Sharing Food & Music Makes Sunraysia Shine

Music and food make great mates, their charismatic combination creates the perfect context for friendships to flourish and where there’s one you will invariably find the other. From Vocal Noshes to music camps and choirs, there is nothing like a spot of music-making to work up an appetite and a gathering of like minded people chatting over a plateful of food after a session of singing or playing is a beautiful thing.

As Community Music Victoria is all about using music to facilitate connections and develop community networks we were very excited to learn from our Growing Community Music Murray Mallee team about what the good folks from Food Next Door Coop and Out of the Box Sunraysia are doing. Work that feels aligned with the values of our own organisation, and to hear about how everybody’s paths came to cross at the end of November.

Food Next Door Coop is a social enterprise scheme connecting newly arrived migrants with existing land owners who have soil space to share, and with vacant or under-utilised farmland in regional and rural areas of Victoria’s North West. It is a model that fosters inclusivity and generates the sharing of ideas in a literal cross-pollination of knowledge and culture, uniting people from diverse backgrounds with members of their new communities and providing them access to land and a way for them to support themselves on arrival in their new country, using farming practices from back home. Creating an avenue to a sustainable source of income and independence helps people to settle  and strengthens community cohesion, while working the land in this way increases the number of small scale farms using sustainable practices beneficial to soil regeneration. The outcome is high quality, organic produce and a healthier landscape, both literally and figuratively, from the grass roots up.

Beats and birthday cake at Out of the Box’s fifth birthday.
Photo credits: Out of the Box Sunraysia

Out of the Box offers local delivery of produce grown in the Sunraysia area using regenerative, organic farming practices and works closely with the Food Next Door Coop as a distribution outlet for their land sharing scheme. Bringing together customers, farmers, volunteers, and landholders, the onus is on keeping food miles down – everything is grown within a 150 kilometre radius of the city – and the boxes are sold on a subscription basis with a lucky dip of produce each week using prices set by the growers. It’s a beautiful way to develop and sustain the community, feeding the people of the township and enriching local community connections by bringing people together and strengthening the network, much in the same way as the community music groups listed on the CMVic database.

And, like music, food grown and shared within the community is not only nurturing, bringing people together at the source, it has a flow on effect. Events like farmers markets create avenues for the sharing and development of ideas and values and offer a springboard for friendships and tighter, healthier, more connected communities. They also provide wonderful performance spaces and opportunities for community choirs and music groups to share their work and spread the joy.

Drumming with Catherine Threlfall. Photo credit: Out of the Box Sunraysia

On November 26th 2022, Out of the Box Sunraysia celebrated its fifth birthday with an extravaganza of music, food and wine that was provided, made and shared by members of the community, including the CMVic Growing Community Music family. Catherine Threlfall led a drumming circle with people of all ages joining in and playing an assortment of percussion including djembes, triangles, and tambourines; there was a band with ukulele and fiddle players and dancing from the Barkindji Dancers, all accompanied by a sumptuous community feast made, of course, from locally sourced foods: Merbein Mushrooms and lentils, beetroot sourdough and even an orange almond birthday cake made with beautiful fresh navel oranges from the region. 

Click here to watch a beautiful clip of the afternoons activities and listen to a moving speech made by Grant Hyam who runs Out of the Box in which he explains what being a part of it has brought to his life.

So if you are beginning the new year full of intentions to live well, joining a community music group or choir is a wonderful way to tick this box straight off the bat. A list of singing and music making opportunities can be accessed for free on the CMVic website. And if you are fortunate enough to live within coo-ee of Sunraysia and the Mallee, exploring the delicious work of the Out of the Box and Food Next Door Coop communities may support the turning over of any new leaves and lead to fresh growth and exciting opportunities as we take on 2023, together. 

‘Off the Chai’ Photo credit: Out of the Box Sunraysia

‘A Shared Affair’ Photo credit: Out of the Box Sunraysia

Written by Deb Carveth, CMVic Copy Editor, in collaboration with Kylie Livingstone, CMVic Growing Community Music Local Catalyst for Mildura, Sunraysia, Mallee

Video Credit: Luke Gange, Gange Productions. Photo Credits: Out of the Box Sunraysia.

All Directions Choir Summons Songs and Stories from the Deep

All Directions Community Choir has written 5 original songs from scratch as part of an original composition project called Songs and Stories from the Deep, facilitated by choir director, Cath Rutten. 

All Directions Community Choir sits within the Boroondara Community Outreach Program (BCO), a mental health ministry run by the Kew Uniting Church to support people with either disability or mental health challenges, or who are experiencing social isolation. The project received funding from Boroondara City Council through the grants program and the Rotary Club of Balwyn and was run by Cath as a series of workshops using water as a metaphor for living, with the group ‘writing from the heart about their experiences of life; the struggles as well as their sense of joy and adventure’.

“We began playing around with words and emotions as a group and there seemed to be a lot of congruence between the way we describe our feelings and water. We spoke of tears, and drowning or being lifted up and held by the waves of emotion, waves of joy, a congruence between the descriptive words of water and the descriptive words for emotion.”

Cath is a musician who loves working at the intersection of arts and health. In addition to running a singing studio at home, she also teaches inclusive singing practice, and has run a number of community projects including 52 Flash Mobs in 52 Weeks to promote the benefits of arts participation to the community. 

“My belief is that we are inherently artistic and musical as humans and for it to be professionalised so that we think we can’t do it unless we’re fantastic is detrimental to us as people.”

Members of the choir were interested in writing songs that talked about their lived experiences but also about the experience of being human. “All too often members from this community feel categorised by whatever challenges they face and really a lot of the challenges will be very familiar. Many people are facing challenges around secure housing, family and home to a lesser or greater extent, there are so many universal stories in there.”

The group met weekly for six sessions to continue writing and drawing on all of the water metaphors and included non-choir members of the BCO community. The process was encouraged along with inspirational visuals of water, and then Cath took the poems and turned their ideas into songs. Cath describes it as a wonderful journey to have shared. 

Artwork by Leah Ferguson and Belinda Wickens

“Being in a room and playing with lots of people and using words as part of that play, there’s just so much that comes out of it. In a way when you’ve got lots of creative people together, the work seems to do itself, it’s fantastic.”

Cath created the music and worked out the song arrangements so that the material used by the writing group could be learned by the choir. Everything was going swimmingly and according to plan. The choir began learning their songs at the end of 2019 with the view to recording the tracks for wider distribution in early 2020. But of course, like most things from that poor ill-fated year, it all had to stop and be mothballed. Cath says, “during COVID like so many other choirs we went online but a lot of the community did not feel comfortable in that space and numbers dropped to around 10 or 12. At the start, before everyone grew tired, I would sometimes ring people and have a sing on the phone with them as a way to remain connected and to check in and we kept going but with a skeleton crew.”

It took a while once lockdown lifted for All Directions Community Choir to regain its collective confidence about being out and about and to find momentum once more. At the beginning of 2022, the choir began working with a wonderful producer, Cameron Mackenzie, and Songs and Stories from the Deep was finally back on track. “Cameron came into the church and worked with the choir in the space and made the recordings over five or six weeks. It was a really lovely, enjoyable process.”

