Choir?

I'm on a jazz summer school at the London Guildhall. I'm in choir. The mood is low. The leader is great but I think it's the form that doesn't work. The youngest, a girl of about eleven, is getting increasingly miserable. She's punching her thighs now in a cute little rhythm. She's the daughter of the saxophone tutor, a big soulful black papa, and her mother is evidently a long lean leggy beautiful white woman. It's as if this child is unselfconsciously embodying the discontent of the group, who, being adults, sing along obediently with joyless faces.

Is it the central leadership, the central control of our musicality? The little pre-designed part-boxes we're being put into?

In Indian music there's no such thing as choir. In Shona singing there are songs everyone teaches each other, which are repeated endlessly and become the basis for a whole lot of making it up.

What happens elsewhere? Am I saying I reject choir?

At my friends Rachel and Alex's wedding, a choir of friends, conducted by a friend, sang “Thank you God for this amazing day” in the service. It was totally magical.

I once walked, late of course, in from a cold December evening inot the Royal Albert Hall where my siseter was performing Christmas carols with the Bach Choir. Almost immediately, tears welled up in my eyes at the beauty and the warm feeling of homecoming.

I don't want to reject the choir form, the form of coreographed, taught and centrally controlled music.

But do I want to take part in it personally?

Does it have anything to do with the fun fed?

How did the young Vin Marti, big papa of Ecstatic Dance, feel going to dance lessons where his movements and interactions with other dancers were controlled by the choreography and direction of another? Where beauty was prized above honesty, technique above expression? His response was to ditch the audience and professionalism, say “Dance Ugly and Drool”, and spread a form of dance that everyone can participate in, love every minute of and get mighty high on.

Ecstatic singing? I've experienced ecstasy through singing twice, and something approaching it a lot.

I google the term, and retrieve lots of stuff about Kirtan, the Indian call and response form of singing, and devotional song, the repetition of mantras. Repetition is one of the routes to ecstatic singing, but I'm not sure about Kirtan and mantra.

How do we do it, then?

I don't want to come back to boring 'sing-as-you're-told' choir. But I form 50% of the tennors section. “You two”, says the choir leader pointing at me and my fellow tennor, “as long as you come back all week we'll be fine!”

Argh! The dilemma! It's lunchtime but I've been drinking my whizzed up breakfast all morning and I'm not hungry. I sidle off to another practice room, get out my Bach prelude and, under the instruction of my unmet Hero, Bobby Mcferrin, sit down at the piano and learn to sing it.

I sing for my pleasure, and for the pleasure of the community, I think. This week, this is the community. I'd be letting them down to bunk choir and sharpen my teeth on Bach instead. I decide to stick with choir and keep Bach for lunchtime.