Gathering the Blackburn Urban Choir
Over the last three years More Music has been working with young singers in Blackburn with the aim of creating an urban choir who can perform contemporary and original material, utilising rap and beatboxing alongside harmony singing arrangements.
“He didn’t see himself as a singer but now jumps at the opportunity to sing solos”
“She has made quite the transformation…was bossy and argumentative, uninterested in focused singing work …now is polite, understanding and helpful… helps to direct singing parts for the girls”
“He started the term saying he didn’t like singing and just wanted to rap, now he is holding down tricky harmony parts for a full 3 minute piece”
“She doesn't stop talking about the Urban Choir at home and I'm glad she's finally found an outlet for her creativity”
Over the last three years More Music has been working with young singers in Blackburn with the aim of creating an urban choir who can perform contemporary and original material, utilising rap and beatboxing alongside harmony singing arrangements. This has been established successfully in our local area of Morecambe and Lancaster with LYVE (Lancashire Youth Vocal Ensemble). The aim was to create something similar in Blackburn, using contemporary music and working collaboratively with participants to create arrangements and new music, while also providing more opportunities for them to sing and use their voices. The earliest version of this began in 2015 at Pleckgate and Witton Park schools. This work has been funded by Youth Music and Blackburn Music Hub (now run by Bolton Music Service).
After working in a number of different locations in previous years, this time we focused activity at Blackburn Youth Zone (an 8-11 year old group and a 12-16 year old group) and Witton Park School (a KS3 afterschool group). Since Summer 2017 to the end of Spring 2018, we have steadily built up three groups in these places, each with their own core participants who have grown in confidence to sing and create music together.
There have been challenges along the way; attendance can be irregular which makes it harder to build cohesive groups and work on arrangements. It’s taken time for young people to learn to stay focussed in the session, to approach it differently to a normal youth club session which they can dip in and out of. Disruptive behaviour has sometimes been an issue. However, a number of participants have stuck with it, enjoying the sessions to become more confident singers and assets to the groups. In the early stages of the Witton Park group the boys didn't see eye to eye with the girls and were constantly bickering with each other. Over the terms they bonded through singing and now consider each member of the group a close friend.
As part of our work in Blackburn, a local music leader Teri Birtwistle have been working alongside More Music’s Leroy Lupton to deliver the Urban Choir sessions, developing her skills to work in this field. Training local music leaders in community music methodologies builds the skillbase in Blackburn and will create a legacy to make it possible for new projects to be created without our direct involvement.
At the end of each term, a gathering brings together the different groups to share what they have each created, to sing together and to celebrate what they have achieved. 15 young people came to the Spring 2018 gathering, which included some completely new participants. Some of the core participants were able to help the new ones to take part by teaching them the vocal parts of the songs.
Over the term, the groups had been working on a mash-up arrangement of Ed Sheeran’s ‘Perfect’ and Christina Perri’s ‘Thousand Years’. At the gathering, the group (including the first time participants) were able to record this, demonstrating their burgeoning skills for harmony singing, beatboxing and arrangement. The recording sounds great (you can hear it below) and it’s a testament to the hard work of the young people over the year that they were able to record such a strong and layered performance, with standout solo moments.
As you can see from the quotes from our music leaders and at the start of this blog, many of the participants did not see themselves as singers at the start and would certainly not have considered singing solo on a recording. Positive changes in ability and behaviour have been observed over the course of the project and the last quote is from a proud parent who was pleased to see her daughter being encouraged to express herself creatively.
Moving forward, we hope to continue to work in Blackburn and maintain our partnerships there. There has been a lot of change within the local music hub, which is now run by Bolton Music Service. Now they are in a position to develop their own inclusion work, which we can support in various capacities.
To find out more about More Music, visit our website at www.moremusic.org.uk.