The CD launch of ‘Songs and Stories from the Deep recently took place, in mid-October. “It was wonderful, we all had such a lovely time with a beautiful big crowd and Boroondara Councillor, Nick Stavrou, came and opened it for us; it was such a warm, loving event.” In keeping with the community spirit of the song writing project, the beautiful promotional artwork accompanying the project was contributed by Cath’s daughter, Leah Ferguson, and the graphic design was done by Belinda Wickens.

Cath crackles with conviction and sparkles as she speaks of the community in which she works and her fondness for the project and the people it has involved, as well as for those who work tirelessly behind the scenes to make it all happen:

“Natalie who is a Reverend of Kew Uniting Church and the Coordinator of BCO does an enormous amount of work. She organises food relief and there are volunteers to come in and cook for people who can’t cook for themselves so that there are freezers full of food, and she does a lot of work for people behind the scenes. The program offers Tai Chi, and as well as the choir, a ukulele group runs on Tuesday mornings; there’s a band that meets and rehearses too and because Natalie’s really committed to finding skilled professionals to work with the choir and the band, there is always a need for funding. I’d love to plug the fact that the songs are for sale as a CD on bandcamp, it’s not very much and people can look up Boroondara Community Outreach if they would like to make a donation, which will go towards the activities that Natalie runs.” 

Something Cath notices repeatedly through her work is how quickly the health benefits of making music together occur and how obvious the effects are:

“It happens as soon as you start, being in a space together with people and singing or making music, our physical and mental health improves immediately and our beautiful souls respond!”

Songs from the Songs and Stories from the Deep are available on bandcamp, and while it is possible to enjoy them without purchase, all money raised from sales of the digital album will go to support the fantastic work done by BCO: 

Click here for a link to the songs: https://alldirectionscommunitychoir.bandcamp.com/album/songs-and-stories-from-the-deep
Click here for more information about BCO https://www.bcokew.org/

Written by Deb Carveth, Copy Editor for Community Music Victoria, in collaboration with Cath Rutten; thank you Cath!

Feature image: Detail of the artwork for Songs and Stories from the Deep, created by Leah Ferguson and Belinda Wickens

CresFest: The New Folk & Roots Music & Dance Festival Putting Creswick on the Map

“There’s music everywhere!” says Judy Turner, convenor of the inaugural CresFest taking place between April 1-3.  For two days, the township of Creswick is throwing open its arms and its doors and inviting visitors to savour two of life’s transformative pleasures: music and dance. CresFest will celebrate the return of live music and performance while showcasing the beauty of Creswick’s historic architecture, its pubs, cafes and public spaces and the great beauty of the Central Victorian landscape. 

Judy’s desire to entice visitors to Creswick arose from her feeling it was underused, underknown and underappreciated with a plethora of lovely buildings just waiting for someone to bring a festival to town, and to share the talents and spirit of the local community with a broader audience. Drawing on a lifetime’s experience of coordinating festivals, fundraisers and cultural events for a broad range of audiences, Judy decided it was time to drop a big old pin and mark Creswick out on the map.

“People tend to dash through Creswick on their way to somewhere else and we want it to be a bit more known”, says Judy. “The Goldfields region is a beautiful place to come and explore, people can stay in Ballarat, Daylesford or Clunes and be here for the festival in fifteen minutes. It’s a beautiful part of the world to visit and CresFest is happening at a beautiful time of the year.”

Picture source: http://www.cresfest.com.au

A festival committee was formed of like-minded locals from Creswick Folk Club, the Neighbourhood Centre, Leavers Wine bar where open mic nights have run for many years, and the Creswick Theatre Company. Together, they have fought for funding and been shaping the show, growing it from the ground up for many, many months. CresFest now has an enviable program which has grown to include 360 musicians.

In addition to a phenomenal line up of headline acts including Emma Donovan and The Putbacks, Eric Bogle Trio, The Maes, Lucy Wise, Fiona Ross, Kee’ahn and oodles of others, CresFest offers a whole other program – the Armband Program – filled with an exciting range of opportunities for community participation. 

Festival goers can sing along with the Creswick Chorus led by Stella Savvy, strum and hum in the Creswick Ukestra led by Jen Hawley, strike out with Strat and Lyndal’s street band, and the Creswick Brass Band or be blown away by a Bollywood Dance ensemble. In addition to all of this and more, CresFest will include a series of live theatre shows called ‘Stories of Us’, funded by Festivals Australia, interspersed with short films in which music plays a key role. 

A kids’ choir has been created with funding from a local family and open mics will be running all weekend, some hosted by the alumni of Youthrive, a statewide group based in Creswick working to support kids from rural areas in supporting their education and bringing their skills back home. For lovers of flips, tricks and ollies there is a YMCA skate competition included in Sunday’s program.

The festival’s ticketing model gives punters the choice of buying a pass for all of the activities taking place in and around the town as part of the Armband Program, with an additional ticket required for access into the Town Hall where the headline acts will be playing across the weekend, offering what Judy calls ‘two levels of commitment’.

“There’s also heaps of free stuff” Judy says, “for people passing through or wanting to dip their toe in the water. The famous Creswick market will be home to an outdoor stage which in turn will host Saturday Breakfast from Ballarat ABC in a first live OB from Creswick.”

In addition to putting Creswick on the map, the committee hopes CresFest will increase the role and prevalence of shared participatory music making and performance for people of all ages within the Creswick community as well as communities from the surrounding small towns who have been brought into the festival fold. 

As Judy says, “that idea that people love getting together to sing, play and perform has been at the heart of what I’ve been doing all my life.” 

Planning this event has taken nerves of steel, and CresFest appears to have struck lucky in being able to proceed in a window of opportunity when other regional town-based festivals held earlier in the year had to be cancelled. As Judy says, “everything is fraught when you’re surrounded by uncertainty, particularly when it’s the first time doing something”. Undeterred, Judy has been driven on by holding in mind the sheer joy that making music and performing with others can bring, a bug she caught back in the 70s when she began performing at folk festivals:

“For me, it is really all about amateur music and the power of performance. I just love the atmosphere and the chance to sit down and play and play and play until I can’t play anymore, and I like to provide that for other people.”

The inclusive and collaborative culture of CresFest extends beyond the music and dance. Local businesses have provided backing and volunteers of all ages have been drafted from across the community with plenty more still needed. 

“We have a terrific team of people on the job, a mix of younger professionals and older volunteers, and it has worked really well and everyone is doing a terrific job. If anyone would like to be involved we could do with more stage managers, front of house people, we need people to serve the food in the artists’ green room, we need trouble shooters who can be runners, we need gofers, and before that we need people to put up posters!” 

CresFest sounds an incredible way to spend a weekend. For ticket bookings and information about how to participate in the festival – become a CresFest volunteer, put up posters or offer a billet to a visiting act – click here, and and be sure to try and get yourself and everyone you know there.

CresFest: April 1-3, 2022. Creswick is just 1.5 hours’ drive from Melbourne, between Daylesford and Ballarat. It is accessible via V/Line on the Maryborough route. For more information visit http://www.vline.com.au or call 1800 800 007

Written by Deb Carveth, Online Editor for Community Music Victoria with Judy Turner

Good Vibrations: How the infectious energy of John Lane makes life feel better

All my training has been on the job and I have learnt it by doing it… I always loved singing and I loved acting and I liked being the centre of attention, I guess, whether it was in music or theatre.” This love of the limelight may have been a starting point, but John Lane has spent his entire working life bringing others into the frame to experience the joy of participation that has perpetuated his own effervescent, irrepressible energy and enthusiasm for community arts practice.

