End of School year. Whole school is assembled to listen to prize giving & hymn singing, in the great hall. The school choir is raised before us on set boxes that are terraced 4 high, to give everyone a great view of their shiny happy faces.
As they work their way through their repertoire, the music teacher announces a sea shanty. It begins and as they get in to the swing of the piece, they sway in time to the music. To give the shanty a salty sea dog feel, the four rows of voices sway in opposite directions to each other.
Of course, they begin to get out of time; of course all four rows begin to sway out of sync, causing the people in the middle of the rows to be battered from both sides by their swaying colleagues. Unable to keep their balance from the pummeling they are receiving, they begin to fall off the back of the terraced stage set.
The crowd erupts with spontaneous applause which carries on along with the laughter for a minute or so after the piece has finished. We begin to chant for more,….. I am not sure if the music teacher was been sarcastic or genuinely felt that his efforts had earned him an encore. Whatever it was, he held his hands aloft & waited while his choir regrouped & lifted themselves back on to the stage set.
They launched in to the song with renewed vigor, this time the problems of staying in rhythm were amplified by adrenalin & people were falling off the front & back of the set…the crowd went wild!
Ahhhhhhhhhhhh schooldays.
Listening to
Courtney Pine
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