Sing out and take a stand against domestic violence

Back in April, an invitation was sent to community choirs to unite and sing up at a ‘pioneering choral event’ called You’re the Voice, an element of the 2017 Queensland Music Festival dedicated to highlighting the persistent problem of domestic violence across Australia and building awareness in a bid to ‘turn the tide’ and support positive change.

image from Queensland Music Festival 2017

The project, directed by Dr Jonathan Welch, has received high profile support* from singers including Archie Roach, Kate Ceberano, and Katie Noonan, who is also the festival’s artistic director.

On July 29, 2500 community singers participating in You’re the Voice will congregate in Brisbane, joined by other community choirs and singing groups from around the country via live stream and social media, to deliver their powerful message, singing John Farnham’s song of the same name.

Closer to home and in response to news of the project, Vivienne Colegrove, a singer songwriter from the community music network here in Victoria got in touch, offering to share a song she had written about domestic violence with any other community singing groups and choirs wishing to address the issue, also:

Hi CMVic folk,
following on from your post on FB re Katie Noonan’s call for choirs to sing out against domestic violence, I have a song that I am happy for choirs to use if they wish (just to acknowledge me as the composer obviously!) Here is a (strictly rehearsal-only quality) mp3 recording and pdf score for choir facilitators – please feel free to pass on to anyone who may wish to use it. Free to a good home!
Warm regards – Vivienne Colegrove

‘White Ribbon Anthem’ by Vivienne Colegrove

It’s time to sing out it’s time to speak out
It’s time to shout out we’re making change
We stand together we stand united
It’s time to sing out we’re making change

No more silence about the violence
No more looking the other way
Join our chorus Sing together
Sing as one voice we’re making change

Safe for women safe for children
Safe for men of any age
Safe for my mother safe for my brother
Safe for each other let’s turn the page

(chorus)

Make it change now we’re making change now
Change is what we say and do
Let’s make change now let’s do change right now
Change is me and change is you

(chorus) x 2

Vivienne says “I was inspired to write this song because I feel excited about the power of singing together as a community to bring about the positive changes we want in our world. Music, and especially singing, is such an inspiring, unifying way to invite transformation and change. I have a vision of hundreds, thousands of voices lifted together in song as a heartfelt invitation to create a safe world together for us all.”

Vivienne’s words echo those of Katie Noonan who, when speaking of the potentially transformative power of You’re the Voice said,  “We can sing together for those whose voices have been silenced by fear… I believe that art and music have the power for significant change and that musicians and art have a responsibility to respond to, and reflect on, our society and the things we can do to create change.”

Written by Deb Carveth, online editor for Community Music Victoria with massive thanks to Vivienne Colegrove.

Download the lyrics to White Ribbon here & the mp3 of White Ribbon here 

*Archie Roach, Troy Cassar-Daley, Montaigne, Katie Noonan, Kate Ceberano and Isaiah  have collaborated to re-record ‘You’re the Voice’ as a charity single to raise funds to support young people who are victims of domestic violence. To purchase the single, click here. (All proceeds will be donated to DVConnect.)

References:

• Queensland Music Festival: www. qmf.org.au
• The Katie Noonan quote is taken from an interview with ABC Queensland by Janel Shorthouse and Sheridan Stewart ‘Katie Noonan, Choir of Hard Knocks become voices against domestic violence.‘ published April 7, 2017

Support Services for anyone living with Domestic and Family abuse:

• White Ribbon: Find Help: Hotlines and Support Services
• Domestic Violence Resource Centre Victoria  or call DVConnect: Womensline 1800 811 811, Mensline 1800 600 636

 

Betty M. & the birth of a network

‘The great thing about events that get people together is the fact that they get people together!’ says Betty McLaughlin, Gippsland based community music activist and founder of the Gippsland Singers Weekend at Wilson’s Prom. It was reading about the success of the 2016 gathering in October last year which inspired this conversation with Betty as encouragement to anyone out there looking to consolidate a sustainable, regional network of community music makers and wondering how to go about it.