“Being in musical vibration together with others is the closest I get to being really spiritual, that’s my spiritual observance, it’s why I like going to the footy; if your team wins you get to sing with 20,000 people! This world with all this pain and sorrow also has all this beauty and one way of plugging into that, viscerally, is to be vibrating in harmony together.”

Having learned piano as a child, John branched out into trumpet and the French horn at secondary school before teaching himself to play the guitar, inspired by the likes of Neil Young and Bob Dylan. “I took every opportunity I could to be a part of productions, both at school and university where I was very much into musical theatre.” 

After three years of medical school, John decided to take a gap year to try and get theatre out of his system. This was a plan destined never to work. He was offered a job in Brisbane and spent three immersive years touring political musical comedy shows with the Popular Theatre Troupe, also organising and running drama workshops and improvisations based on what he had been doing in student theatre workshops, back in Melbourne. John found he couldn’t stop soaking up skills and knowledge in whatever ways he could from whomever he could.  “I worked my chops up by just ‘doing it’ and learning on the job from watching other people.”

“This world with all this pain and sorrow also has all this beauty and one way of plugging into that, viscerally, is to be vibrating in harmony together.”

While living in Queensland, John bumped into a fella named Linsey Pollak and the two of them went busking together; John played tenor saxophone and Linsey played a broom, the end of which he’d turned into a flute (of course). “We played songs that he had written, and some that we both knew, and it was Linsey who first said to me ‘you could write your own songs!’” Having been given his first lessons in the ukulele by Joe Geia from the band ‘No Fixed Address‘, John would carry his banjolele with him everywhere he went – wearing it slung around his back, ready to whip out at any point and pair it with a quick bit of kazoo to entertain people at festivals or in the streets, in the piazzas of Rome, Bologna and Perugia perhaps, and even on a 24 hour bus trip from Dharamsala to Kashmir.

“The only real formal performance training I did was later on, with the Nanjing Acrobats of China, spending six days a week with them for three months in Wodonga, practising alongside members of the Fruit Fly Circus and Circus Oz. I was open to anything and everything and by that stage was feeling ‘this is so much fun, everyone should have this opportunity’. ”

John’s primary focus became finding ways for other people to experience the joy that he’d had of participating and being ‘in it’. For the first ten years of his working life, John acknowledges that he was very lucky to have been employed full time doing theatre with the type of community-based theatre companies where you weren’t just an actor, you were involved in writing the material, creating sets and props and anything and everything else.

“With West Theatre we went into housing commissions, we did projects with the Vietnamese Community at a time when they had newly arrived in Australia, we worked with the Nurses Union, we put on these very professional big community shows. There was a collective of between 7 and 12 professional theatre makers and together we would run events that involved dozens to hundreds of people in the community, putting on shows that were sometimes political, often based around personal and local issues; and community music was always a big part of that work.”

By this point it was the mid-80s and John became heavily involved in festivals around Melbourne and across Victoria. “Festivals were the most obvious opportunity for lots and lots of people to participate in a cultural event. These could be run as projects with artists in schools and artists in the community that culminated in a festival.”

Towards the end of a long period of freelancing, one of the jobs John started doing in 2000 was working for the Royal Children’s Hospital. “They had acquired funding from VicHealth to engage professional arts facilitators to work in schools and they were looking for a coordinator. I got that gig which was 2 days a week for 6 months and this kept going as an annual contract job among the many other jobs I was doing like the Darebin Music Feast, the Kites Festival and the Kew Festival, and stuff for the Royal Melbourne Show and City of Melbourne.”

Unsurprisingly, John had also learned to juggle by this point which came in handy and helped him to keep all these professional balls in the air at the same time, as well as beanbags, skittles, fruit, kitchen knives and whatever else came to hand.

Striving to support the voice of people who had been oppressed or suppressed drove John’s passion for agitprop theatre.

“It was therapeutic for me to be involved with music and with drama and I was always really interested in the application of creative arts techniques to psychological medicine, which I had only just begun to research as part of my medical training. This stuck with me and became a personal political goal of doing this type of work because of its benefit to people’s mental health… including mine!”

The Royal Children’s Hospital’s “Festival for Healthy Living” (FHL) program was an embodiment of this philosophy, and upon taking up a newly created salaried role of FHL Artistic Coordinator, by 2004 John found he had gone full circle from leaving medical school in 1976 back to working within a hospital where he remained until his retirement from that post in October 2021. 

So how did John keep up his energy? “Keeping a role for myself as a hands-on participant, even when I was coordinating projects, was vital for me. I’d end up being an MC or I’d pop up in the band playing the trumpet or tenor horn, keyboards or uke. I think my work as an overall coordinator suffered sometimes because I was so obsessed with being in things, but I gradually realised I didn’t need to be front and centre and that my role in life as I got older was in being a facilitator and capacity builder.”

John firmly believes that some of the best capacity building happens by learning on the job, side by side with someone who is really experienced. “I would be there alongside emerging artists, doing the stilt walking or juggling workshops, or building a gigantic puppet or encouraging kids in a songwriting session. At other times the job was all about writing funding submissions or facilitating steering committees, but doing only that would never last very long with me and I had to find at least some time to keep working on the ground. It was a crazy life rushing hither and thither!”

Finding ways to help people feel better, and experience wellness from connecting with other people in their communities, schools or families, working for the Royal Children’s Hospital proved to be a great way in for John to build countless productive partnerships in over 30 different communities across Victoria. More recently, working closely with local agencies, under the RCH/FHL banner the annual Dream Big Festival was established in Melton. This was run for the first time in 2015, with John at the helm as Artistic Director.

A year later, John decided he needed more brass back in his life and joined Melbourne-based street band, Havana Palava (cos he obviously had so much spare time on his hands). There he met Lyndal Chambers who at that time was coordinating CMVic’s StreetSounds project. As part of a collaboration between StreetSounds and the Dream Big Festival, together they established The Fabulous Meltones Street Band.

Facilitating the band was an opportunity for John to embrace participatory music-making and perform on a regular basis while bringing together community players of brass, strings, percussion and more, in a riot of colour and sound. The band has played at the Dream Big Festival each year, and at dozens of other community events including the local Djerriwarrh Festival, and also featured in spectacular appearances at Geelong After Dark for three consecutive years.

Since his ‘rewirement’ last month, John has been reflecting back on all of this history and allowing himself to dream of what might come next.

“In the future I do see myself as always wanting to get community music to happen with people of all ages.”

If history is anything to go by, John won’t be sitting still in one place for very long before his energy fizzes over and propels him towards his next adventure. There may be kazoos… Watch this space!

Written by Deb Carveth, Online Editor for Community Music Victoria, with John Lane

Photos supplied

Going back to U-Bass-ics, with Oli Hinton

Nine years ago or thereabouts, Oli Hinton retired from UK academia and made the move to Australia for what began as a sabbatical holiday. Oli and his partner, Jess, had known Jane Coker for many years through playing community music back in the UK.

