We are a newish, small group who got together in the summer of 2019 for a Sing for Water event. Based in rural Lochaber, we are very dispersed: some members had a 7 hour round trip to come and sing! Zoom makes things easier and we now extend to the Isle of Muck.
We don’t think of ourselves as a choir, we just love weekly singing together for wellbeing, resilience, and purposeful pleasure. It’s hard to define what we sing; we don’t do classical, musicals or pop; broadly we sing a cappella, folk realm, contemporary, traditional, Scottish, world, and secular. We sing a lot about birds, trees, and water and we like songs about social and environmental justice, with a radical edge.
We learn everything by ear, no need to read music, very much ‘round the kitchen table’ rather than a performance choir, but we made our first video in 2020 (a very steep learning curve) as a Christmas present for friends and family, and occasionally we get involved with other activities: some of us have sung in the street for climate action, led crowd-singing at an EU vigil, and sung for an XR video. We recently made a video of Enough is Enough for the Let it Grow project for COP26. It was the longest, most complex song we’ve ever attempted, and we’d never have managed it without our fantastic experience with Stephen, Debbie and the Love Singing project. Ideas for location singing (beauty spots, edgy urban) are likely to be on covid-hold for some time yet.
Discovering lots of wonderful singing workshops in other parts of Scotland over the last 5 years helped me through some difficult times. Noticing what made learning easy, what was fun, what made me feel supported, my song-leading grew out of yearning for something similar on my doorstep, on a regular basis. I’ve no formal training; we’re homespun, tentative, all of us enjoying learning as we go. The Love Singing project has been a huge creative stretch for us all, but also a great confidence boost, fun, fulfilling, and we’ve learned so much along the way.
Everyone welcome, no experience needed 😊 so if you live in or around Lochaber do come and join us.
Mandy, Sing Mor
If you’d like to join Sing Mor, please email hello@lovemusic.org.uk and we’ll forward your message.
Page last updated Feb 2021
