I guess it was inevitable. My Mother was a choir mistress when I was at school. I was in her choirs. And now I have a choir of my own. The Gulgong Community Singers is a group of mature age singers who meet every Friday at the Gulgong Sports & Golf Club at 10.30am til 12.00pm to enjoy the fun of singing together. We're not as tight and professional as a slick vocal group, but it is about taking part and including everyone. We sign at nursing homes and retirement villages and appear at community events such as Anzac Day services in the Memorial Park or Xmas in July at the Sports Club. It's a wonderful opportunity to enjoy the company of these interestinjg people. There is an amazing diversity of personalities and the characteristic tolerance country people have for each other. (Gulgong, 30kms from "Uamby", has a population of just 2000 - as many as you'd see in a shopping mall in Sydney.) The better singers have to tolerate graciously the less than naturally talented singers - and, though I see some funny faces pulled at times, they keep the peace. we sing songs from the old traditionals like Amazing Grace, songs of the '30s and '40s like Memories, School Days, and I Don't Want To Play In Your Yard, and songs from the 60's like Morning Town Ride, Idlewiess, and Que Sera Sera. WE do a wonderful version of Harry Belafonte's Yellow Bird. At our rehearsal yesterday I introduced two new songs for them to learn - California Dreaming by the Mama's and the Papas and The Rhythm of Life (with 3 separate parts being sung simultaneously) from Sweet Charity. (This last song will take 6 months to get to performance level.) While performing last Wednesday at the Moran Nursing Home in Mudgee, I asked one of the wonderful carers there to take a few shots of us in action. And here they are. If you want to join the group, we'll see you at 10.30am on Friday at the Club.
(How did I get involved? I heard the choir singing at the rededication of the Gulgong Memorial Hall and spoke to Marlene O'Brien who I know from Church at Goolma. SHe told me the group was going to fold because the choir leader was leaving town, her husband having just retired from the local mill. I could see how important such a voluntary group was to the social infrastructure of the community. The silencing of the choir would be the same as the disappearance of a song bird from the local environment. As explained in Aldo Leopold's A Sand County ALmanac*, such a loss impoverishes us all. I thought "It can't be that hard to run a choir. You just wave your arms about..." I said I would only be temporary while they found another leader. I told them I couln't always be in Gulgong for rehearsal, having clients in Sydney who need me (thank God). ANd I told them i would be devolving responsibility onto them. And they have responded magnificently. Marlene has taken over the administration. Merlene Laing, the vicar's wife, plays piano and takes them through their vocal exercises. Effie Plummer introduced theatrical props for our "School Days" performance at the Gulgong Primary School in Seniors Week.
**”The physics of beauty is one department of natural science still in the Dark Ages. Not even the manipulators of bent space have tried to solve its equations. Everyone knows, for example, that the autumn landscape in the north woods is the land, plus a red maple, plus a ruffled grouse. In terms of conventional physics, the grouse represents only a millionth of either the mass or the energy of an acre. Yet subtract the grouse and the whole thing is dead. An enormous amount of some kind of motive power has been lost.
"It is easy to say that the loss is all in our mind's eye, but is there any sober ecologist who will agree? He knows full well that there has been an ecological death, the significance of which is inexpressible in terms of contemporary science. A philosopher has called this imponderable essence the numenon of material things. It stands in contradisiinction to phenomenon, which is ponderable and predictable, even to the tossings and turnings of the remotest star." (A Sand County ALmanac, Aldo Leopold, 1949)
(RUFFLED GROUSE. PIC: Saskatchewan Environment)
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