So step this way into the CMVic time machine and buckle up because we’re going back to 2008, when community singing leader Betty McLaughlin was the regional catalyst for Gippsland region as part of Community Music Victoria’s Victoria Sings program.

One of the final things Betty did during this particularly active phase of her involvement with the program was to arrange a Singing Leaders gathering for all Gippsland based leaders at Wilsons Prom. Working together with Jane Coker and Fay White, Betty planned a gathering with a deep inbuilt purpose at its heart: to seed something ongoing between local community singing leaders and participants.

The event was open to anyone interested in making singing happen in their community.

Incorporated into the program was a Sunday session especially designed to create a more formally recognised network of singing leaders in Gippsland. And so what began as a roomful of individuals brought together by their shared values and vision ended as the newly galvanised Gippsland Singers Network, established to encourage and promote Community Singing in the Gippsland Region through mutual support, skill and repertoire sharing. Betty believes hundreds of singers and leaders are now active under the umbrella of the GSN, which she describes laughingly as a ‘loose affiliation’.

Twelve months after that first weekend, the group reconvened, again dedicating an entire weekend to singing and networking together at the Prom with support from Community Music Victoria, and this pattern has continued successfully over the past eight years, galvanising into a regular annual event in the music making calendar.

The Wilson’s Prom weekend has remained a primary focus of the Gippsland Singers Network, with a fresh committee formed each year to organise the event. Occasional one day workshops are held within Gippsland, as well as a couple of Big Sings to raise the funds required to keep the GSN alive and to allow the event at the prom to be supported by money other than that raised through attendance.

Looking back, Betty considers the following factors contributed to the ease with which the Gippsland Singers Network took off:

Support: It wasn’t only Community Music Victoria who offered support to the GSN in its fledgling form. The Gippsland Acoustic Music Club has been a massive support to the GSN too. Barb Brabets who at that time was president of the GAMC was part of the formation of the GSN back during that first weekend on the prom and brought her experience of involvement with a community organisation formed back in 1982 to encourage acoustic music making in the Gippsland Region.

Find your tribe: It was having a catalyst role with CMVic that encouraged Betty to go and find out who and where people were singing. As she says, having this title and association ‘gave me the credibility to go and knock on doors and introduce myself to people like Jenny Candy who leads groups in the Eastern area of Gippsland’. Betty’s reputation spread further through attending the GAMC’s annual a cappella festival in August where Lyndal Chambers introduced her to everyone as the CMVic Catalyst for that region, putting a face to the name and placing Betty firmly on the community music map as somebody to contact. Anyone contacting the CMVic office wanting to start a singing group in the Gippsland region would also get a call from Betty who reflects fondly “It was a wonderful role, it was a to-die-for role.”

Hold an event “It keeps it alive and people have such a good time there together.” The great thing about events that get people together is the fact that one, they get people together! And two, it gives you a focus.

In the case of the GSN, a new committee forms each year during the last session of the weekend. This is a fantastic way to ensure that the ball keeps rolling and prevents over commitment and burn out from occurring.

Have structure: In keeping the last session of the weekend free to organise the following year’s team, the GSN ensures continuity, a handover and everyone’s clear about what needs to be done, by when and by whom.

A personal by-product of Betty’s involvement with the GSN was the inspiration to return to full-time music study which she did in 2012 having never previously considered herself ‘a musician’. Betty headed back to uni to study composition, a step that required her to reduce her organisational involvement with the GSN. Her great ground work and the collaborative model adopted by the network from the outset ensured its sustainability.

In Betty’s words, “the great thing about having to leave, was that it allowed the GSN to be taken on further and for more leadership to show up in that network.”

Article by Deb Carveth with Betty McLaughlin

Further reading/ references.

