NYC day 4: concert

And just like that, it's all over. NYC has come and gone, in a blaze of glory. Ok, so that's a bit of an exageration, but what isn't is the fact that I had an amazing time, and it's been a while since I last enjoyed singing that much. I always love it, but sometimes there is something particularly special about it. NYC is like that partly because it is a group of such different people, from so many different environments and backgrounds, who come together in such an intense situation, for such a short amount of time, and do something wonderful with it. I have received some clarity on the music I was so confused over. The two most theatrical pieces were composed by a film-scorer, Lebo M. So the theatricality has it's purpose. I am still not entirely comfortable with it all, for the reasons I already discussed, but I think I understand better. And for all the worrying and fretting I do over it, I still love it. I really enjoyed singing, and I enjoyed the audience reaction, especially to the African music. And the tears which I am even now fighting back are testament to how sorry I am that it's all over. It's a funny thing with music that because it happens in temporal space, it is so finite and fleeting. I can never have the performance we did today back. But the music is not over. Only that performance has ended. The music is about the change and variation. Every performance is different, and that is how it's meant to be, and that's part of what makes it special. For a space in time, the sound of a whole choir was coming out of my throat. A choir, and an organ, and a harp and percussion. I was a part of a whole. And I still am in some ways. That's what makes a choir a particularly special voice. It's about so much more than one person, one voice, one intention. It's about us, a collective, a choir, a community, an audience. Everyone is implicated. The music gets into my body, and comes out of it, and gets into the bodies of the people listening and singing beside me. We all move as one. We breathe the same air, and set it in motion. We share so much more than notes, and words, and intonation. We in South Africa can make meaning from the same music that moves Latvian's. And they can be moved by our music. As full of problems as this can be, it still moves people, and keeps them coming back. One way or another, it works.