This video work by graphic artist Majid Adin, a refugee from Iran, shows one way that a non-political song can become a protest song. Sometimes it's not just about having earnest lyrics, it's about context - who's singing the song, where they're singing it, who they're singing it to... Who hears. Musically, Elton John's Rocket Man already captures an almost ethereal sense of loss and longing, perfect in its terrible way for the stories of refugees...

The wonderful BBC World Service (so much better then Radio 4's too often bland, bourgeois and these days Brexit-obsessed blather) features Majid Adin talking about his work on the The Cultural Frontline and there's more of his story online. Majid's work is part of  No Turning Back: Seven migration moments that changed Britain which is on at The Workshop in Lambeth, London, until 25th February 2018. A must see.

by Kate Macdermott

A new street choir emerges...
 
Early September, not yet dawn. 10,000 dead in the Yemen, (drink and a blanket) 1 million homeless,(packed lunch, cake?)£3.3 million spent by Saudi Arabia since 2015 on British weapons, (remember the banner): we’re getting a coach, swaying through the lanes, hurtling down the M42, singing once we’ve  passed Oxford, heading to the Excel Centre, where Britain will host its biennial International Arms Fair, (roll up, roll up, get your killer materials here, all welcome).Of course it is known (unknown) by a nice anonymous set of initials, DSEI, concealing the fact that billions of £££ of guns rockets tanks bombs and new ways to torture people are sold here to virtually anyone.

So here we are, 22 of us , mostly from a choir based in Presteigne in the Welsh borders, coming to support the blockading of deliveries before the trade begins. For some of us it is our first demo, for most of us it will be the first witnessing of ‘lock-ons’. We are not sure quite how this will work.

East London Dockland, windy, open, looking like an extended supermarket car park; we’re at the East Gate, police vans, high metal fences erected and a knot of yellow jackets guarding 3  people lying down across the road. Linked by their arms hidden inside  steel tubes, blocks of concrete, glues, wires,  suitcases-and locked on deep inside by carabiners, they are voluntarily making themselves vulnerable and POWERFUL at the same time. It is extremely impressive and effective.(Could I find the courage?  ) One similar blockade has been dismantled here; deliveries have been halted at both gates.

It is 12 o’clock. We start singing:
“The war machine rolls on and on…,” “We are, we are together...”, “Better light a candle than curse the darkness…”

From behind the encircling yellow jackets comes the noise of hammers, chisels, drills. Occasionally we are moved away and shields are raised as they use angle-grinders to cut through the encasements( cannot imagine what  that feels like, lying there so still; their will-power is amazing) It’s particularly moving to sing  “I’m gonna lift my sister up, she is not heavy… if I don’t lift her up, I will fall down” They have been lying here for  nearly 3 hours.

Our voices blend, separate, rise and fall; our energies combine. These blockaders are released, carried to vans; another blockade is forming further down the road. A man emerges from nearby flats with coffee and biscuits, comes back with tea, herb teas, enough for everyone.

We walk to the West Gate  (15 minutes away, this place is huge.  No! it’s called The Abu Dhabi Excel Centre!)

A small camp, pop-up café, windmills of all shapes and sizes and another blockade. We form a circle and sing our hearts out; held in another circle, joined by other singers, we could sing on and on.
But the tacograph means we must leave at 4. It’s a long way home.

A few days later, our minds still whirling with images, we have exchanged messages:
”Singing for our lives seems to be a very  important thing to do”
“Uplifting despite grim purpose”
“Reawakened my conviction in the value of standing up tall against atrocities”

And messages from London that it had meant a lot that we had come from Wales, that the singing had raised spirits and  boosted morale at a tired moment.

Here in the Borders we can feel a long way from ‘the action’; taking part in this protest reminded us all of our connections, our possibilities, of the power of song to deliver not only the message but the emotion- ‘we care about this’.. let’s sing on!

An edited version of this article appears in Peace News

I've just added Voices Now to our Links page. The forthcoming Voices Now survey looks like a chance to make the voices of street choirs heard on the choral map of Britain? The previous Voices Now survey did not, unsurprisingly (?), have categories for 'street choir' or 'protest music'. Maybe it should? The survey - 'the first ever comprehensive snapshot of choral singing in the UK' - is well worth a read (even if it plainly isn't comprehensive and, pedantically, 'snapshot' and 'comprehensive' seem antithetic terms!) 