Sing Yarra Ranges: ‘Sing Yarra Ranges aims to be a network for singers and singing leaders based in the Dandenong Ranges and Yarra Valley (Australia). The network is part of the “Up Hill, Down Dale” project which was funded by a grant from the Shire of Yarra Ranges. Sing Yarra Ranges is currently inviting people who “live, work and play” in the shire to join them in establishing the network. They would like to hear from all singers and singing leaders to find out what YOU think the region needs in order to make singing a valued part of cultural life in our community.’

CMVic North East: A FB space for people from North East Victoria and surrounds to share information and collaborate regarding community music making events and activities.

Gippsland Acoustic Music Club: The Gippsland Acoustic Music Club Inc aims to encourage acoustic music in the Gippsland region. We support the development of local musicians’ skills as well as providing concert opportunities.

Old year, New books! CMVic launches Sing it & A Guide to Community Singing Leadership

Endings. They’re the new beginnings, folks. And while December can feel like the calendar equivalent of a French waiters’ trick where everything’s whipped off the table before you were sure that you’d finished, it can also be the perfect time to combine contemplation and celebration with the launch of something new. An opportunity to look beyond the craziness of the silly season, and turn your focus to the calm, blank canvas of the future and all the potential it holds.

That’s the way we’re choosing to roll, here at Community Music Victoria.

Like buses, there hasn’t been a new CMVic publication for aaaages, and over the past week, two have come along at once.

Whether you’re a Singing Leader or somebody who simply loves to sing, the new song book from Community Music Victoria, Sing it – Songs of Wisdom Hope and Laughter, together with ‘A Guide to Community Singing Leadership’ hold within their respective covers enough new material, advice and guidance to ensure 2016 is both an inspired and inspiring year, packed with new tunes and songs to discover, and fresh methodologies to adopt and incorporate into your leadership practise.

Both of the books were sung into being at a CMVic celebration held last weekend. Beneath the bunting in Ross House, the fairy lights were unravelled, paper plates piled perilously high were passed around, and CMVic members, coordinators and volunteers gathered together to celebrate the double launch.

Each of the books has a place close to everyone’s hearts and has been in the pipeline for a number of years, so it was just incredible and also a relief to see them both fresh back from the publishers and dressed to party in their shiny dust jackets, finally sharing a table and their moment in the spotlight.

The final selection of 45 songs in Sing it was edited and arranged by Jane Thompson and James Rigby with Fay White sorting out the vital scaffolding of contracts and copyright, while a large amount of work was undertaken to get the project underway in the initial phase, by Corinna Peachey.

Written in the main by community singing leaders for community singing groups, the gorgeous variety and quality of the songs will no doubt put wind in the sails of many singing groups in Victoria, across Australia and beyond, with the songs breezing through the wattles and into the wide world over the course of 2016 and for many years to come.

Suzanne Petersen’s song, ‘Walk away from your trouble’ has more words than those published in the book. To enjoy the song in its full extent, download the lyrics here.

A Guide to Community Singing Leadership was written and compiled by Michelle Morgan as a personal project and also as a means of raising funds for Community Music Victoria.  Michelle is an experienced singing leader and, for several years, was a member on the board of Community Music Victoria. Here she talks a little bit about what moved her to pick up her pen and break out the ink:

“A few years ago (yes, things move slowly!) I was working through Julia Cameron’s ‘The Vein of Gold – A Journey into Your Creative Heart’.

I’d been feeling inspired to write, and knew I wanted to write something, but didn’t know what.

At that stage, I’d been running choirs as my full time business for a few years. I wasn’t an expert by any means, but I had a good grounding in the practice that had been guided and supported by Community Music Victoria. I wrote wildly for a few days straight, forming the structure of the book and a lot of the content. I knew the book could not be mine alone and wanted it to reflect the myriad of voices and collective wisdom of our singing leader community.

I read every edition of Shout! and Sing It! that I had access to, and requested permission to re-publish many of the articles that fit within the scope of the chapters. People were generously willing to share their work in this format and so it began to come together.  Over the years, there were chunks of time where I got caught up in life and totally dropped the project. There were also times where my own doubt stopped me from taking the next step… making that phone call, re-reading that draft. But somehow it continued, and somehow we’ve now reached the point of publishing and release!

