Learning how to lead a song
“We are heartsick for the true world.” — Dionne Brand
Isn’t it hilarious when you want to learn one lesson and then life serves you up something completely different?!
Last week, I traveled to Victoria, British Columbia to attend a community choir leadership training, endeavoring to become a better song leader. I practiced how to keep time with one hand, change dynamics with another, while using my face to indicate when to breathe. Turns out—it’s way trickier than it looks!
Plus, even when you think you’ve learned a song so well that you could sing it in your sleep, a melody can drop through your brain’s built-in escape hatch and leave you stranded the moment you stand in front of a group to teach it.
Nevertheless, I am more convinced than ever by the power of singing together as a community building tool. Just look at PubChoir, Gaia Music Collective, Sisters in Harmony—or this amazing airport scene to see what can happen!
But what do we need to bring these communal singing moments to life—especially in places, like the airport above, that aren’t created for shared music?
If singing together is our birthright, what midwifery is needed to make it happen?
While chatting with super talented composer and song leader Paul Vasile this weekend, I realized that maybe I’d been asking the wrong question; trying to learn the wrong skill.
Instead of attempting to master the technical elements of music leading that don’t come naturally to me, my job is to find someone who knows how to do those parts of song leading well, so that I can focus on what I’m good at!
That’s what makes my song circle work: I know how to gather people together, set a good vibe, pick some fun songs—and then I rely on the much more skilled musicians in the room to find the right pitch and hold down the alto line. Once again, I’m confronted by the reality that no one person can do everything. Even for something simple like singing together, we need each other.
Think about it this way, if there’d been one guy singing with a guitar in that airport, it could have been awkward. But because there were three of them making music together, the invitation to join in was irresistible.
We don’t all have to be able to direct a hundred people in song. We just need to find one or two others who’ll join us to get the singing started :)