As we can’t perform live at the moment we’ve had to move online and find innovative ways of creating and sharing music. For our first virtual choir performance we chose Coldplay’s Fix You. Cel tells us about what the song means to them

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We sang Fix You at my first concert with the Pink Singers, ‘Sing!’. I joined in Autumn 2016, and as a newbie and a French speaker, I was asked to make a speech, introducing our guest choir Equivox from Paris, with whom we would then perform this as a joint song. I have always shied away from public speaking, being a quiet person, and this challenge filled me with fear and apprehension. To this day, I associate the preceding song You’ll Never Walk Alone with uncontrollable nerves, and the song Fix You with breathing a sigh of relief, having given the speech. 

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The four years I have been part of the Pink Singers represent a very important period in my life, because soon after joining I started to take my first real steps in coming to terms with being trans. That is no coincidence. The choir was an open and welcoming group, and I was able to begin exploring my identity at a time when I desperately needed to start dealing with those issues. When we met again to start the new season in early 2017, I was ready to start using a new name, and I found a way of finally expressing my non-binary identity, in this safe environment initially. That summer, for the first time I had the opportunity to attend Pride with a group of friends, to march and to perform. It’s a happy memory for me, filled with sunshine, song and celebration. 

This summer, things are a little different and marching at Pride was one of the things I missed the most. The first Zoom meeting for the Pink Singers was emotionally charged, with all of us still trying to process the sudden arrival of the virus that would rip through our lives and our community almost overnight. A few days earlier we had been forced to cancel our album recording, a project that the choir had invested in and been preparing for for months (this would have been the second time my French skills were being called upon – this time I was filled with even more nerves at being asked to rap in French!) Some of us were thrown into instant isolation, some fearing for our jobs or the health of our loved ones, others facing the grim reality of working on the NHS frontline. We came together for a few hours in mid-March and shared a moment. Acutely aware of being apart, we held onto a sense of togetherness, and knew that we were there for each other. 

Many weeks on, we have continued to meet once a week, sometimes more, and attendance has been strong. Our Sunday ‘rehearsals’ have meant so much more to me than just singing. In fact, one might argue that the singing has become somewhat questionable. Nobody really knows, given that we can’t actually hear each other. We still persevere and have made slow but steady progress in learning some of our new rep. But these Zoom sessions have offered us the chance to look back at our prior performances, share our experiences during the lockdown, see each other perform individually, and learn about the choir’s long and fascinating history. While there is so much to be missed from our time before the pandemic, we have also found that there is much to be gained. 

Singing Fix You again for our video project has brought me back to that first concert, and that sigh of relief I breathed as I stepped away from centre stage after my speech. It has helped me to reflect on my personal journey over the last few years, and the important role that the choir has played in that journey. I may always be a quiet person, but I’m finding my voice – unfortunately, that voice no longer hits the high note near the end of the song; apologies in advance if you can hear me! Perhaps that’s due to the lack of practice in the last few months, or maybe it’s the testosterone. In that concert back in 2017, when we reached that climactic moment in the song, everyone on stage made some form of physical contact with another person, for example by holding hands or putting an arm around someone’s shoulder. That’s the moment I’m hit with a pang of sadness as I sit alone at home, singing into the computer. Yet despite being away from our community in the physical sense, indefinitely, I know that I’m not really alone, that I can be myself now. And that’s a sigh of relief that I can’t begin to describe. 

Cel Smith, Alto

Like all choirs lockdown has left us unable to get together to sing and perform. So we moved online and this season’s concert was replaced by a virtual choir version of Coldplay’s Fix You. Keri tells us about her emotional journey of choir life in lock down and the positive impact doing this project had on her. 

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Let’s start by stating the obvious. Lockdown sucks for everyone. It is horrible. The world is hurting, black lives matter, all over the world our politicians aren’t doing enough, and I haven’t hugged my friends in nearly 4 months. Not to mention feeling that at times I’d have given my left arm for a freshly poured pint. (Not the right as I need that one to lift the glass to my mouth.) Yet, one thing has simultaneously broken my heart and carried me through and that was my choir. The Pink Singers were my community salvation before corona became a thing and they’ve kept me sane while corona wreaks havoc on my psyche and my bank account. The group pulled together, and together we walked through these times. We’ve had ‘socials’, quiz nights, watched drag queens together, distance cooked pancakes. The altos talked me off the proverbial ledge one day when loneliness and uncertainty became too much. Hell, a section member drove 2 hours to wave at me and give me strawberries from a distance. 

