Brixton Turns Five
Happy fifth birthday to our Brixton choir! A combination of feeling nostalgic and it being half term (extra time on my hands) has led to me sharing my inner ramblings on the beginnings of our Brixton choir. I had genuinely forgotten we had a blog…
It was January 2017. The Vauxhall choir I had set up the year before was flourishing and we had 50 people at our first rehearsal of the year. Interest just kept coming in but I just didn’t want to change our vibe by having too many people: 50 singers feels to me like a sweet spot for our type of choir. Turning people away felt wrong and I absolutely loved my Wednesday nights with Real Voices and wanted to do more of it. So, I worked up the courage to launch a new choir.
It was different this time, so much more nerve-wracking. I already had 20 singers from a previous group when I started our Vauxhall choir so there was that cushion to fall back on. It felt quite safe, baby steps. This time, I was starting a new choir completely from scratch. I had to completely put myself out there knowing it could just fail: not something I’m good at!
Brixton seemed an obvious choice of location. It was just down the road so doable for people I had to turn away from our Vauxhall choir. There’s so much going on in Brixton and I couldn’t find another choir similar to ours anywhere nearby. I pulled together some photos of our first gig a few months earlier and hit “boost post” on a Facebook Ad. I went into the cinema and when I came out, there were new emails in my inbox. 3 days later there were 90 people on a list wanting to give Real Voices Brixton a go. I genuinely thought it was a prank (we’d had some negative comments on our facebook advert that I was trying not to take too personally). It felt way too good to be true - what was the catch? I was convinced these weren’t real people…
But they were real people. Our first rehearsal came around a few weeks later (a few stressful weeks of running around Brixton trying to find a rehearsal venue). Setting up chairs in a few semi circles, wondering if anyone would show up.. I had visions of leading a rehearsal with 7 brave souls and awkward silences playing through my head.
Names on a list turned into real people walking through a door. The room was buzzing and despite my nerves we had a fun rehearsal and landed in the pub a couple of hours later. It was like a good date, it felt easy, natural and not an awkward silence in sight ;) The pub, The Crown and Anchor, was to become our home for the next few years and the cause of way too many Tuesday morning hangovers. People came back the next week, and the week after, and our Brixton choir was born.
We did have some challenges: we initially only had two tenors and one of them was going to have to leave rehearsals early as he also played football on Monday nights. Needless to say I realised we’d won that battle when he came back after football to join us in the pub after rehearsal and never left early for football again. He still heads up the tenor section 5 years later.. In fact, lots of the singers from our first term are still in the choir. Strong friendships have been made that extend far beyond singing together once a week.
We’ve had some awesome times in rehearsals, gigs and socials. Looking back, the launch of the Brixton choir was a pivotal moment for the future success of Real Voices. It showed that more people wanted to be in choirs like ours and if I could hold my nerve and be brave enough, we could continue to grow and reach more people.
Some things have changed: we no longer rehearse in a venue so cold that in winter, we have to pass a hot water bottle around and in summer, people have to bring fans. We go to a different pub where they don’t leave rude drawings for us on our reserved sign or give us free chips. But we still show up week after week for our musical and social fix and have a bloody good time. Here’s to the next 5 years!