“We got in touch with Jane when we arrived in Australia and Jane said, ‘fantastic, can you come and volunteer for CMVic?’” Oli laughs.  

By the time the CMVic coordinator role came up some months later, the winning combo of life down under and volunteering at CMVic-bug had well and truly bitten and Oli decided retirement could wait and that here was an opportunity for him to get his teeth into something new and exciting.

“I wanted to do something even more interesting than I had been doing and working for something I feel passionate about which is playing music.”

Yet to deploy full-holiday mode, Oli embraced his new life and kept busy putting down roots and playing baritone sax in Havana Palava, a local street band. In what seems like no time at all he got to know more about the different music-making opportunities in and around Melbourne and started playing his accordion again with The Footscray Gypsy Orchestra. “I got to know more and more of the wonderful community that’s involved in community music in Victoria and I just feel that I have been incredibly fortunate.”

Baritone Saxophones and accordions aren’t known for being quiet instruments so how did a small, stringed instrument like the ukulele find its way to Oli’s heart? “We found ourselves often in the company of other people who were playing ukuleles and none of the other instruments we played were really suitable for playing alongside them so we thought, if we can’t beat ‘em we’ll join ‘em!”

Oli and Jess got themselves soprano ukuleles and started playing along, but Oli quickly found he missed playing the bass rhythm lines, and the strings of the little ukulele hurt his fingers.

“I kept talking about the U-bass and then Jess bought me one for Christmas and it arrived and I’ve never looked back, it is faaaabulous!”

Having never played a string instrument of that sort before, Oli found it took him a while to get to grips with all the different technical challenges and fundamental things like knowing the strings and where the notes were. “In my usual way of learning I did it by learning one tune and then another tune, and another tune and then I thought, ‘ah, I’m getting the general idea here!’ “

Oli confesses this is the way he’s learnt to play every instrument. “The great thing about learning by playing a tune and then another tune is that you get instant results!”.  He’s also quick to point out that a few lessons from someone who’s been playing for many years is also incredibly valuable.

As well as playing music, Oli has had a lot of fun arranging tunes for different street bands which has given his knowledge of music theory a good workout. “I’ve had to really get to grips with the keys of different instruments and chords and harmonies and actually as a bass player, you’re much more aware of what the notes are and the progression of the chords.” This experience has even led Oli to compose a small ditty for the BUF lunchtime concert on Saturday – something he never dreamed of doing in the past!

In considering the fundamental, scaffolding role of the bass, Oli sounds amused as he admits that played really wrong it can actually destroy a tune but has realised if you carry on with aplomb, things will generally be okay.

“From playing bass the most important thing I’ve learned is to keep plucking something in time and the great thing about bass is the ear isn’t very good at determining the bass notes…if you ever try to tune a bass instrument using your ears it’s really hard! Nearly all bass tuning is done with a gadget, by me anyway, and if you hit a bum note it’s fairly easy to get away with it!”

On Saturday, Oli will be running a workshop for absolute beginners and has promised that by the end of it, everyone will be able to play a tune. “Because I’ve said this is a workshop for absolute beginners, I’m going to start by which end you hold it! I can still remember how surprisingly hard I found certain things when I started, so I’m going to try and pull those out.” For example, string damping; when you start out you think ‘oh no, I’ve got to stop that horrible noise happening!’ The strings play off each other and you can get intermediate harmonics happening between them.”

Another thing Oli noticed when he started playing U-bass in a uke group was that rarely are you presented with the tabs for the bass chords of a tune. “So what happens is the leader of the group will say ‘let’s play so and so’ and you flick to the page and of course, you’ve got the normal presentation of lyrics and chords, and you then have to work from that to something which makes sense. It’s not like reading the exact bass line. You may be really lucky and it’ll be a tune you’re familiar with and you’re familiar with the bass line that goes with it, and so you can at least get the feel for what it should be.. or you might not!”

Oli is keen to acknowledge the joys and the challenges of online music workshops for everyone. “We know it can’t be as good as being together live cos you miss the interaction where you’re playing off each other and can see what each person is doing and developing things alongside them at the right pace, and that’s hard on zoom. But we’ve found that people get loads of fun from them. Things may go a bit slow or too fast from time to time but there’s always the opportunity to follow up!”

What Oli hopes more than anything is that anyone who comes to his workshop this Saturday leaves thinking ‘yep I’m going to get a U-bass and I’m going to take it along to my group’… cos they’ll have so much fun with it!

By Deb Carveth, Online Editor for CMVic, with Oli Hinton, CMVic Coordinator

**BUF took place online on Saturday 25 September. Take a look at what happened here: https://cmvic.org.au/whats-on/boroondara-uke-festival-past-eventl

MusicfesT: A New Look, Statewide Celebration of Community Music

Trying to plan a state-wide music camp at this moment in time is a bit like juggling with jelly. Unless, like CMVic’s Nicki Johnson, Craig Barrie and Oli Hinton, you had already been dreaming of ways to bring people together across time and space, even pre-pandemic.

“We had a brainstorm with Oli – back when we were volunteers at CMVic – to imagine the evolution of CMVic’s annual Music Camp. It was almost like Oli had some kind of vision of the future,” laughs Nicki. “Some kind of oracular vision, I don’t know what he was thinking but there was this provocation… How could we develop Music Camp?” Then, of course, 2020 brought on a year of lockdowns. Some additional State Government COVID-recovery funding led to Craig being employed as the Digital Coordinator. At the end of 2020 Nicki became CMVic’s Program Coordinator, a new role with a focus on state-wide programs linked to CMVic’s Growing Community Music project. “When the new year began, everybody felt filled with optimism, it was like ‘ta-daaaa, we’re back!’ and so when plans began for this year’s music camp, it seemed there was all this potential because we were out of lockdown and everything was going to be normal and straightforward.”

But Nicki’s thoughts kept returning to a term that Craig had coined back in that meeting with Oli about future music camps being run as ‘a community of communities’  which, after all, is exactly what we are. “I guess that term had just sat like a little sleeping seed in the background of my mind.” 

Nicki was keen to implement learnings and experience gleaned from Grantville Online into plans for this year’s camp. “I wanted to use what we’d learned from Grantville 2020 which was such a great vibe. Over the past year, everyone has become more familiar with the technology and I started to wonder whether we might use that as a way to connect with other places we were wanting to share musical ideas and experiences with.” 

Nicki began imagining how it might look like if everyone could all be together the way they really wanted to be, making music and feeling it resonate and pump through their bodies while using the skills they’d developed to enable them to share this and see what other people were doing elsewhere in other areas and in other ways. 

These thoughts bubbled away for a long time.  After much brainstorming and many meetings, the plan for a day-long ‘Musicfest’ finally emerged and took shape. “Really, it’s a crazy ambitious thing to try! Musicfest is effectively 3 music camps simultaneously rolling out in one day!” 