Now, although we’ve never stopped our rehearsals by moving them onto Zoom just like the rest of the world, they haven’t been quite as fulfilling as the live interaction rehearsal. They aren’t perfect but they have been something. Every week I can see some or most of my community striving to maintain not just our connection but our Art. Art with a capital ‘A.’ Now, this isn’t going to be a blog entry about the importance of Art or how it brings us together, or how it changes the world, or how it makes most days worth the trudge. It is a blog entry on the moment I heard my choir sing again. While we had moved our choir online, the one thing Zoom couldn’t give us was the possibility of singing together. Corona robbed us of making collective music. The collective heart strings. I will hate corona for this forever. I’d give up all those possible pints for that moment of sitting in a room and listening to when all our voices melt into one. After two months of being online, I began to lose my faith and my mojo. I started to feel disconnected from one of the things that had so much meaning to me. I began to just show up but I couldn’t feel the music. 

When it was suggested that we contribute to a ‘virtual choir’ performance I went along with it. I had already slumped into a ‘what does it matter’ attitude; I couldn’t imagine it would achieve anything or fulfil me. But I went ahead and recorded my piece, singing by myself in my flat with no worries of being overheard (I live alone) but desperately needing someone to hear me. To hear the love of music and the love of my community and feel the joy coming through me. Tears ruined my first three takes. I sent the fourth with complete certainty that it was awful and unusable. 

A week later the mix was released. I didn’t listen. I couldn’t. There was no way it could fill my heart, it wasn’t going to change anything. Or worse, it was going to be awful and ruin the beauty of the Pink Singers for me. This is what happened when I listened: the music started, Shauna starting the solo, then my and Ali’s voices join. I choked. As the song says, the tears came streaming down my face. I listened to 4 minutes and 41 seconds of my soul piecing back together. Listen, I’m an artist and that makes me a bit poetic when speaking about hearts, but damn it, each crescendo glued my broken little hurting heart back together. Each harmony cleansed the staleness from my spirit. I had been floundering in isolation and lack of direction and there it was – the ‘ooo’s’ and ‘ahhh’ of our collective voices melting into one again. All the pain, all the missing, all feeling of a hole in my heart filled and eased by the sound of our voices. By the sound of Us. 

Art fixes us and The Pink Singers Fixed Me. 

Keri Seymour, Alto

This year’s Pride will mark the 50th anniversary of the Gay Liberation Front (GLF). There will be a socially distanced veterans’ march taking place from BBC centre onwards to Trafalgar Square to celebrate anniversary of the first gay liberation front march. And as a founding member of the GLF our very own Philip Rescorla will be attending the march.

On Sunday 21st June, in the run up to the event, members of the choir were treated to a fascinating interview with Pinkies Michael Derrick and Philip Rescorla along with Philip’s partner Martin Edwardes about LGBT activism in the early 70s and how the GLF was established. The Pink Singers was formed a few years later in 1983 for the Lesbian & Gay Pride march in London. This activism and political agenda was at the heart of the establishment of the Pink Singers and remains so today.

Watch the video below and read Philip’s fascinating account of the early history of the GLF.

 

This year is the 50th anniversary of the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) which had its first meeting in London on 14th October 1970 at the London School of Economics where I was studying Social Administration. Nineteen of us attended the first meeting. The GLF dragged homosexuality out of the closet, onto the streets and into the public eye.

By the end of January 1971 there were up to five hundred people a week attending the General Meetings and in August 1970 there was a march from Hyde Park to Trafalgar Square organised by the Youth Group. I had become part of the GLF Street Theatre and we devised a special piece for the occasion (see picture, I’m the bearded one in the middle couple).

In July 1972 the first Gay Pride march left Trafalgar Square and marched to Hyde Park for a Gay Pride Party, with over a thousand in attendance, accompanied by two thousand police! By then the GLF had started to fragment but it had created the conditions for the LGBTQ movements we have now, giving birth to our helplines, newspapers and activist groups.

In 1983 the Pink Singers were formed to provide a choir for the Pride March and we have never missed a London Pride March or Festival since. Marching with my Pink Singers family is one of the highlights of my year and I count myself fortunate to have been there at the start of the modern gay movement and fought for the rights we enjoy today in the UK.

