We Can All Make Music.
The two of us
Six years before the 'Choir of Hard Knocks'
on television gave the general public a reason to talk about singing, two rural
Victorian women formed a partnership that has grown a unique singing
culture. The extension of the Vocal Nosh
model has communities across
When I
saw Fay White running a Vocal Nosh in Newstead, I witnessed an experienced
musician with excellent facilitation skills.
The ability to work with a group of people who did not know each other,
to include them all and get them to have fun together particularly appealed to
me. As I watched the concept of the
Vocal Nosh develop, I recalled many conversations in rural communities, which
became the inputs to the problem-solving processes regarding us - the
people - and our communities.
I
remember hearing comments like “We need activities that aren't
sport” and “We want activities that men and women can do
together”.
At
Vocal Nosh, not only were people doing it together, they were enjoying
their differences in harmony.
“We
are exhausted from the sheer volume of work involved in keeping our community
going.”
In
stark contrast of this comment, I watched buoyed and bubbly people nattering as
they left the Nosh and saw that Fay had provided a way for people to be
together with levity and energy, and which didn't drain people.
“We
have no voice. No one listens to us.”
The
lament of isolation, of being un-heard, is a profound and dangerous pain, and
one that I know of first-hand. I've seen
its fruit frequently in rural communities and on farms. At Vocal Nosh I had a voice, and experienced
the joy of listening and being heard, of singing
together, and I didn't even have to think of anything to
say! I could just be “totally 100%
myself”, follow the directions and it would work.
The
Vocal Nosh was also touching some of my idiosyncratic passions.
I have a
passion for democracy and community singing, and we practiced democratic
ideals. The public voice of women is
fundamental to modern democracy. The
more our voices are heard in public, the less vulnerable we are as a
group. The more we practice using our
voices in public, the less we will be silenced.
Singing is a critical way for women's voices to occupy public space, and
that makes it safer for all women.
I
thought about communities who would lap this up, and I remembered those times
when I had sat around the piano with rural women at the local hall after an
event. I remembered thinking at the time
“Who will play the piano for the next generation? How will they find simple joy like this
together?”.
It
occurred to me that if we could train other people to do what Fay did, then
communities around the state could sing together the way we do. I think the two things that make this project
innovative are the model itself, which was Fay's work, and the development of
an arts project which built cultural “infrastructure-people” with
particular skills, and an approach to practice that
isn't based in “place” but communities.
Our
project design contained many of my learnings as a rural woman. Other rural women's words reverberated in me
and fuelled my arguments and my thoughts in the project’s design. One example which came to mind was the
formation of singing teams.
“Nothing
ever happens in a country town with just one person doing it. You have to have a group of people.”
These
words are recalled as one of Dorothy Dunn's edicts, no doubt issued outside the
building while we were both having a smoke during a break at a meeting we were
attending sometime in the mid-‘90's.
I've stopped smoking now, but I haven’t stopped using the wisdom
of
I'm
sure you'll see many other womens' wisdoms in the project, whose aim is the
creation of a network of singing leaders!
(Is
that a new concept?
Thanks Rural Women's
Network!!!)
I first
met Anne-Marie Holley when she came to sing at a Vocal Nosh in Newstead. This monthly singing session around a shared
meal had been going for about 18 months, and had grown from an enthusiastic
group of about 15 people to a regular turn-out of 35 or 40 singers who came
from the surrounding district. The
development of the idea had been gradual for me (starting in childhood really).
I'd
been lucky to grow up in a singing family, and a singing community, and I didn't
realise until later in life that not everybody sang. I thought it was a natural thing you did at
any time, every day! In the ‘60's I played guitar and sang
at every opportunity, but when I realised nobody was going to
“discover” me and I wasn't going to be Australia's answer to Joan
Baez, I decided I had to create opportunities to “just sing
anyway”.
I
started to organise house concerts with help from friends who had good-sized
lounge-rooms. I'd read about people who
were doing this already and I thought, “We can do that! We know about hospitality!”. So we'd round-up 20 or 30 people in a house,
I'd sing and people would join in. We'd
usually conclude the concert with happy chatting over a slap-up supper.
Then
invitations were made requesting me to lead singing workshops at festivals and
music camps. I had trained as a teacher
and loved teaching, and I was also influenced by the singing practise of Frankie Armstrong,
to whom I'd been introduced by The Boite. I started organising singing workshops and
included lunch because I loved doing it.
It only dawned on me slowly that the combination of singing and food was
a deeply satisfying, time-honoured human activity. Lots of people know this of course - it's not
unique to me, but the revelation was somewhat of a surprise to me at the time.
When I
moved back up here the people in Newstead said, “We want to sing
regularly’, so I organised regular group singing with food and called it
Vocal Nosh. People seemed to enjoy a 'free and fearless space' where
they could make satisfying harmony quite quickly without the anxiety of
performance or failure.
The
Vocal Nosh technique was the slow-growing fruit of many years’ thought
and activity, rather than a sudden flash of an idea. Anne-Marie could see and describe what I was
doing as a singing facilitator and articulate how it was valuable to community. She understood that shared leadership was
more sustainable than being a Lone Ranger.
Without her insight, Vocal Nosh would probably have gone no further than
Newstead and I'd have probably burnt-out by now. The juncture of both our visions and skills
was a very lucky one for us to have discovered.
We were
also fortunate at that time to be able to make connections with VicHealth and the National Rural Health Alliance. VicHealth asked us “What can you do
with music?” and we thought that providing musical and community-minded
people from communities across the state with an opportunity to gain some
important modern skills, and to let them learn from each other was the best
thing we could contribute. In rural
communities, there is no surplus cultural capital – it’s almost
un-thinkable that people should experiment with something and fail, or to
develop confidence in something new quickly.
We developed a proposal which VicHealth accepted, and Anne-Marie and I
started training community singing leaders and providing on-going encouragement
and support. After two years training
about 60 leaders were teamed-up with Community Music
Five
years later, the project continues to grow, and has attracted the interest of
the Department of Victorian Communities
and Arts Victoria, as well as VicHealth. There are catalysts in four rural regions
across the State, training and supporting singing leaders and helping the
community at large understand, enjoy and promote the benefits of singing
together.
Although there has been a revival of community
singing across the western world, only the state of
For information about how to get involved with a
singing group near you, or to learn about training
opportunities for people who would like to get singing groups happening, please
contact Community Music
CMV - making a
sound world together.
©
Community Music Victoria Inc.