WASN’T SO LONG AGO

Published by Rick on Tagged Uncategorized

I’m thinking back exactly a decade ago. Obama was president, and it would be six months before Trump “descended down the escalator” and the American nightmare would begin. No, I’m talking about a life-changing decision that I just thought would be a fun endeavour. I had been living in North London for about a year and a half, and a friend had suggested I go see an a cappella choir that was performing in Crouch End a couple weeks before Christmas, 2014. The choir was/is called Songworks, and I was really impressed by their spirit, and most importantly they didn’t go flat, a bugaboo for so many a cappella choirs.

The director announced at the end of the performance that if anyone wished to join in the coming year, to take one of her business cards and contact via email. I had been in church choirs through most of my youth, and my first go at it was very traumatic. I’ve talked about that experience before, and maybe if someone asks to hear the whole story, I could repeat it, but let’s not lose the narrative. This was a community choir instead of a church one. there would be the occasional song with religious overtones, but mostly were international pleas for peace and understanding, some sung in foreign language. I sent an email a few days later, and since there was a paucity of male voices, I was quickly accepted in for the term beginning in January.

I was placed in the basses, which all the male singers except two tenors belonged to. The songs were a mixture of new agey platitudes mixed with proclamations for love, etc., but there were some challenging interesting ones as well. One of the best was the South African National Anthem “Nkosi Sikelel’iAfrika” (pronounced Cozy Sick-a lay-lee Africa) sung in sort of a hybrid of several native languages. When sung properly, it is very moving, and lingered with me as my favourite in that first year, even though we also sang a beautiful Irish folk tune called “Dark Island.” We did an arrangement of the hymn “Jerusalem” that I found more exciting than the recording used as a football anthem.

Our director was quite connected with various political factions, and this was best manifested on January 20, 2017, 8 years ago today, which was a Saturday, and also the day Donald Trump was to be inaugurated as the 45th president. There was a huge rally which involved thousands of people marching from Grosvenor Park to Trafalgar Square where a throng of people were there to protest against Mango Mussolini’s rise to power. Many colourful signs were being carried, including several that said “Free Melania,” but the one I remember best was one that said “I’d call him a cunt, but he lacks the depth and warmth.” There were many children marching with their parents that day, but if that’s where the kids learned the c-word, the parents didn’t seem bothered by it. Most importantly, the one song we sang, to about 20,000 people, was a poignant song that was a top 10 hit in Britain in 1987 but no chart action in America. The song is called “Something Inside (So Strong)” written and originally sung by a gay black Englishman named Labi Siffre. It was a most appropriate song as it addressed persecution in all its many forms, which as we know from the Trump years, made a big comeback. Hearing thousands of people sing it back to us, as the words were projected onto a screen adjacent to the stage, was as big a rush as I got from the many times playing in those 3000 to 6000-seat arenas in my younger days.

We would also sing the same song a couple months later outside the Houses of Parliament, and can’t remember what our cause was, I just remember the speaker on stage about 10 minutes before we went up was Bianca Jagger, the only person to ever be legally married to Mick. But our director had another little trick up her sleeve later that year, albeit on a smaller scale. For our Christmas show in 2017, we had worked up a version of the song “Fairytale of New York,” originally done by The Pogues in a duet with Irish chanteuse Kirsty MacColl. It’s become a staple of Christmas radio in UK, but sadly has to my knowledge never been played on American radio. Maybe it’s the opening line “It was Christmas Eve babe, In the drunk tank” that sinks it, who knows? We had done our a cappella version at a concert in Crouch End in mid-December, but we got a group of us to do what they call a Pub Crawl, where we would sing the song in several neighbourhood pubs. Our starting point was the King’s Head, where at the time I had been DJing one day a week, as well as coming in to do comedy in their Downstairs room every couple of months. There were enough people we touched when we performed there that some of them decided to follow us from pub to pub singing the same song.

There was also the time the choir sang the Queen song “Somebody To Love” near the town hall in Crouch End, but I had to pass on that as it was the same time I’d be DJing. Some of the singers came in afterwards. The most important development of my time in Songworks happened after only a few months in, and our 10th anniversary will come in July, that is meeting Maggie O’Hagan and having a continuing relationship after all this time. We don’t even sing in the same choir anymore, as she sings on Tuesdays, and I have stayed with Wednesdays. To this day, though, I don’t know of any other relationships coming out of that choir. Nor can I remember there being any other Americans in the group. But here we are, and to all of that I’m eternally grateful.

January 20th, 2025



Leave a Comment

You must be logged in to post a comment.