Stormy weather today pulled Carols in The Park indoors this year to St David’s Church on Melville Rd.  For our first performance we had prepared two songs;  I’ll Fly Away and Noel (Gospel style of course).  As a young choir there was much anticipation built towards this night and a real sense of coming together in the rehearsals leading up to it was apparent.  There is something to be said for committing to something and following through and I think all of our choir members felt that tonight.  The result is a feeling of reward, a sense of joy, and for me – brimming pride.

We must have looked classy in our green and black colour code because upon arrival we were invited to spend the whole evening on stage so that everybody could admire us.  We sang all the classic carols accompanied the Moreland Brass Band and when it became our turn to perform our rehearsed tunes we sang loud and strong – any bystander would have thought we’d been doing it for years.

I would like to say a big THANK YOU again to every person that participated in Brunswick Community Gospel Choir this year.  It has been a massive learning curve for me as a choir leader and without you all I would not be experiencing this great sense of satisfaction tonight.  Thanks to Josh and Annika for all your encouragement and support and CONGRATULATIONS to the incredible singers who performed this evening.  You are truely, totally ace.

Choir sessions resume Tuesdays in Feb 2011 with a new angle on our exploration of Gospel music and it’s impressions on Soul.

Click on the following links for a sneak preview…

Something’s Got a Hold on Me

Chain Gang

People Get Ready

Merry Christmas with love from your faithful choir leader,

Jolene Moran

XOXOXOXOXO

The choir has been doing a beautiful version of this…

I’ll Fly Away Gillian Welch performing it live.

Listen to your part and sing along by clicking on the link below:

Down In The River To Pray

These girls do a beautiful version of Sylvie…

Bring Me Little Water Sylvie

When the slaves arrived from Africa to the new country, they brought nothing, except for memories and their musical heritage.  In America the slave owners deliberately separated most slaves from their families and their tribe members, in order to break them down and assimilate them to the new culture.  Culture shock and language barriers also helped to increase the general confusion among the slaves.  The only thing the slaves had in common was their music.  Even though the slaves came from different parts of Africa, most African music was similar in its bases.

Being in the New World, the colonial clergymen pondered the idea of converting the so-called heathens of the New World, the blacks and the Indians, to Christianity.  Most whites put effort into civilizing and converting the slaves, and since most slaves felt emotionally divided out of the extreme culture shock, they easily absorbed the new message of the Christian religion.  Many slaves recognized themselves when they were told stories out of the Bible. Stories like Moses and the people of Israel, who lived in oppression, but were told and promised by God that they one day should be liberated, were absorbed by the Negroes.  The Christian message strongly affected the slaves and their ability to endure the hardships and trials they often were confronted with while working out on the plantation fields.  As the time passed by and the slaves got more and more integrated into the new world, they started blending their African musical heritage with their influences from the new world.  Out of the hardships and trials of slavery a rich musical culture evolved, which forever came to change the world’s music scene.  Mixing their musical heritage from Africa with the Christian religion, the English language, and the musical tradition from the Anglo-Saxon church, the slaves came to create a totally new music form as they at the same time laid the foundations for another one.

A field holler, also called a holler, is an extemporized form of black American song, sung by southern labourers to accompany their work. It differs from the collective work song in that it was sung solo, though early observers noted that a holler, or ‘cry’, might be echoed by other workers or passed from one to another. Though commonly associated with cotton cultivation, the field holler was also sung by levee workers, mule-skinners and field hands in rice and sugar plantations.

Field hollers are also known as corn-field hollers, water calls, and whoops. They were sung solos and normally expressed by the southern labourers (most often slaves). These songs expressed many different topics, many times cries for water and food, cries about what was happening in their daily lives, to let other people know that they were out in the fields working on that particular day, and many other cirumstances that that one would feel like singing about. Some were even about the slaves religious devotions. Field hollers were even used as an outlet for southern laubourers to sing about their troubles and hardships in their everyday lives.

It is believed that the holler is the precursor of the blues, though it may in turn have been influenced by blues recordings. No recorded examples of hollers exist from before the mid-1930s, but some blues recordings, such as Mistreatin’ Mama (1927, Black Patti) by the harmonica player Jaybird Coleman, show strong links with the field holler tradition. A white tradition of ‘hollerin’’ may be of similar age, but has not been adequately researched. Since 1969 an annual ‘hollerin’’ contest has been held in Sampson County, North Carolina.

Yonder Come Day

Bernice Johnson Reagon singing another version of Come And Go To That Land.  Man this woman’s got soul!

Come And Go With Me To That Land

It’s a choir for everyone – young and old, religious or not, we’re singing together for the purpose of having a good time. Welcoming new participants every week.

Tuesdays
St John’s Church
Cnr Melville Rd and Victoria St
Brunswick VIC
7pm
$5