Laughter peels through the choir as director Leah Collins Lipsett explains how not to slide up to high notes: “Silent night, holy night, aaaalllll is calm …. ”
For many people in Shining Lights, a choir for low-income and homeless people that meets at the Metro Non-Profit Housing Association’s Housing Support Centre on Gottingen Street, weekly practices like this one give them a voice, both figuratively and literally.
“People in the choir live a life of survival,” says housing support coordinator Bryon Anderson. “You’re always going around here, there, and everywhere with your hand out, sort of thing. And the choir is a great mechanism to be heard and actually give back, and feel you’re giving back, to the community.”
Every Monday at noon, 10 to 20 people pack a bright lime-green room, decorated with hundreds of pictures of the centre’s patrons, to sing everything from folk to gospel.
“It makes you feel good when you’re depressed, and if you’re feeling down it can bring you back up,” says Bonita Shepherd, who takes the bus from her apartment in the north end of Dartmouth every week to attend.
“It’s an ‘up’ for the day. It makes you feel better and you know you’re going to have a good day afterwards.”
The choir was started in 1997 when Anderson heard about a homeless men’s choir in Montreal.
Anderson says everybody laughed when he suggested starting a similar group in Halifax. “But I wouldn’t let it go.”
At the choir’s first performance, only seven people sang, and that included three Metro Non-Profit staff and the choir’s director.
“There was something wonderful that happened,” says Anderson. “There was something that meant very much to the choir and also to the community. It gave a voice to people that don’t usually have a voice.”
The choir grew rapidly by word of mouth and, within a few years, had up to 30 members.
“It’s the audience participation that’s made it grow,” says Amy Moonshadow who sings in a number of community choirs in Halifax and was one of Shining Lights’ founding members.
“The folks have joined the choir because they’ve heard what fun it is to perform. Plus people like the free food.”
Before every practice there is a free coffee hour, and after practice members can enjoy a snack of crackers and cheese and cookies.
Unlike some charitable organizations in Halifax, says Anderson, Metro Non-Profit does not bar people for fighting or poor behaviour.
“We may ask someone to go but we allow them back as long as the behaviour is addressed,” says Anderson.
“So you have a really remarkable thing happening. People who were once barred from somewhere because they fought with each other, now they sing together, and in some cases they’ve become great friends.”
Moonshadow agrees. “For the most part people that won’t talk to each other, have differences of opinions on the street, sit beside each other here and get along.”
“It’s an equalizing factor,” she adds. “You might not be singing in tune, but you’re singing together.”
Over the past 16 years the choir has performed more than 100 times and recorded three albums, including one with singer-songwriter David Myles.
Since November the choir has been under new direction, with Collins Lipsett, a Dalhousie piano performance student, taking over from longtime director Earle Cosman.
“She’s young and spirited and great,” says Shepherd. “She brings a lot to the choir. She’ll keep it going. She’ll keep it thriving and new and fresh and upbeat and forward progressing.”
Collins Lipsett says she’s having fun introducing things such as dynamics – singing louder and softer - into songs the choir has been singing for years. Her next big step is trying to get the choir singing harmony.
“You’re together, using your voices,” she says. “So it’s really powerful that way. It makes it way more of a sense of community than any other form of music I’ve encountered.”
The choir has two upcoming performances, one at Hope Cottage soup kitchen on Dec. 10 and another at St. Luke’s Church in Tantallon on Dec. 15.
Follow Mark Rendell on Twitter @mark_rendell