See and hear the massed Campaign Choirs sing the Fracking Anthem to marchers taking part in the People's Assembly demonstration at the Conservative Party conference. Interesting to meet, march and sing with Commoners Choir for the first time. Shame they couldn't come to take part in the Campaign Choirs sing and meet street choir members from Liverpool, East Lancs, Sheffield, Leicester, Cardiff, Aberystwyth...

Photo: Ieuan Ellis

Photo: Lotte Reimer

Cor Cochion in action (Photo: Lotte Reimer)

Campaign Choirs will be singing for the demo around the Tory Conference in Manchester on Sunday 1st October. People's Assembly have suggested the combined street choir stand at the end of the march to sing to people as they finish the route. See you there!

It was great to hear Birmingham Clarion Singers feature on Radio 4's series 'Choral History of Britain' with Jane Scott and Annie Banham giving very good interviews. The programme also featured Greenham Common and the role of women singing at the peace camp. Both Birmingham Clarion Singers and Greenham are vital elements of the story of the development of street choirs in Britain. Our Campaign Choirs Network writing project is forging ahead nicely with a few chapters 'in the bag' that feature stories from street choir members across Britain. Hearing the Radio 4 programme has re-energised us for all the hard work of writing, editing, proof-reading... Excitingly, there's a really talented artist working on the cover of our Singing for Our Lives book due out next year from Hammer On Press. Hopefully the next episode in the series 'Choral History of Britain' will provide more food for thought and inspiration.

Greenham women sing!

After weeks of head-down working on Singing For Our Lives - actually having a wonderful and challenging time, working with and learning from everyone on the S4OL team - I (Kelvin) took a day off yesterday. I chose to go to Cardiff for a mooch about and - of course - ran into the irrepressible Cor Cochion Caerdydd. They were taking a big part in an action against cuts to public services. As usual, they'd put the effort in to make their singing a real piece of street theatre. It was an honour to sing a couple of songs with the Red Choir. And they're surely right, what is the point of Labour if they don't oppose the swingeing budget cuts being forced on them by the Conservative government? All our councils, whoever controls them - Plaid CYmru, Lib Dems, independents - can't keep saying 'there's nothing we can do, it's Westminster'. True, if they resist individually, they'll get hammered. But if they get together, say a collective and resounding 'NO' and demand the money that they need, they might actually put a stop to the brutality, maybe even bring down this crass government that should by rights be in its death throes, and win back the respect and support of the people. And look, in the background of these photographs, whose name is embossed in gold! 'Save our public services, this is not the only way out!'

More posts to come on the fabulous get together of revolutionary choirs that was held near Royère-de-Vassivière last week, but for now here are a few photos. To be honest, we were so busy learning songs, singing, preparing meals, and talking with members of choirs from France, Italy, Belgium and Britain that there wasn't much time for taking pictures! 

On Wednesday, two of our intrepid researchers will make their way overland to France to join Strawberry Thieves and members of Cor Gobaith, Raised Voices and perhaps other British street choirs at the Rencontres de chorales révolutionnaires 2017 (the meeting of revolutionary choirs). The gathering takes place near Royère-de-Vassivière in Nouvelle-Aquitaine (east of Limoges). It should be an amazing experience that yields some great stories as we join radical choirs from France and Italy for a week of singing old songs and new. (see you in a couple of weeks!)

Thrillingly, our project now features on the blog of our publisher, Hammer-on Press! Thrilling but a bit scary too because now we get to re-read the more then 40 interviews we've carried out with street choir members across Britain and select excerpts to go into the book, Singing For Our Lives. Reading the interviews is a great job to have but choosing which bits of the collective story to leave out will be really difficult: we want to do justice to everybody's story; and everybody we spoke with had something special to say.

Here's a an excerpt from an interview with Jane Scott, conductor of Birmingham Clarion Singers that reveals something of the long and unique history of this street choir:

"We did a concert tour in the German Democratic Republic in 1977, so there was that kind of international thing. Going back to the fifties, well to the end of the forties actually, we have performed with Paul Robeson in Birmingham town hall, we did a piece by Earl Robinson called The Ballad for Americans. I think he was friends with quite a number of people on the left in Birmingham, particularly one chap Ruscoe Clarke, I think an American, whose wife Avis Clarke was in the choir… Anyway when he (Robeson) went back and lost his passport we campaigned, we did a lot of campaigning, on that. And when his passport was returned and he came over it was, coincidentally, just at that time that Colin Bradsworth died… So, we asked Paul Robeson to be our president, which he was gracious enough to do. So, he was our president then from, was it nineteen fifty-nine (or) sixty, till he died in, was it, seventy-six… That was quite exciting, (we) performed with him a couple of times…"