When a huge university choir with a proud 72-year history goes on tour, it goes to big centres like Winnipeg, Man., and Saskatoon and … Lashburn, population nearly 1,000.
Something happened to the travel plans. The choir was supposed to be in Lloydminster April 30 but they found out they had nowhere to sing, except a parking lot, perhaps.
They started out April 23 at Medicine Hat, Alta., and were booked into eight places in all.
A friend who lives in Lashburn phoned me. She knew there were to be some singers from the University of Alberta in Lashburn, but there had been little advertising and she was worried there would be no audience.
I said I would go. When I arrived at the modern hall, I was astonished to find it was the University Mixed Chorus, 14 handbell ringers, three violinists, two flute players, a keyboard player and a pianist, the conductor, of course, and the assistant conductor. It was like finding Cadillacs parked all over Lashburn.
The audience was small but appreciative. The programs and the advertising all had been sent to Lloydminster. To where? But we had enough to follow a most excellent concert with music, mostly unaccompanied, from Handel to spirituals to Rodgers and Hammerstein. Lloydminster’s loss was Lashburn’s gain.
Near the end, the choir sang God Be With You Til We Meet Again, because some members would be graduating and some exchange students – there were quite a number, from Singapore to Kenya to England – would be leaving.
A Christian hymn? We are more or less told there are no Christians in universities. It’s a good thing there was no one there to start a petition telling our universities they cannot force students to sing hymns.
But, even if this outstanding choir had planned to stop in Lashburn and the event had been well advertised, would the audience have been much larger? At one time, I could have phoned nearby farms and at least a dozen people, unless already booked that night, would have gone but they are all dead, and so is music. It’s a different era. People do different things, but they don’t do music.
Studies have shown performing music is good for the mind and the spirit, but we shouldn’t need studies to prove that.
Over time, here in my rural district, we had at least 12 pianists, four or five organists, six violinists, one cellist, horn, clarinet and trumpet players, several guitars, mandolins, banjo and ukulele players, harmonica players and one accordion player, vocal soloists and duet and trio singers. We could easily get up a chorus. We had whistlers and the congregation of our little church sang like a choir. And oh, yes, two dance orchestras.
Now if young people take singing or instrumental lessons, they leave it all behind. No time for it would be the excuse. Not a reason, just an excuse.
I’m amazed that the Battlefords keeps up its musical traditions. I think if we want to go where singing is still a way of life, we shall have to move to Africa, however. Children like to sing and dance but today’s ideas soon discourage that.
I shall end with a true story related by a woman who told that, when she was little, the family was poor. The father wanted to train for the ministry in a fundamentalist church. They were not allowed to drink; they were not allowed to smoke; they were not allowed to dance. They had music for her mother had a wheezy little organ on which she played hymns, solemn or lively.
One day father came home with an old hand-cranked record player, and one record so old there was music grooved only on one side and the label was missing.
When the machine was wound up and the needle put down on the record, the little girl was entranced by the music. She danced and danced and danced. Her mother looked on rather disturbed but didn’t have the heart to stop her; so every time the record was played, the dance began. Many years later she discovered what her parents didn’t know: the name of the magical music. It was the Beer Barrel Polka.
Two days after the 50- to 60-member university choir sang their last concert of the season in Lashburn, there was the celebration of Music Day worldwide May 2. I would be happy to hear you had even whistled something like the Beer Barrel Polka.
