Novo: Reminiscing Choir

Novo

Monday, July 16, 2007

Reminiscing Choir - GWH

It's been 3 months since the choir got the vaunted Gold with Honours for SYF.

We were lucky.

Lucky to have a great bunch of seniors who were focused on their objectives. Lucky to have members who were passionate about what they do. Lucky because of their sacrifices. Of time. Sweat. Of tears.

Many people (colleagues, principals, alumni from my time) congratulated me for the 'good results', attributing the fact that my 'expertise' and past experience as a chorister must have somehow rubbed off onto the choir.

I'm not so sure I can take an ounce of credit since I didn't sing nor conduct. In fact, to me, it wasn't so much about the members' actual singing, but it was the sheer tenacity and courage each person brought on the stage. We were for the last decade an underdog choir, a 'has been' kind of choir. Even 5 months before the SYF we were deemed as miles away from the real top dogs, the first leaguers - Cat. High, VS, TKSS, FMSS. We were patted on the back with nice words such as 'you're improving', 'good progress' 'your choir is stabilising'. We were always a 2nd division choir because we are a 'cheena' school. How many SAP schools even get a Gold for Choir?

I'm sure most choir members did not realise this huge societal background that works against most chinese school choirs (think about it Dunman, Cheung Cheng, Chinese High, all have 'poor' choirs), and that the 'english' schools have for the last 30 years dominated the choir landscape. Even during the SYF competition day itself some SYC members were scoffing AH Choir when they walked down the tiers. They whipped out their tuning forks to 'check' on the key and whispered to each other how flat we became. SYC is the most snobbish english choir that exists. No surprise I quit 7 years ago huh.

I kept this very much to myself because it is not the duty of the young to fret over this generational stupidity that started during my time. But man, I was never so deliriously estatic in my adult life when the results were annouced. I'm not sure if anyone noticed, but I leapt up to my feet, and I was actually running around, and that I ran to mr toh and whacked him so hard on the shoulder, that the guy sitting on his left was frantically asking me to relax.

Choir No. 44. We showed them good. We showed ourselves good.

posted by Ben Tan @ 6:05 PM

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