Sing-along Café 2025-03-06

March 6th. We're not in Black History Month anymore, but we're still on that theme. At church, my Affirming and Inclusivity Team has chosen to focus on anti-racism for 2025, in addition to our main role of affirming the Pride community.

My Black History Month playlist is huge, and there's so much to talk about and so much good music to listen to. This time, we were talking about the big influence Black people have had and continue to have on other music, the rhythms and techniques of ragtime, jazz, the blues, R&B, gospel, funk, reggae, and afrobeats are not only used by Black artists.

Last week, Don sent me some interesting information about a Canadian tenor, Edward Johnson, that he was instrumental in including Black singers in opera at the Met in New York. I didn't find that, when I looked him up, but quite the opposite, that he is known for excluding Black singers. I found reports that it was the next General Manager of the Met that introduced Marian Anderson five years later in 1955. Nevertheless, we were interested to hear about a Canadian leading the Metropolitan Opera in New York City, after singing in Italy using an Italian name to hide his Canadian identity. And, how wonderful to see and hear Black singers in opera, and country music, and any genre anywhere, understanding that there is still anti-black racism in some arenas (pun intended).

We had lots to talk about as usual, I baked muffins, and we sipped tea, and it was a lovely evening in lovely company.

Next week, March 13th is a day away from PIE day/Affirming day, so we'll have a PRIDE theme.

Here's a list of some of the songs we listened to and sang along with on March 6th:

The Maple Leaf Forever and Vesti la Giubba by Edward Johnson
Amazing Grace by Jessye Norman
Wonderful is Your Name by Melvin Crispell lll
Goodness of God by CeCe Winans
When you Believe and My Love is Your Love by Whitney Houston
Man in the Mirror and Black or White (video and song) by Michael Jackson
Georgia on My Mind by Ray Charles
Calm Down by Rema and Selena Gomez
Update by Burna Boy
small samples of a few songs from the Afrobeats playlist
Easy and Brick House by The Commodores
Super Freak by Rick James (we couldn't manage the whole song)
Reggae Night by Jimmy Cliff
Hymn to Freedom by Dione Taylor

Comments

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 ...

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...

Trinity Newmarket Singers

Search This Blog