The Music

We sing rounds, songs from traditional polyphonic oral traditions, harmony songs, shapenote, mind bogglingly silly songs, and acapella arrangements of artists like Fiona Apple or Fleet Foxes. We sing songs that engage mind, body, inner-child, and heart and tell stories of world beyond the oppression wrought to people and land by colonial capitalism. Singing is, after all, science fiction. All our music is quickly learned and can be carried home and woven into the rhythm of daily life. And we encourage you to bring it there! Through what we sing, we seek to participate in the decolonization of music by honoring origins, naming and paying composers where possible, and telling the stories that accompany them. We ask questions about what we sing and why and refrain from singing music of oppressed peoples, including music from indigenous Americans, Hawaiian natives, black gospel, and West / South African traditions. These are all incredible musical traditions, and we encourage you to find teachers from within them to sing under and learn from. Because it is beautiful and rich to learn from other cultures and stretch our musical minds outside of western, English language singing, Annie, your white, midwestern, Frisian-Scottish heritage choir leader loves to learn and bring songs from European polyphonic traditions to the group. If BIPOC members of choir carry songs from their heritage they wish to share with the group, space is eagerly made for their sharing! Learn more about our philosophy around decolonizing oral tradition music on our blog.

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All Are Welcome.

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In order to ensure all are truly welcome to  enjoy the magic of this group, we commit to upholding an explicitly queer-friendly, trans affirming, and antiracist ethos that weaves its way through everything we do and stand for as a community. As an organization currently run by a white, cis gender woman, we are committed to the lifelong work of self-educating and dismantling white supremacy, patriarchy, transphobia, ablism, agism, and all oppression invented by a capitalist patriarchal society built on stolen < Sauk, Ojibwe, Ho Chunk, Potawatomi > land. We do not use gendered language when referring to voices, and have any and all genders in every section of the choir. We acknowledge that the fact this choir is currently led by a white woman may in and of itself may be a force of oppression that is unwelcoming to BIPOC community members. Understanding this we welcome and celebrate, though in no way expect, black voices, feedback, and participation in this community. We celebrate BIPOC finding rest, joy, self care, and spaces to feel the power of their voices wherever and however they choose.

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Hot Tip: Singing is an amazing practice for neurodivergent / atypical people, especially folks on the autism spectrum.

Accessibility

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We commit to an anticapitalist model of micro business and organization that is accessible to all, community funded, participating in reparations, and supports the work of its female leadership while seeking to make itself obsolete. We commit to continuing our support of BIPOC-run organizations doing critical anti oppression work with our events and dollars. When joining choir, BIPOC community members are invited to use the Reparations element of the sliding scale. This aspect of our scholarship fund seeks to be a physical acknowledgement of the fact that we are singing on stolen lands built from involuntary labor of black and indigenous people whose voices have been silenced and undermined for centuries. We recognize the magnitude of what it is to simply BE as a BIPOC in this country today and hope this pricing option can make it easy to access the joy, self care, and community available through this group.