We left London on Friday afternoon on a crowded rush hour train and went to a sleepy little town called Bedworth where we had a gig on Friday night. The gig was hosted by an organization called In2Cultures (http://www.in2cultures.com) that does an amazing job engendering greater respect and tolerance between people by encouraging people to explore different cultures through the medium of creative art. As a part of the show we did 2 seperate sets; one acapella and one with musical accomoaniment which both went really well and then we were supposed to do a big finally with two soloists + backing choir singing the 2012 olympic anthem Proud which is usually a really good set-up, but then 2 minutes into the song a major power cut happened… Soo we pretty much ended up singing that rest song in complete darkness… our pianist skillfully improvising the music and choir and soloists heroically trying to keep up appearances while people was fleeing the building… Ha ha, quite funny actually and that was only 2 hours after we had lost our keyboard stand on the train to Bedworth leaving people frantically running around the train station holding the train back while it was being relocated.
So after a bit of a bumpy start we left Bedworth for Stratford-upon-Avon where we stayed the rest of the weekend at a very nice, rather plush Holiday Inn - it had cooked breakfast.. and a pool!! We stayed in rooms of four and just to give an impression of the ethnic diversity in the choir and I thought I'd use my room as an example. We stayed five girls in my room; Rosie who English, Lola who is from Poland, Cara from Northern Ireland, Lois who is also English but has Ghanaian roots and then myself from little Denmark (: the only Scandinavian person in the choir as far as I'm concerned!). Then we also have people from Germany, Italy, France and Hungary among others. Can you say international? I think so.
On Saturday we didn't do any gigs, but instead we did several über cool workshops. One was about appoaching Shakespeare's texts though gospel music (: I can now sing the prologue of Romeo and Juliet in gospel tunes! - what an invalueble skill! ), then we had an African drumming class which was a lot of fun and finally we had a Bhangra dancing class which was hilarious and exhausting in equal measures! Bhangra dancing originate from the Punjab region in Northern India and is originally a folk or community dance that was practiced in conjunction with the harvest. We where only taught a simple routine, but it was still really challenging! And even though you quickly got the hang of the basic moves it was difficult to get all the little details right like how to shake your your head in the right manner! And god it was exhausting jumping on your toes the whole time! Still it was a great experience. In the evening we all went out for dinner together and then afterwards most of the choir continued to the local nightclub where we had a crazy two-hour dance party (: we literally had the entire club chanting LYGC!! LYGC!!) before we went back to the hotel.
Sunday we spent walking around the town centre putting up small performances (: sharing the joy of music! Ha!) in various locations. After that we had an hour long gig at some kind of summer festival/fair which turned out quite good I think considering that everyone's voices was rather hoarse from the manic club singing the night before.
And just like that we were at the end of a wonderful weekend and we had to run to the train station to catch our train back to London. On our way back Fiona, Zack and Suzi held a brilliant 'award ceremony' as an ending to the entire tour. They handed out tiaras to everyone while presenting each of us with a 'title'; e.g. one was awarded for 'best fusion of bhangra and hip hop dance moves', another for 'most efficient use of breakfast buffet'. I was named 'photographer of the tour'… Wonder why :P..
Sadly, my time in the choir is running out and even though it has only been six months I know that leaving it behind will be very difficult! It makes me sad to think that I'll not be there when everyone gets back together in August, but on the other hand there are things I need to do that I cannot do in London. I am so grateful that I have had the opportunity to be a part of something this fun and LYGC is definitely one of the things that I'll miss most about London! So, before I'm getting all sentimental.. enjoy the pictures (wuup!) and check out LYGC (: London Youth Gospel Choir) on Youtube, Facebook, Twitter etc. to see what we are really up to. And if you for some reason are in London and are free on Jul 11th, come to our End of Term gig in All Saints Church Notting Hill at 8pm - It'll be wicked!!
x Sofie
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