of growth is one rich with like-minded people, of similar ages or family settings that gives a great baseline for some of the broader and more diverse parts of peoples lives, the coming together of a community. Musically I have pushed farther than I thought I would. Of course it is absolutely my self indulgent dream to have 50 people sing the songs I love, at me, in 4 or 5 part harmony every week…and get paid to do it…but slowly I have been able to push it even further. I am more than partial to a crunchy harmony, I love suspended chords and those which shouldn’t work but do, but when you aren’t in a professional musical environment it can be easy to shy away from the more challenging musical decisions. It humbles me always that this group of amazing humans take on everything I suggest with faith and fervour. Not only that but they are more than capable of some of the most difficult harmony work I have ever taught. Its another layer to this ridiculous notion that music is reserved for the ‘trained’ among us. It’s absolute bollocks- it belongs to us all.

Amongst the personal fulfilment of exciting and challenging musical repertoire that VOCA has brought into my life, it has also been an anchor in my week that, as a mother of young children, I didn’t realise I needed. There have been many weeks I have wanted to bail, under the stress of a tricky day at home with the chaos of small children, and some weeks I have had to because of sickness or pure exhaustion. But every single session I leave feeling better than when I arrived…we often finish in a state so dizzy and high that I’m certain our cool-down breathwork actually ensures I’m safe to drive home.

I keep thinking back to that evening, at our choir Christmas social where one of my members surprised me by making an observation of the last few years. She mentioned that it had been like watching me find myself again. I had come a fair distance from that newborn mother (for the second time) who I was when I first started, walking the baby steps of a newly born choir director, probably looking a little dishevelled, certainly without the posture I was professing to be so important for singing (observed weekly by a massage therapist choir member). Learning that I was being witnessed this way was profound. The choir is made up of a lot of women who are my mothers age, many of them having been through the journey of finding themselves through/after/despite Matrescence and hearing this perspective, I suddenly felt held by all the wisdom and experience amongst me. This community I strongly feel that I fell into, continues to serve me (and many others) in a way I hadn’t expected, and I’ll certainly not take that for granted anytime soon.

VOCA if anyone would like to hear us sing!