What can compare with the feeling of being in the middle of a choir, lifting your voice to join with those around you as together you weave a melodic tapestry, often through crafted harmonies, for an audience of strangers and friends? To anyone who has never been in a choir, it’s not too late to go out and find one to join.
I joined our school’s junior choir in Grade 3, continued in various school choirs until I graduated from high school, and carried on in the church choir for a few more years after that. These days I rarely sing any louder than a quavering mumble.
I don’t remember ever wondering if I should join the choir when I was a kid. We all sang, and we never considered whether we were good at it. However, once we got into the choir, we were bluntly told by our choir leader whether we should to be there or not. Wait, let me rephrase that. Mrs G either thought you sang like an angel and would fawn over you, or she ignored you completely, which meant that you were an average singer. If you sucked, she suggested that you leave and to never come back because you were an outcast, using language only slightly less severe than that. Those who were tone-deaf but had blind enthusiasm for being in the choir, and who hadn’t crumpled under the glare of being in Mrs G’s spotlight, were told to just lip-sync during performances. Harsh.
In the younger grades, being in the choir consisted of singing sweet little songs in unison. Our families, who showed up for our concerts, would unconsciously hum or mouth the words along with us, having learned the song from our constant singing at home. Not that we were practicing—we just didn’t know the words to all that many songs.
For those public performances, usually at a church or a seniors’ complex or a concert at school (and occasionally at the local radio station), we would show up wearing the traditional uniform of choirs everywhere: a white top and a dark bottom. For me that translated into some sort of itchy polyester blouse tucked into the too-tight waistband of a navy knee-length skirt made by my mother out of some sort of thick double-knit material that looked like it could stand by itself in the corner when I wasn’t wearing it. In fact, if I recall correctly, there was a pattern for the skirt that circulated among the mothers of the choir members, to save each from having to splurge on a pattern which no one had any other use for. Goodness only knows where they got the double-knit from.
It would be surreal to show up someplace and have all of my choir friends dressed alike in clothes that we never saw each other wear outside of these performances. That we were all dressed alike would just add to the existing air of excitement and, while our nerves spiked in waves, we would be frantically herded into position in order to get us assembled in a timely manner. Once on stage, most of us on the verge of tears, we would sing, mumble, or lip-sync our way through the event’s repertoire, and then applauded dutifully.
The oddest choir moment I remember was in 5th or 6th Grade when Mrs G agreed that our choir would be the backup choir for some cooler-than-us high school senior who played the guitar and needed a choir to enhance his performance of John Lennon’s Christmas song “War is Over”. (I’m sorry. You’ve started singing it, haven’t you? I should have just alluded to the name.) So, our choir, as the background vocals, practiced that somewhat melancholic hook about a million times, each chorus accompanied by a chord change that pushed the tune higher and higher and higher. Only neighbourhood dogs were ever able to hear the final refrain.
Mrs G gathered us together one night at this guy’s high school for their Christmas Concert, where Cool-Guy sat on a stool in the spotlight strumming his guitar and droning on about world peace, while we wailed morosely in the background (very much like Yoko). Am I the only one who finds this song devoid of anything remotely happy or hopeful or for that matter, Christmasy? I don’t know if those were my thoughts as we crowded together outside of the spotlight on that stage, keening away as high as our young voices could keen, but I have to say that “War is Over” is one Christmas song that even today always gets skipped on my holiday playlist.
That is only one, among many, of the surprising experiences that came with being part of a choir—being one in a crowd of likeminded others, a cog in the third row off to the left—and of being able to contribute to the making of music for the enjoyment of myself and (optimistically) of others. Although I have never been much of a team player, I understand the bonding of a collection of people with a common musical goal. And through years of watching other choirs of all ages and abilities perform, I have come to admire the talents of all choir leaders who have the vision, patience, and nerves of steel required to pull a performance out of a bunch of individuals dressed in white polyester tops and dark bottoms, eagerly waiting to be counted in.
As Mrs G would so often say, “And…one, two, three, four…”
