Skip to main content

Sing-along Café 2025-02-06

We always talk a lot about the songs we sing, about the lyrics, the artists, the eras and genres, ideas, beliefs, our families and life, everything. I think that this Black History Month playlist generated the most discussion of all my playlists. 

Part of the inspiration for the discussion was our current need for more connection, some sympathy/commiseration as we deal with all the scary news. And, we all agreed that we needed to sing more,  "okay, we need to sing now", for the release and escape and joy we feel. I am thankful for this opportunity to hear other people express the thougths in my head, the people sitting in the fellowship room with me, and the people who created the songs we're singing.

Here's a list of some of the songs we listened to and sang:

  • Sometimes When We Touch by Dan Hill (local black artist, and brother of Lawrence Hill)
  • Blinding Lights by the Weeknd and by Tebey (both local black artists)
  • Wake Me Up by Tebey
  • What's Going On by Marvin Gaye
  • Living for the City by Stevie Wonder
  • Ball of Confusion by the Temptations
  • Get up, Stand Up and Jamming by Boby Marley and the Wailers
  • Texas Hold-em and If I Were a Boy by Beyoncé
  • A Bar Song (Tipsy) by Shabozey
  • The Way You Make Me Feel by Michael Jackson
We all agreed that we should continue with this theme next week, and maybe throughout February. I think we will listen to some love songs for Valentines Day though. We did talk about the fact that some of these really meaningful songs about peace and social justice are from singers of wonderful love songs too. So, we'll sing about love, peace, and justice. Sounds perfect. 




Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Sing-along Café 2025-01-23

Our café last night was so nice! I baked the most wonderful blueberry muffins, with a nice crunchy golden-brown top and juicy blueberries. Everyone wanted the recipe, so I'll include it at the end. Nibbling our muffins was easy, as a few of the songs we sang had very long instrumental interludes.  Our theme was Disney movie music. It was interesting to hear how different eras sounded different, from the 1940's to the present. It was partly the technology developing, but also the styles of music and the kinds of bands and orchestras that were popular. We don't hear a lot of twittering birds in the more recent Disney musicals, or coloratura singing with lots of tremolo. There were a few princesses whose singing we couldn't match.  Listening to and singing all those movie songs, we remembered times we watched them in the theatre or at home on our televisions when we were small and when our children were small. I had a memory from when I was 6 years old, and lots of stories...

Sing-along Café 2024-09-05

Our theme was fun! September and School, and Summer too. I'm not going to list all the songs, but you can find them in my Apple Playlist, which you can access here. I had fun making this week's playlist, and we can keep using it for school-themed songs and for summer and fall, and even new beginnings. In fact, we'll use it next week again. We didn't listen to some key songs, so we can do them first (See You in September, She Blinded Me With Science) The fist song, the one that started the list, was September by Earth, Wind and Fire. Later, I found another version which I absolutelty adore. Lots of songs with a school theme came next, and we noticed that most of them had a negative or rebellious tone. School for me was fun and interesting and I loved it. I didn't break rules, I loved them, and thrived among rules and patterns and details. I'm not a rock star. Another thing that stood out in the school theme was love stories, and a focus on the opposite sex (most...

Thursday, April 18 Sing-along Café Review

The theme for the evening was: Songs with La-las (and other nonsense: ooh, doo-dah, na-na, scoobie-doobie, bum-ba-bum, hey!). I call all of these little non-word lyrics la-las. They're often my favourite part of a song. Everyone can sing those words, usually. With scat singing, not usually, and with yodeling, not everyone. But, think about the Beatles song Hey Jude. At the end, everyone can sing along with the na-nas and some of us even like to harmonize with them. When my daughter was writing songs, I urged her to put some nonesense la-las in her songs. Don't worry about finding beautiful, powerful words for all the verses, or all the lines of the chorus. Sometimes, the lack of words makes a melody more powerful.  Here's the list of songs we sang and listened to: Can't Get You Out of My Head   by Kylie Minogue Everything   by Michael Bublé Those Were the Days   by Mary Hopkin Hey Jude   by the Beatles Tom's Diner   by Suzanne Vega &DNA De Do Do Do, De ...