A Guide to Community Singing Leadership has truly become a collaborative creation, in the spirit of all CMVic activities. I’m so grateful to the precious people who have become part of the team; the initial readers, the cheer squad, the editors, the board members in the communications group, the designers and others who’ve assisted.”

With a foreword written by Fay White, Michelle’s book also tells the story and the history of the Vic Sings movement and how it unfolded and manifested as the strong network it is today. In the words of Jane Coker who coordinated the Victoria Sings program for CMVic:

“I’ve been lucky enough to preview this lovely book. As well as being a really intelligent and practical guide to leading sustainable, accessible group singing, it’s also a social history in that it tells the story of the Victoria Sings network and leadership development program from it’s earliest days. Fabulous reading.”

You can buy either (or both!) A Guide to Community Singing Leadership and Sing it – Songs of Wisdom, Hope and Harmony, from the store section of the CMVic website. Please be aware that orders placed after December 16 may take a little while to reach you as CMVic HQ is shutting down for the holidays, but reach you, they will.

And finally, with endings and fresh starts still very much in mind, huge amounts of gratitude and our very best wishes go to three very special people. To Jane Coker who is changing hats after doing an outstanding job as CMVic’s Victoria Sings coordinator for the past fourteen years; to Aaron Silver who is moving out of Melbourne and swapping his role of Engaging Younger People for Teaching younger people; and to Heather McLaughlin, long time CMVic board member, community music champion and marimba queen, who is moving interstate. Our love to you all!

This is the final blog post for 2015. Thank you, lovely people, for reading and commenting on the the past twelve months’ posts and please continue to share your stories and experiences of music making in your communities with us next year, you know we love to hear them.

Wishing you all much music making and merriment as well as good health and happiness for 2016. See you on the other side!

Deb Carveth, Online editor for Community Music Victoria.

 

The joy of song swaps: singing leader Barb McFarlane sings out

The Dandenong hills are alive with the sound of music but there’s no sign of the Von Trapps in any of the tea shops, anyone running is probably just late for Puffing Billy not making a dash for the Swiss border, and for lonely goatherds there are open mic nights and online forums. How times have changed… Much of the music ringing around these green hills is community music, championed and facilitated by, among others, Barb McFarlane, a long time community music activist and valued supporter of Community Music Victoria.

Barb recently dropped us a line in response to a blog post about Song Swaps: “Song Swaps are my favouritest CMVic short activity! I love that you never know what will be presented and I always come away with some new gems, some new ideas and the warm glow of connecting with others who love gathering people to sing.”

Ooh, now who doesn’t love a bit of positive feedback? It spreads happiness and comfort like butter on hot toast. So, getting a little greedy, we pursued Barb shamelessly with questions about her style and approach to singing leadership that she was good enough to answer with further reflection on why she loves Song Swaps so much, as well as offering some insight into her own musical journey, which began at a young age.

“I remember sitting at the piano, striking notes one at a time and putting my ear close to the keys and waiting ’til I couldn’t hear the note ringing before playing the next one. Also making melodies with no end. When I was a bit older, I’d pretend I was Julie Andrews and sing songs from the Sound of Music. I was sure I sounded just like her! Many school holidays visiting with cousins where we’d all sing songs we’d learned at Guides, Sunday school or School remind me of SongSwaps!”

So what was it that made Barb decide to become a Singing Leader? I realised that I didn’t get much pleasure out of performing and was embarrassed by praise. I felt there was something I was missing, a realisation about the thoughts and feelings that audience members had, that seemed to make them think they couldn’t do what I was doing. It bothered me that over the years, people said things that seemed to put performers above themselves. It was like finding gold when I realised that I could help empower people to sing without judgment and with no audience but the circle of other singers.

