On song

Eager as always to endorse all that that's low-cost, life-enhancing and spirit-lifting, Mr Gnome has relished a full-on day of sensational singing at the annual midlands Community Choirs Festival held in Stratford-upon-Avon today.

Choir festival? Doesn't that mean cut-throat competition, purse-lipped adjudicators, plucky losers and ecstatic victors?

Er, no. Community choirs are based on the conviction that if you can walk you can dance, and if you can talk you can sing. Simple as that. Consequently, the experience of being a member of such a group is non-competitive, totally inclusive, unthreatening, weirdly joyful and surprisingly addictive.

Today's bash brought together some 500 singers from near (Warwick) and far ('Hello Abergavenny!') 

Coached by a glamorous quartet of vocal virtuosos (lower half of picture), we bopped through a Carol King classic, made contact with our inner primitives via some gutsy Australian stomping - and soared skywards with a South African freedom song.

The day closed with each of the 22 choirs performing a pre-prepared song to the assembled company.

Impartial to a fault, Mr Gnome relished every note - but confesses to a particular enthusiasm for Songlines (pictured), the Warwick/Leamingtion-based ensemble led with incomparable panache by Bruce Knight (extreme right).

The wild-west get-ups were chosen to enhance their party piece: Johnny Mercer's 1930s classic 'Old Cowhand from the Rio Grande.'  

Mr G's suggestion for an encore? How about 'Gnome on the Range'?

Community choirs - and a surprise 'c'

A whole day of full-throated singing at the Community Choirs Festival, Warwick University.

Some twenty singing groups gathered, more or less filling the University's Butterworth Hall.

We learned songs and chants from around the world, took part in a call-and-response workshop with a Congolese leader, and, finally, performed our party pieces to one another.

Binding all together is the distinctive approach of the 'natural voice network' - which maintains that anyone can enjoy taking part in choral singing.

So, no auditions, no regimented rows, no printed music. We warm up, loosen up and learn by listening and repeating. It's fun, energizing and, for me, liberating and joy-inducing.

We closed with a South African farewell song:

Remember me, forget me not
Think of me, wherever you go
I am yours and you are mine
Remember me wherever you go

Lovely, rather haunting tune. The song was brought back from SA by a Cheltenham choir that has a strong link with the Diamond Singers, a choir of workers employed in the de Beers mines.

Part of the choir's role is to spread positive health messages, particularly related to HIV Aids.

Read the lyrics again. 'Remember Me' is in fact a very memorable, very timely reminder to carry and use condoms.

Maybe there's a 'natural voice' singing group near you.