Roads to Joy

I’ve been involved in serving up several video clips of the SongWave Choir’s concert series over the weekend of the 21st of June, and in the course of putting the page (Singing Up A Storm 2024) together, I found this still that seemed to encapsulate the collective joy of our experience. The applause was nice, of course, but the joy, I think, was the delight we shared in the rendition of the song.

The weekend was great fun, encompassing three concerts, with a little reprise at an event commemorating the Dispersed Memorial Forest at Threave Nature Centre for the victims of Covid. It’s intriguing how different the vocal/aural experience is in different venues. And a rewarding experience to feel that we were singing better, together, by the last concert than we had at the first. Even though our voices may have been a bit more ragged and strained by then.

There is certainly something about the human experience of sharing voices in song that resonates deeply. Also at our concerts, interspersed among the choral numbers, individuals did solo recitations of apt poems, fitting the theme of Storm and Sea. Some were humorous, others deeply serious, and none more so than the reading from an RNLI logbook recording the fatal misadventure of a lifeboat crew in 1953. It felt appropriate to provide the opportunity to donate to the Kirkcudbright RNLI station‘s renovation fund, as part of our concert presentation. More joy in doing good, then.

Music is a great wonder, and a huge pleasure to share.