This is more a diary entry than one of my usual rants, but what the hell. It's something I'm rather proud of and want to share.
April 12th.
For those who don't know, I'm involved in doing stuff to help restart the Basement Social Centre/Café in Manchester. On Saturday April 12th a group of people involved had decided to join in the days of action for squats and autonomous spaces by creating a family-fun-day-type-thing in a public space. At the meetings various ideas were put forward. I offered a Tai Chi workshop and suggested that I ask some of my lovely musican friends if they'd like to get together for a fundraising busk.
So, some time in March this year I mugged my friends Womble and Brynjar into having a go. I play wooden flute and tin whistle and I'm self-taught and, therefore not especially good. Brynjar plays guitar, self-taught like me, but he hasn't really performed before.
Womble is a different matter altogether. She plays violin, amongst other things, and is classically trained to a high degree. When it comes to understanding music she really knows what she's talking about, which can't be truthfully said of the other two of us.
From my point of view that's fantastic. Not only has she got a better ear than me (not difficult), she's forgotten more than I've managed to learn - and working with a properly trained musician means I can learn a whole lot more.
I think we managed about four rehearsals, in my kitchen, which included choosing tunes and working out how to put them together, chord structures and so-on. All-in-all, maybe 6-8hours of rehearsal time was what we managed.
We even thought of a name - Cacaphonix - for which my number one son created a banner
And then came the day.
We met up at Cathedral Gardens in Manchester on Saturday afternoon. The people running the show (Hi, Nic and Vera. X) were finding food and painting banners. Sara took the munchkins doing stuff, a samba band turned up as well as more people and I did my workshop.
Then it was our turn.
Okay, we played a lot of bum notes (well, I certainly did). Okay, we were slightly out of time on more than one occasion. Okay, we could barely be heard over the sound-system of the No Borders people.
Yet, it was great fun. We set up, we tuned up and we played. In public. For the first time ever. Perhaps I'm an attention-seeking tart (perhaps?!), but I loved it and I wanna do it again!
It is my hope that this officially heralds the birth of Cacaphonix, folk trio extraordinaire!
We even have documentary evidence:
Love and musicianship,
Seán
4 comments:
Blimey Seán, I'm not that good! I kept forgetting repeats and I really need to practice more. I had too many years of being lazy, I think.
I really enjoyed myself and think we should do it all over again.
I think Brynjar deserves the biggest clap on the back, because he can't read the dots, yet he still managed to make sense of what we were doing ;o)
You'll hear no argument from me on that score. The lad is a hero.
i thought you were ace and i hope to hear more, i was sorry i had to keep wandering off. i've been wittering for ages that i want proper music (ie stuff i like) at demos and its wonderful to hear some lovely folk. thanks and hurrah for cacophonix
love morag xx
Aww, thank you. Hopefully we acn play again but possibly somewhere a little quieter. I'd certainly like to.
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