On August 28, CMVic will be facilitating three face-to-face teaching hubs based in Ballan, Emerald and Mildura. Workshops with local leaders will take place across the day for music makers of all experience levels. The day will open with an Acknowledgement of Country and a song performed by Maylene Slater-Burns, First Nations singer-songwriter and Deputy Chairperson of Songlines Aboriginal Music Corporation, and proud Kamilaroi, Wiradjuri, Yuin, Worimi, Ngunnawal, Gugu Djungan, Nywaigi, Gangalidda and Garawa woman; there will also be Zoom workshops from Kavisha Mazzella, Jen Hawley, Catherine Threlfall, Dan Maceoin, Alison McGann, Win Moser, and Will Viran. At the end of the day, everyone will join up for a celebratory concert, MC’d by ‘community music legends’ Lyndal Chambers and Brian ‘Strat’ Strating! 

For anyone unable to make it along to a hub, Musicfest Online provides an opportunity for anyone, anywhere across the state and beyond to tune in and bring the experience of being at camp directly into their music-making community.

Nicki’s vision is for singers and players across the state to gather in pods, community halls, homes and verandahs, anywhere large enough for people to congregate around a screen and get a party of their own going on. All that’s required is for restrictions to permit this and for access to a screen and speakers large enough to allow everyone in the room to see and hear what’s happening in the hubs. 

Feedback from participants of Grantville Online showed that Zoom fatigue was a common factor after a day spent on screens and this has been taken into consideration in the planning of Musicfest. “When you have that as a secondary aspect to having all the people in the room, there’s no way you can be as exhausted because your focus is really on the people there with you. Depending on the level of restrictions, that might be just your family or it could be your choir or instrumental group and hopefully it might include people who have never been to music camp before and who get this lovely gentle introduction.” 

Pressroom Philanthropy is backing the event with generous printing support and advice.“It’s really lovely because we are hoping that this will help us to reach the next ring of contacts outside of the people who already know us.” Mildura Rural City Council is also champing at the bit to create a memorable inaugural event. In considering the unpredictability of life in ’21 and being on the border with NSW, Nicki is mindful that Mildura might be precariously placed for a face-to-face program. “I really want the community to have this amazing collaborative experience with us and I’m also frightened that NSW could derail us at any moment. I had a meeting with the Mildura team last week and they are so full of energy and galvanised to do something fantastic and a little bit different. They’re even thinking of maybe having their venue on one of the paddle boats which would be so amazing although I’m not sure how it’ll work with the technology!” 

Musicfest is a testimony to the innovation of everything to have emerged from last year, presented as a big, exciting, collective experiment. Way up on Nicki’s agenda, and something very much on her mind, is her wish that leaders don’t feel alone. “To a large extent I feel that we’ve been replicating each other’s efforts. Everyone is at home making a cappella videos for their groups to give everyone support during this time of separation and that’s been really draining and depleting and I really wanted a way that we could share a bit more, or at least look at ways of collaborating where the burden is a bit more distributed. Musicfest is one way of doing that but I’m also trying to think of other ways we can help each other out, using the technology and massaging it into doing things it wasn’t necessarily designed to do.”

Tickets for the Ballan, Emerald and Mildura hubs and Musicfest Online are on sale now. Nicki’s hope is that people will come along, join in the musical fun, and feedback to CMVic how it made them feel, so CMVic can learn more about running events that aim to bring together the music communities across the state. 

Of course, the organisers are ready for if restrictions mean a last minute change of plans. One thing CMVic is piloting is how to make participatory music events scalable depending on restrictions. “There are so many fallback stages for singers and music makers according to what the restrictions are. For Musicfest, the beautiful plan B will be to run it all online the way we did with Grantville Online last year, and the other end of the extreme is everyone together in a room – just people and no extra technology!  Musicfest gives us room to slide backwards and forwards along that scale and adjust to whatever suits the restrictions at that time. Hopefully we will always find ways to make the most of whatever situation we find ourselves in!”

A screenshot from Grantville Online 2020

Colour and joy at Grantville Music Camp

Written by Deb Carveth with Nicki Johnson, and Craig Barrie for Community Music Victoria

For information and bookings to Musicfest, click here!

Use of Auslan in Choirs and Music Programs

By Karen Kyriakou

It comes as no surprise that with the current ban on singing in Victorian schools, our ever-resourceful music teachers are looking for creative and safe ways to involve students in end of year celebrations and graduations.  With the increased exposure of Auslan in mainstream media through the bushfire season and of course this whole dreadful COVID business, it makes sense that teachers are considering using Auslan in their music classes. It is wonderful to see the substantial recognition that Auslan is getting from mainstream media which has resulted in a massive interest — and that Auslan courses are booked out to the maximum.

For the last 11 years, I have been working as a music teacher at a Deaf school in Melbourne. I have had to learn Auslan to do my job. And I still am still very much learning.

Music teachers are becoming interested in using Auslan as a way to include students in singing-replacement activities. I was asked to write something about the use of Auslan under these circumstances.
Because the Deaf community is not primarily my cultural community I felt it was not appropriate that I speak for them, although this message has since been read by members of that community. So I am writing this as a music teacher — to my music teacher community – sharing my knowledge and experience with Auslan.

Here’s some things to think about if you are considering using Auslan in your school music program — or any school program.

Firstly, what is Auslan?

 Auslan, or Australian Sign Language is the native sign language of the Deaf community. As a cultural group, it is appropriate to use a capital ‘D’ when referring to a Deaf person from this community. The language has its own grammar, sentence structure, and uses facial expression and specific areas of the body as part of the language.  Also, Auslan is not written with ‘all capitals’.

You can find more information about Auslan here

It can be fun to learn a few Auslan signs.

But learning a few signs isn’t learning Auslan nor makes one fluent in the language.

What isn’t Auslan?

 Auslan is not English in sign language. It isn’t ‘actions’ to words.  And it certainly isn’t ‘choralography’ (I never, ever will like that word!).

With its own sentence and grammatical structure, Auslan signs can’t be imposed over English words as the language then makes no sense due to the structure, similarly found in other non-English languages.

So how do you interpret songs into Auslan?

Songs are not ‘translated’ straightforwardly from English into Auslan – they are interpreted, and every Auslan user and interpreter would come up with their own interpretation of the same song given the chance. Songs are full of idioms, imagery and metaphors and as you might imagine, interpreting these into Auslan would not be easy! You have to convey the meaning of the metaphor, not the translation of the English language.

If the Auslan and message of the song cannot be understood by a Deaf Auslan user then it can’t be used in our choirs. (Also, important to note that because of the language structure, one doesn’t sing along when signing.)

If you are copying an Auslan video without knowing the signs, how would you ‘teach’ Auslan to your students? How would you know what sign is what word? Or if you are using an Auslan dictionary to
seek out signs, how will you know the order and structure required?Auslan is very context dependent and there are dialects to think of too. Sometimes it is appropriate to ‘make up’ signs to describe something but this involves a specific process that would include the input and consultation of a few Deaf people or community. How will you know if you are using a true sign or a descriptive one? For example, in a song I am doing currently with my students, the lyrics are ‘The call of the birds bring the break of day’. We are signing Morning, Sunrise, Birds, Sing. The words don’t match the signs as they play out in real time and we are also incorporating culturally appropriate features such as pace, facial expression and upper body movement.

Authentic Cultural Experiences

We should be striving to offer our students authentic cultural learning experiences. We want our students to learn to respect different cultures and their customs and traditions. Auslan is at the heart of the culture of the Deaf community and therefore it should be taught by a native user. Consider this in parallel with the wishes of Indigenous people to be able to share their own culture, stories and history.

