~Originally A Short Blog Entry
2004-02-11 - 5:59 p.m.

I joined a choir! On Sunday, I was browsing through our council mini-newspaper (4 pages). On the back they had a few classes and things at the local community centre. Years ago I took a 7-week singing course there with Jamie Redfern (if you say "who??" then, like me, you don't remember the very very early Young Talent Time team with Jamie and Debbie Byrne and the like...or you're not Aussie). Dianne took art lessons there for a term even earlier than that. Mum took a painting course there only last year and Emma took pottery lessons there for a number of years in primary school and high school.

I always love looking at the courses I could take, planning what I could take and never actually taking them. Not just with the community centre, but also with the Council of Adult Education. From there I plan on taking classes in German, French and Italian, art history and appreciation, creative writing, tai chi classes, song writing, feng shui...oooh they have brain gym!...aromatherapy, graphic design, web design etc. From my local one, I've thought about taking courses like creative writing, journal writing, tarot reading, drawing & painting etc. So I've often kept up to date with the courses available. Last year I almost took a writine course, but in the end felt I just couldn't handle more thinking and awakeness from 7:30-9:30 every week after school.

The closest choir used to be about 25 minutes away and meets on Tuesdays from 7:30-10 or something awful like that. Even getting home at 9:30 means I only have about half an hour to unwind myself before I have to get to bed. Sally and Emma joined that choir for a while, but they found the people rather middle aged and old and a bit set in their ways and annoying, so they didn't keep it up. On Sunday, when browsing through the aforementioned document, I noticed that they'd started a "Multicultural Choir" at the local community centre and thought it might be worth a try. On Monday I came home with a bit of energy my adrenaline still running high from work and I phoned up to enquire and decided to go. I went not expecting too much and knowing that I might hate it and choose not to continue.

About halfway through, I'd almost decided not to stick with it. Not only was my voice getting a bit sore (which is more from my bad technique and lack of singing practice) and I didn't want to have a constantly strained voice for work, but I also just wasn't sure if I was enjoying it. The choir has about 12 people (maybe one or two more who couldn't make it on Monday night). About five of them, including myself, were new to the choir and the other four all had no previous choir or singing experience. Two of them were an intellectually disabled man and his carer. Now, I have no problem with the choir's open policy, it is a council-funded community choir, after all, but they're both very flat singers!! There's another disabled woman who needs crutches (those nifty metal ones that don't have the underarms sitting on them), but as far as I can tell she's a very decent singer, so that's all nifty.

Anyway, after mostly being in such professional choirs (well, apart from the Grand Youth Concert choir, but I only turned up for one rehearsal and it was just some lame "let's celebrate government schools in the poor western suburbs" kind of thing), I feel that the standard of songs, of singing and of ability to sing the correct tune might be a bit frustrating at times. Especially as I rely so much on my ear for learning songs and picking out my correct note and therefore need some people who're decent at picking up tunes or sight-singing around, instead of people who're guessing the notes more than I am (or worse, don't even realise they're singing the wrong thing!). However, the choir leader seems very nice and competent and the songs are nice and easy. Well, comparatively. After singing in such professional choirs, I feel a bit ashamed to have even the slightest difficulty at all with these songs that are mostly sung in rounds! Regardless, I think that this level of singing is probably just what I need on a weeknight. If I could have joined a weekend choir I might've been able to handle something trickier, and would've had more people with a clue who could support me, but with 12 mostly inexperienced singers (and one fabulous singer who I recognised and eventually discovered did a B.Mus at my uni and was in the uni choir with me) that's not going to happen and it's probably just as well. I don't think I'd have the mental or physical energy for anything harder! So yes. I've joined a choir and sing multicultural songs.

(In fact, I almost find the "multicultural" label a bit condescending. Sure, it says that we sing songs from many cultures, but lots of choirs do that anyway. As far as referring to the members, well there are so many different cultures living in our council area that they may as well be labelling every school as a "multicultural" school and every workplace and shopping centre and so on. I really couldn't say I looked around the choir and thought "wow, look at all the different cultures", even tho I believe we had some people from English, Scottish, Maltese & Macedonian backgrounds at least. That's just normal. It'd be odder if there were no Maltese people.