Towards the end of October 2013, one of the choirs I’m a part of – Shell Out Sounds – decided to up the ante a little from its previous visits to the South Bank during the intervals of Shell-sponsored classical concerts. This time, we bought tickets, went into the Royal Festival Hall, and sang our piece just as the Brazilian orchestra and conductor Marin Allsop were due to take the stage.
I’d had a hand in creating the harmonies for our piece, (‘Oil in the Water’, based on the old but still powerful spiritual ‘Wade in the Water’), so I was interested to hear how it would turn out aurally. In a way it seems we stumbled on a version that had an anxious angularity that suited the fact that we were a mostly white group of singers with little direct experience of gospel singing. It could be that after a few bumpy notes, the unexpected support from the audience allowed us to settle quickly into singing together and hearing eachother well enough to glue the sound together more effectively.
There’s more background in the report on the SOS site, (plus news of some great classical reviews here), suffice to say that our biggest problem after the event was mixing the sound in such a way as to make out sound as good as possible, while not losing the particular acoustic of the RFH, (hats off to Hamish and Danny on that score.)
My favourite moment is when the banner is dropped from the first row, and the audience bursts into a round of applause – a real warning there that there is widespread disgust at the activities of companies like Shell, as well as support for culture beyond oil. That applause (not to mention the clapping along!) makes it especially hard for the Southbank Centre or Shell to claim that opposing oil sponsorship is an extremist position. Harmonic disobedience is the way forward!
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