Is it a problem if I use Auslan with my choir?

In short, highly likely.

When I started learning Auslan it was all I could talk about. I love the language so much, and as a musician and conductor, the link with non verbal communication and expression was profound. I wanted to use Auslan every day in every way and probably — almost certainly— made every mistake in the book regarding its use.  I know much better now. At the request of the Deaf community, they ask we don’t use Auslan without proper instruction and direction.

Unless a Deaf Auslan user is involved in teaching the song, bringing the correct cultural and linguistic references, it is unlikely that the language will be used correctly. This is incredibly important to the Deaf community, a minority group, who have fought for the right to use their language and to have their language used correctly by others.

Incorrect use of a language of a minority group is cultural appropriation

It is important that a Deaf person be able to understand the performance of your song. If not, the language has been misused or appropriated, even if unintentionally.

Hopefully this nasty COVID virus will be gone and before too long we can resume singing and playing our wind and brass instruments. But music teachers are a creative cohort, so maybe for this especially odd year we make our graduations songs instrumental  items instead, or maybe include student compositions or maybe even accompany a recorded song?

And you know what? This in itself makes a really important learning opportunity for you to share with your students. If you have started a song in Auslan and now have second thoughts about continuing, then you can use this as an opportunity to explain to the students
why and how you have come to this decision. We really have no shortage of musical activities to do with our students, so at this time, in this unforgettable year where teachers have demonstrated
flexibility in unquantifiable measures, we might just need to accept that we will have to do something else instead.

Karen Kyriakou is a music teacher and freelance educator working with arts organisations including MSO, Musica Viva, the Melbourne Recital Centre and ANAM. In 2012 she won a Churchill Fellowship,
travelling to the UK to investigate inclusive ways of bringing authentic educational and musical experiences to the Deaf children in schools.

Rachelle Stevens is an experienced classroom teacher, Deaf herself, and an all-round awesome person. She meticulously checked this article to make sure I represented the views of her Deaf community
correctly.

Article by Karen Kyriakou.

CMVic is grateful to AMusE for their kind permission to use this content. Thank you AMusE! CMVic would also like to thank Steph Payne for bringing it to our attention in the first place; thank you Steph!

From Our Street to Yours: Taking the Band Online

It was participating in an online music session for pre-schoolers which turned around Brian ‘Strat’ Strating and Lyndal Chambers’ thinking about playing and delivering instrumental music online.

“We were invited, us and our grandchildren, to participate in a family session for Drummond Street by Amanda Testro, and it was really interesting. We learned a lot being participants in that group. The fun thing was seeing all the little screens of people doing the same thing or people doing the actions to a song in their own remote locations. We all started off together and then slowly the kids began rambling around the lounge room, you know it’s kind of really interesting and fun to see everyone doing the same thing in different places and we learnt from that experience that things with actions work much better than trying to play music.”

There’s no getting away from it, the communal aspect of instrumental music making online can be dissatisfying for a number of reasons: you don’t have your external speakers cranked up; you don’t own external speakers, your own instrument sounds way louder than what’s coming into your room so there’s no hope of playing along with the facilitator because you’re struggling to actually hear the music itself.  And then there’s the unavoidable reality that in real life sessions, everybody’s bits go together to create a tune and while one person on their own might fumble and stumble over their part or lose the beat, it is everybody playing together in real time that makes everything work and is beautiful.

So how can we make the most of collective instrumental music-making opportunities during these times of physical distancing?  After all, they’re a great vehicle for checking in and hearing how everyone’s doing.

As highly experienced community music facilitators and musicians, this quandary is something Lyndal and Strat have spent many hours contemplating and experimenting with since COVID put an end to most of their other commitments – and income – overnight.

“As a practitioner delivering music online, you need to think about ‘how do I make it work, what’s the reason for doing community music online, and then if you decide to do it, how do I make it successful? Because, you know, if somebody really wants to learn a tune, they can sit in front of a video on YouTube, they can learn the tune slowly and repeat it as many times as they like.” But this isn’t fun, nor is it what brings it to life. We get together in groups because we want to be with other people.”

Playing with the pre-schoolers led Lyndal to realise how dancing and responding to action songs works well online because it doesn’t matter if you’re hearing the tunes with lag, you can still do the actions. “At one point, Amanda said ‘go on kids go into the kitchen find your pots and pans’ and they all ran off eagerly to go and get their pots and wooden spoons, and so I ran off and got this big pan and wooden spoon! And when I went to play along, my pans were soooo loud, I couldn’t hear a thing from the computer! We learnt that not only can you not play in real time, you can’t even hear what’s going on unless you have some decent external speakers set up on your computer.”

What both Lyndal and Strat enjoyed most was the social aspect of participating in something in this way. “Our grandkids, all three of them – and one is only 18 months old – are in Blackwood and we are in Inverloch, and we are all watching Amanda’s show and we can all see each other!”

So the main purpose of all being online together is to maintain that social connection which we all need and seek out, and music is still that common thread.

“In our physical groups, music-making is a vehicle for us getting together and we can all play together which is just not possible with the technology that we have. At least not without phenomenal expertise and state of the art equipment. The reality we’re stuck with is we’re not going to be able to play real time music together in virtually any online context anytime soon because there’s such huge variability in everyone’s situation. There are barriers such as internet speeds, internet cabling. And some people don’t have a good, functioning computer with a good camera and good audio, some people don’t have internet at all, and some people are too old to wrestle with technology.”

The takeaway from their experience of online participatory music making has shown Lyndal and Strat the importance of identifying a clear purpose at the start of the online session, articulating this as a group and agreeing on an expectation of what everyone is trying to achieve together. “It’s the same as those values we use when we are face to face.”

Lyndal and Strat were recently invited by Aaron Silver to do a Virtual Bush Dance for the Turramurra community. “When we started trying to work out how to do it, we figured that we needed to actually get up and moving ourselves to get other people off their bums, so we did a practise, and videoed ourselves calling the dance and playing the music simultaneously, and it was hilarious.

“The bush dance worked really well but it took a lot of preparation. We had a dry run with around ten people before the session and discussed which settings were needed on Zoom, what settings people should change, and all the technical stuff. Even this was an opportunity for fun and reconnection, we were all laughing and talking to each other, so the social thing was happening even then. This small group of testers were able to say whether or not they could hear if Lyndal danced away from the computer, or when they stood away from their own computer.”

“When it came down to the actual event we were dancing and moving around at the same time as everyone else, we could still see the concert view on our computer and there was everybody dancing in their living rooms. Mark Jackson took a video of himself and Jane with us in the background on the telly and it was so hilarious, so funny!”

As part of Grantville Online (CMVic Music Camp 2020), Strat and Lyndal will be re-visiting this approach and facilitating a Virtual Street Band Parade! The tune is available and can be downloaded ahead of camp so that anyone preparing to play in the virtual street band will be familiar with it. Lyndal and Strat would like more than anything for this workshop to be about letting go, healing and having fun.

“We want it to be a lively thing, a joyful experience! We want it to be ridiculous, a coming-together and dressing up; a fooling around opportunity, a joyful, love-filled safe place!”

