Better Living Through Harmony

A few years ago I joined East Bay Harmony after hearing them sing at the Live Oak Park Fair. I joined right away when I discovered that I didn't need to know how to read music to be part of the chorus. It's a community chorus, part of a project of the Contemporary A Cappella Society; there are wonderful singers and great people in the chorus. I left the chorus when I moved out of Oakland, but I lurk on their listserv, I attend the Friends and Family Concerts (the next one is March 26th), and wish I was back in the chorus.

I never did learn how to read music, but I learned a lot of music theory and all kinds of songs while I sang with them. I loved singing all the songs, though there were few songs in which altos sang the melody. I like singing background, and I enjoyed the circle-singing-style warmups, nonsense syllables that blended and harmonized as our director led us. "Somewhere," "The Longest Time," the old Rice Krispies jingle, and "Embraceable You" were some of the songs in the repertoire when I was in the chorus. The chorus has gotten better and is singing more technically difficult songs, which is why I love the F&F concerts.

The slogans of the chorus were (and probably still are) "peace through harmony" and "community through harmony." One song indicates what a community it was, to me: At the September 17, 2001, rehearsal, one of the tenors brought multiple copies of the lyrics to "Imagine." I'm not a churchgoer or a religious person, and was not seeking divine comfort in that scary time, but singing that song, at that time, with people I didn't know well, is one of the most religious experiences I have ever had.

As I'm writing this, I'm daydreaming about rejoining the chorus. They still don't require the ability to read music, though in all other ways it has gotten more professional-sounding. From the pictures it looks like a fair number of the people who were in the chorus when I left in 2002 are still singing there.