Philip Rescorla, Tenor

This is the first year since 1983 that we haven’t been able to attend London Pride physically as a choir. To make up for this Pinkies Amy, Sally-Anne and Will tell us about their respective first prides.

Amy’s story

Happy Pride Month, y’all. 

Pride looks a lot different this year than I expected. I was hoping that the Pride in London Parade would be my first Pride event. I have never been to any Pride before – not even as an ally. I was too afraid of being associated with “The Homosexuals” and stigmatized by my religion for being an ally to go to a Pride event. In other words, I was the opposite of proud. I was ashamed of being queer.

As I grow more and more into myself and grow more confident in identifying as a bisexual and queer woman created by a loving God, I feel more confident participating in Pride month. 

But then we had a global pandemic. And large gatherings got canceled. And then protesters marched down my street and one of them waved a rainbow flag with the words “I can’t breathe” written on it. And I realized Pride month isn’t canceled. It just looks different this year. It’s still happening. And this year we are remembering that Pride started with five days of rioting at Stonewall. We are remembering that black and brown women led the way. We remember that, like people of color, LGBTQ people have suffered from police brutality.

Intersectionality has me thinking about how I can make my understanding of Pride — and my baby steps towards representing myself and supporting rights for the LGBTQ community — more inclusive.”

Amy Delamaide, Alto

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Sally-Anne’s story

My first Pride (or “Gay Pride” as it was called then) was in 1985. It was a small affair compared with the event today and Divine sang from a boat on the Thames. I’m not sure if I went on my own but I wouldn’t have minded as it was so important for me to be there. I probably told my Dad (who was very supportive) that I would try and go to the march, because I remember ringing him afterwards from the payphone in “The Fallen Angel”- a then famous Gay pub in Islington, all excited because I had done it! 

This was during or shortly after the Miners Strike and an organisation called “Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners” helped support the strikers financially by collecting donations. A woman from a Welsh mining area explained that people in the mining community were not sure what to say to “them” (the lesbians and gays) at first. But after the two groups had met, she said that now they ask “when are those nice people from London coming back?” She also said that she wanted us to understand that “If my child grows up and tells me they’re gay,that’s alright”. I know that may not sound very radical today, but in those days, there was more prejudice against us. Years later, the story about how gay and lesbian people supported the Welsh miners was the subject of the film “Pride”.

Sally-Anne, Soprano

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Will’s story

Two years ago I attended my first Pride event. I got up at nine am, put on a rather rushed layer of eyeliner, splattered some glitter on my cheekbones and got the tube into central London.

I had got up this early to take part in a walking tour around Soho. As we walked, the guides explained its historical importance as a hub for protests, revelry, historic scandals and as a spiritual home for the LGBTQ+ community. Later as I watched the parade all this history gave me an emotional context to the hundreds of people, companies and choirs, to name just a few, all marching with their own individual communities. I hoped that one day I would be part of this parade, dancing in the street, walking arm in arm with my chosen family.

In the autumn of 2019, I joined the Pink Singers and after an incredibly emotional and happy first season, somewhere in the back of my mind there was a growing excitement about next year’s Pride march. Indeed, when it got to January it started to come up on the agenda for the season. Every single time it was mentioned, even in passing, I felt tingles down my spine.

When Covid-19 meant that all Pride marches this year were cancelled my first reaction was that of complete deflation. I knew that this was only temporary, and that there would be other opportunities to march and to show pride, but in that moment a great sadness pervaded my being.

But then the Pinkies virtual choir began, and slowly but surely this irrational sadness has been replaced with that same awed feeling I felt at my first ever Pride. Throughout these rehearsals we have explored not only the history of the choir, but past stories of incredible activism. We have sung, cried and laughed together, and I could not be more grateful for the privilege to sing every week with my friends.

I have come to the realisation that Pride with the Pink Singers is not about a march. It is about living your life through community, through activism, through laughter, through bad zoom connections and most importantly through song.

Just as I felt proud walking down the streets of Soho two years ago hearing the tales of LGBTQ+ past and seeing communities present, I feel proud this year safe in my house, still wearing a rather rushed layer of eyeliner and glitter and singing with the Pink Singers.

William Paxton, Tenor