“We’ve recorded a multi-track tune ourselves so that there are lots of parts. On the day, we’ll press ‘play’ and everyone will be able to hear the pre-recorded piece of street band music which they’ve also been learning and it will have the counting, and everybody can play along on mute, or sing, or dance or even just mime! And they won’t just be playing on their own, they will actually be playing and singing along to a full band sound in their lounge room, bedroom or study or wherever they might be, or even outside on the veranda! Our aim is to light up the screen with participation.”

The Virtual Street Band Parade will be about dressing up, getting together and having fun!

In considering the transitioning of their leadership skills into the virtual space, Lyndal is reflective about the challenges of maintaining diversity and inclusion.

“Thinking about the values, this idea of ‘from one to many’ is not my ideal for community music making, I think that’s a real stumbling block for me. In a real-life situation, there may be a nominal leader or a leadership team, and you’re allowing everybody’s voice to contribute ideas to the circle and they feel invested. When you have an online platform there’s one person is sitting in front of the computer directing the actions and everyone’s speakers are on mute, its completely the antithesis of the kind of ideal for me of a democratic community music group…”

Strat agrees, “I think it’s impossible in the online setting, so yeah that’s a great challenge, and the other thing is the thinking that if your normal session goes for an hour, have an hour online. You absolutely cannot! With the bush dance, we would usually go through something like that twelve times, whereas online we went through it just three. The elements that are most important are dancing and movement and linking up and having a great time.”

“Enabling people to do their own dressing up and their own dancing allows them to participate as much or as little as they can, or want to or feel able to, while still contributing. And if we can record it, which I know is possible, there will be this amazing collage of everyone doing their own thing in their own way and interpreting it somehow in a way that’s personal to them.”

“And, because you’ll be muted if you have always wanted to play the trumpet in a street band but don’t actually play the trumpet – now’s the time! If you’ve got a trumpet, pick it up and be able to play without any bum notes, straight off the bat!  This one of the advantages of the virtual street band; anything goes. There are no limits!”

“Oh my gosh” says Lyndal, “The No Limits Street Band…

Grantville Online (CMVic Music Camp 2020) runs May 29-30. It’s a free event and registrations are now open!  To register for the Virtual Street Band Parade, click here.

Written by Deb Carveth, online editor for Community Music Victoria in conversation with Lyndal Chambers and Brian Strating.

Into the Groove in North East Victoria

Brianna Slattery’s always loved rhythm.  “I first picked up a Djembe drum when I was about 18 and found it to be really therapeutic, I just loved the tactile experience of drumming, it was something I did for myself. I’d go to the park and drum without really knowing what I was doing so I joined a Samba style drumming group which was my introduction to drumming within a community.”

“I became aware of how particularly powerful rhythm is in bringing people together and I felt the strength of the connections I was building with everyone I was playing with. Even though we were a really diverse group we became a tight knit community around our common goal of creating and sharing these amazing rhythms.”

Brianna Slattery, director of ‘In the Groove’

Brianna trained as a teacher and began utilising the drum as her primary instrument for teaching music in the classroom. She discovered this was a highly effective way to engage the students, particularly those whose attention was more challenging to maintain.  Then, around five years ago, moving over the border from New South Wales into North Eastern Victoria, Brianna returned to uni to study a Master’s in Education, culminating in her writing a thesis based on her observations from her teaching experience.

“It was really fascinating looking at it all through the lens of the context of drumming, particularly the West African drumming style and it gave me some ideas which led to me developing a Drumming for Student Engagement Strategy which I now implement in schools.”

Using rhythm analogies to teach engagement skills is a key component of Brianna’s business, In the Groove, which she established in 2017 as a way to combine all of her passions and turn them into bread and butter. “Accessibility is key to the appeal of drumming, you pick it up, you play it! For kids who struggle with learning there is instant gratification and reward to discovering that drumming is something they can immediately do. Success drives this motivation and they’re immediately engaged. When you’re engaged in something you learn stuff about yourself as a learner that can then be applied to other areas of your learning and life as well.”

“In working with students and teachers, I’m able to incorporate other analogies such as building perseverance or working cooperatively with others; becoming confident in ourselves and exploring these things through the music.”

In addition to a strong educational focus, In the Groove is about working within the community space. Brianna set up a community drumming class in Wangaratta, teaching West African rhythms she’d learnt travelling in Ghana and through her close affiliation with African Drumming in Melbourne. “In West Africa, the role of music is born out of social purpose; when you hear a rhythm or a drumming piece it’s marking a social occasion or event and there’s a whole heap of meanings and learnings tied to that. I think because of this it comes together in a way that’s quite complex, very much like society is! The music is polyrhythmic, you have many different paths all coming together and playing an important role and so the very structure of the music is a really great way to bring people together….

In fact, the beauty of this West African music and these drumming rhythms is you can’t play them properly on your own. You actually need a community of people to play all of the musical parts and to bring the right kind of energy for the music to actually work! It works around synchronicity and all of the parts bouncing off each other.”

“I started teaching these community classes which were very, very small in the beginning and they’ve grown over time. I now offer them in a number of different towns and there’s always some kind of a social agenda or outcome behind what I’m doing. Repetition is a really important aspect to the structure of each group and so is teaching people to really listen to each other. We have people from all different backgrounds and all different ages who come together to learn this musical style and so there’s the building of community around that as well.”

Often, when people head along to their first class, the most common feeling they’ll bring is the worry they lack rhythm. “They’ll tell me they’ve had a flier on their fridge for aaages but their greatest concern which has kept them away is that they’re not musical enough to be doing this activity. I say to them ‘we’ve all got rhythm, we all have a beating heart; anything that we do, any task that’s repetitive whether it’s chopping wood or filing papers or something like that, is rhythm, there’s rhythm everywhere in our world so we’ve all got it, just some of us are tapped into it more than others’.”

In addition to running paid classes and programs in schools, In the Groove gives back to the community by creating free opportunities for people to come together and connect.  “At least once a month we jam somewhere in one of the towns where we run the classes, it might be at a local market or a fundraising event or it might just be that we decide to drum in the park. The aim is simply to bring the community together.”

Jams are led by members of In the Groove’s community who keep the music flowing and are structured so that musically they sound great. Brianna takes along spare drums to offer anyone able and willing to join in. “People can enter into the rhythm on any level they like, sometimes we sing a few songs too, it’s just about having fun!” In the Groove drummers also volunteer time to share their music at local aged care homes and retirement facilities.

“It’s brilliant, sometimes you just see people come to life as the music brings a whole energy change to the room.

Education, engagement, community and well-being are core values of In the Groove; they’re also the factors for driving and maintaining Brianna’s motivation and passion in her work.

“I’ve seen ways in which this musical form, this musical style can really serve different needs within the community and I’m really passionate about creating more opportunities for connection. I think we’re becoming really disconnected with our dependence on technology and it becomes very easy to become isolated and pretend to be connected when you’re not really. Music is a wonderful thing for bringing people together in working for a common goal and interacting in person with each other within that context. The underlying theme of it all is connection. Connection with knowledge, connection with yourself and connection with the people around you. The lovely thing about these classes is that they’re accessible and open to anyone, the sense of connection is huge.”

