What a week we had not lost in France! On Saturday 23 July three of us from Cor Gôbaith met up with Strawberry Thieves at the ‘Rencontres de Chorales Révolutionnaires’ (meeting of revolutionary choirs) near Royère-de-Vassivière. We then spent an amazing week sharing and learning songs, cooking for each other, chatting, eating and drinking immoderately with choirs from Nancy, Marseille, Toulouse, Brest, Lyon and elsewhere in France as well as an Italian choir assembled from Parma, Bologna and Trieste. It was a pleasure to be with Strawberry Thieves and to get to know the people a bit.
At various points during the week we helped cook a full British breakfast, made Bara Brith and served it with afternoon tea (tough to convince other cultures that British tea with milk is tea), participated in a debate on Brexit (which the Thieves were divided on), and performed a skit on Sospan Fach at the cabaret evening that went down very well (apparently the correct pronunciation of ‘llawr’ is hysterical to the artists formerly known as our EU partners).
As our musical offering to the assembly, we sang a great arrangement of Joe Hill and the powerful El Payandé with the Thieves plus members of La Band a Rosa (Amiens) and Lizzie from Raised Voices. At the end of the week the combined choirs performed two concerts, including a performance in the village square of Tarnac, which is the home of the Invisible Committee! (authors of The Coming Insurrection and To Our Friends ). In the midst of all this we also managed to interview some of Strawberry Thieves for this ‘Singing for our Lives’ oral histories project.
At various points during the week we helped cook a full British breakfast, made Bara Brith and served it with afternoon tea (tough to convince other cultures that British tea with milk is tea), participated in a debate on Brexit (which the Thieves were divided on), and performed a skit on Sospan Fach at the cabaret evening that went down very well (apparently the correct pronunciation of ‘llawr’ is hysterical to the artists formerly known as our EU partners).
As our musical offering to the assembly, we sang a great arrangement of Joe Hill and the powerful El Payandé with the Thieves plus members of La Band a Rosa (Amiens) and Lizzie from Raised Voices. At the end of the week the combined choirs performed two concerts, including a performance in the village square of Tarnac, which is the home of the Invisible Committee! (authors of The Coming Insurrection and To Our Friends ). In the midst of all this we also managed to interview some of Strawberry Thieves for this ‘Singing for our Lives’ oral histories project.
Singing out against Bure, a site in France for burying nuclear waste
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