I mentioned to one of my favorite teachers about 2 or 3 months ago that I had studied music a bit in college, and play an instrument or two...including the piano. She, suddenly and spontaneously, broke into any number of emphatic 'hallelujah amen, oh praise jesus!'-es so that I started looking around me wondering if maybe the big man himself had materialised somewhere behind us. Nope, turns out that they were in desperate need of a piano accompanist for an upcoming choir competition in which EVERY SCHOOL IN THREE DISTRICTS was participating. So, you know, good thing I hadn't touched a piano in about a year. So I spent about three days at a semi-nearby teachers center that had a piano, practicing the music that turned out to be kind of hard (damn). And then approximately 3 hours of one saturday playing for all the music teachers/choir leaders so that they could get an idea of what things would and/or should sound like before the big day. (They had the option of bringing their choirs that day so that the kids could actually practice singing with the piano but, well, TIA).
Last saturday was the big competition, and THANK GOD the official piano player actually showed up. The teachers all claimed that they would rather have had me because I "listened better" (which means I was perfectly willing to ignore all musicality and ink on the page in favor of whatever they wanted) and wouldn't really believe me when I told them that no, they didn't. By coincidence two of the schools that I had been hanging out at the past week also did really well and will move on to the next round.
The school that I was at this past week claims that those two schools did well because I happened to be around (because, you know, sporadically clapping my hands to the beat every now and again and occasionally pointing out things like 'hey, I think you're supposed to be a bit louder here' = BEST CLINIC EVER!!!) so my job for the week was to hang out with the choir. Thats fine, I can do that. It was really fun.
I felt so bad for the kids though, the teachers had them practicing 5 hours a day for a week! Which, of course, is just horrendously bad for you. A lot of them couldn't even talk at the end of the week, I'm hoping that the long weekend will help them out some. They're singing "Funniculi Funnicula" which is actually really hard even if you do read music, and apparently none of the teachers do. Every song, every tune, everything is learned by ear or by do re mi sight singing. Its really amazing when you consider how much singing happens around the village and how beautiful it all is. ...But I've spent a lot of time explaining time signatures and rests and chords.
The kids are sounding really good, which is impressive because they've only had a week to practice. I'm rooting for them on Friday, its the second round of competition so they're not just up against the neighboring schools, now there are the rich schools from around Malelane and Komatipoort in it too. I don't know if the teachers are thinking of it this way, but what a coup for the to do well, to win or move on. I know they can, I have total faith in them, and they're so dedicated too. Wish us luck.
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