Building a business based on passion is not without challenge for Brianna and there are aspects of it she finds tricky to juggle as a community-minded musician and educator: “I want to continue to offer free opportunities for people to come together and share the music and explore and experience the benefits that brings, but at the same time it’s my livelihood and I’m relying on it as a way to generate my income. I have to remind myself that these are things I also need to offer through my business.”

When I started In the Groove it operated as an aside to my work but now it’s my main source of income. I’ve got all these ideas about ways I could be working with different social groups and connecting across different demographics using music outside of the classes, but in order to do so would require a large investment of my time and resources so although it’s something I want to be available for free to the community it needs to be something I can sustain.”

In spite of this wrangle and because of her passion, Brianna is offering a series of free drum sessions as part of Summer in the Park, a council-led initiative. These are happening in Wangaratta Park on Friday afternoons from January into February, and Brianna describes them as an opportunity for people to ‘finish the working week with a bang.’ “Everything we do is an energy exchange and drumming and rhythm make energy really apparent; you can see it and you can hear it and you can feel it. And you can feel the difference and the impact it makes too.”

In the Groove runs weekly drumming classes in Albury Wodonga, Beechworth, Yarrawonga and Wangaratta. For further information, click here or email Brianna: info@inthegroove.education

Written by Deb Carveth, online editor for Community Music Victoria, in conversation with Brianna Slattery 

PHOTOS: Supplied by In The Groove

 

 

 

Threshold Choir Tecoma offers Songs for the Dying

For the close-knit community in the hills above Melbourne, comfort and support in the form of song will soon be available to those on the threshold of life, offered by a fledgling new group of singers, Threshold Choir, Tecoma, led by experienced singing leader, Barb Mcfarlane.

“I went to the Sacred Edge Festival about four years ago and there was a singing session which, of course, I went to. The woman leading it was from the Threshold Choir in Melbourne. Speaking with her afterwards I was fascinated by the idea of singing for the sick and the dying and immediately wanted to be part of it, but Melbourne Threshold Choir meets on a Wednesday night which is when my choir Vokallista rehearses.”

Barb let the idea ride for a while until the subject came up again in conversation with her friend, Christina Reeves, who is a trained death doula. A death doula supports the person who is dying and their loved ones in whatever way is required to come to terms and be able to deal with what is happening. Christina shared and encouraged Barb’s excitement about the idea of a Threshold Choir and the possibility of forming one based in the hills. And so, this particular story begins.

‘The Mother Ship’ as Barb calls it, is the Threshold Choir established in California in 2000, by a woman called Kate Munger. The Threshold Choir is a secular organisation run by volunteers which supports people all over the world to establish their own chapter of the choir with the shared goal ‘to bring ease and comfort to those at the thresholds of living and dying’.

Permission to sing Threshold Choir songs is granted only to members of the organisation. There is no set rate to join; singers pay what they are able or would like to, from one dollar upwards. This membership facilitates access to tips, mentorship and a cappella singing resources to support them in their journey.

It was important to Barb to feel completely at ease with the rules set by the Threshold Choir before introducing any of her singers to the organisation. “I thought about going maverick and doing it my way, then I thought some more. The Threshold Choir Mother Ship has many beautiful songs which are tested, tried and trusted. They also offer mentoring support meaning if something happens I can contact my ‘coach’ or anyone else I meet through that network, and say, ‘hey look, this happened…what would you have done?’ It’s a way to de-brief and check in. On balance it’s worth it for the peace of mind.”

Barb’s coach, Cathy, is based in the US and mentoring is possible via Skype and email. Cathy has been available to Barb since the inception of her initial idea through to the launch of Threshold Choir, Tecoma. It’s an ongoing relationship and she offers Barb mentoring and advice on some of the more common questions which come up, and advises how to prepare the singers for the emotional aspect of what they’re preparing to do.

Barb knows that it’s difficult for anyone to know what to expect in the emotional sense: “There’s a huge range of possibilities to prepare for in a room where someone’s dying.” Threshold Choir, Tecoma rehearsals runs for three hours and at the end Barb finds people are keen to stay and keep talking and singing.  “It’s common for people to feel that we’ve lost the art of talking about death and dying and the experience of belonging to the Threshold Choir allows a way for the singers to reconnect with memories and share their own experiences of bereavement and loss should they wish to do so, or if they find grief and emotion is triggered by what they are doing. It’s a safe, empathic space where people are free to open up. If you bring it out by way of tears and having other people listen it’s always a healthy process.”  

Having spent a year familiarising herself with the material, Barb now has 15 Threshold Choir songs which she’s taught to her group. “We sing them for a long time, each of them might be the length of a Short Stuff style song, and we’ll sing that for around 15 minutes.”  

As somebody highly experienced in leading community choirs and singing groups, having guidelines to follow has required some adjustment for Barb. “I’m still getting my head around how to behave within the rules, cos that’s a bit of a challenge for me, I’m used to doing my own thing, but I also feel protected by it as well because they’ve all been doing it for a very long time.”

In preparing for a session, Barb sets up a circle with a reclining chair covered with a blanket and cushions in the middle. The singers are then invited into the centre to experience the sensation of being sung to for themselves. “We’ve taken a lot of time to do that. We’ll sing for a good 20 minutes to give the person in the chair the feeling of what they might be giving to someone else when they go out and start singing. We then allow for some space and listen to whatever they might want to share about sensations or how they felt.”

Threshold Choir guidelines suggest that singers go out in groups of 2-4 to avoid crowding  out a space. Most hospital rooms and private bedrooms aren’t able to accommodate more singers than that without their presence becoming overwhelming. This means that the singers who attend not only have to be confident in singing their parts but need to be able to hold it on their own, which is what takes the time for most people.

Barb now has around 30 singers who’ve been to gauge whether singing in a Threshold Choir is something they think they could do, with a good core of 12 coming along to most sessions. She’s happy to allow for a slow build of interest, the work may not be for everyone. Barb’s also working to factor in obsolescence for herself in order to ensure longevity for the group. As an ongoing part of rehearsals, Barb models and shares solid CMVic Singing Leadership skills, offering others in the core group the opportunity to teach and lead songs, encouraging them to develop their own skills in leading rehearsals and eventually, to deliver the actual work with people in the community.

The services of the Threshold Choir, Tecoma will be available for people in Palliative Care at home, or in a hospice. The songs may also be used as a way for soothing the room down after somebody has passed. Effects of the singing are reported as calming, peace inducing and pain relieving for the person who is ill, for their relatives, for the staff if the person is in a facility and, of course, for the singers themselves. 

Living in such a connected community, Barb foresees a high demand for the services of the Threshold Choir Tecoma in time and is hopeful to have enough singers available to manage a roster service available to voluntarily sing for the sick, the dying and their families. 

This weekend, Christina Reeves, Death Doula, is heading up a ‘Dying to Know’ expo being held in the Hills (August 8-11). The focus of the weekend is to explore ways to ‘create a world where we all know what to do when someone is sick, dying or grieving’. Threshold Choir, Tecoma will be singing at this event and Barb will host immersion sessions on Sunday 11th August for anyone keen to experience the songs or who would like to try singing with the group and find out further for themselves, what this incredible service is all about.

Written by Deb Carveth, CMVic Online Editor, and Barb Mcfarlane for Community Music Victoria.

Photo by Bobby Stevens on Unsplash