Barb leads two weekly Sing for Fun groups that are inclusive of people of all abilities, a Strum and Sing Ukulele group and a Community Choir called VoKallista, which she started in 2009 and runs with assistance from Libby Price. Vokallista is an open, performing choir who sing a variety of material that Barb describes as dealing with themes such as social justice “and the fascinating challenges of being human.” She leads sings at many community events and festivals such as The Hills and finds that people really love to celebrate!

VoKallista has been going for a while now; how do you keep it evolving and what do you think is the secret of its success? VoKallista evolved from a caroling group I was leading. We’d all troup around nursing homes and the like in the busy lead-up to Christmas, instead of being swallowed up by the craziness. I think the kind of people we are has led the style and subjects of music and then we’ve attracted more people who like our songs and are similarly community minded, like to live more simply, are very caring of the environment and keen on social justice, peace and equality among human beings. So maybe the ‘secret’ has been that ‘like attracts like’! Having an Assistant Director in Libby Price has been invaluable. I’ve had someone to talk through difficult stuff with, as well as lots of the practical things running a choir calls for.

I credit the circle formation that I’ve learned to work in, with much of the success of the model of Sing for Fun, otherwise known as Vocal Nosh. (I don’t do food!) Without words each participant is saying “you are welcome, you are one of us, you have value as a person, we are all equal, we are on the same team, however you are today is fine, I can see you, I can hear you and let’s create something beautiful together.” CMVic have given this amazing gift to the community by teaching this model to all Singing Leaders who have come to them and taken this back into their communities. Working in a circle is, for me, the most important element to the success of any singing group but so many of the basic singing leadership skills have become my second language as I see how easy they make the learning of a song for people.

CMVic has been Mothership to me and I have developed further skills and confidence to lead a group in song. I receive such wonderful support and encouragement from CMVic to continue to skill share and song share with other leaders and this keeps my practice very fresh and keeps me inspired and energised! CMVic members are like my musical family.

The songs I’ve collected from Song Swaps that I treasure most and use most are the little shorties, such as ‘After the Journey’ by Laura Brearley:

“After the journey

there’s always the rest,

time to be quiet and blessed”

What is it about short songs that makes them so effective to teach a group? The thing about these songs is that they are easily passed on….to other Leaders to use and then to groups of people who may be singing for the first time in their adult life or who have not had many opportunities to sing. The song messages are often very nurturing, reassuring and inspiring and, because they are usually repeated many times and because some are rounds, we tend to go away with the songs stuck in our heads. This can sometimes override other less helpful stuff that may be going on in our heads! I love ear worms!

Do you think more people are turning to community music making in greater numbers as a way of reaching out and connecting with one another? Oh Yes!! I love to see the friendships and connections that are made through a regular sing for fun. I love to hear people’s stories and know that they have found a place to be where whatever they sound like is fine, where there is lots of non-verbal communication through laughter and grimaces, little teams clinging together to stay on their part, eye rolling as my ‘secretary’ is once again sacked for a funny typo. I choose songs that will encourage a positive thought or two, funny songs and songs that are beautiful with just two parts so that people may feel that they are the creators.

I reckon that all times have their difficulties but the time we live in now calls for strengthened, tightly woven communities who will be able to pull together when needed.

What do you like to do when you’re not singing and music making? I read a lot. I love a good chat and a walk in the forest. I also get involved in Community events.

Finally, if you were let loose in one of the many tasty cake shops nestled in those hills, which tasty treat would be in the most danger? Lemon Meringue pie!

Barb’s community choir have struck lucky in having her as their leader, something they’re probably highly aware of as they continue to try and determine the human condition and sing to bring awareness, change and enrichment to the lives of themselves and of others. Huge thanks to Barb for playing ball and giving her time and energy to this post. The song ‘After the journey’ is published here, courtesy of Laura Brearley and is taken from the CMVic publication ‘Short Stuff’.

For information about Vokallista, click here or visit their Facebook page www.facebook.com/VoKallista

Interview with Barb McFarlane by Deb Carveth, Online Editor for CMVic