Traveller's Tales - The Singer

Published in 2006 by David Kay

Many years ago – 1976 I think, I was offered the lead role in a show in Melbourne. The show wasn’t a musical, but my role did have a few songs. When I was offered the part I told the director that I couldn’t sing. He wasn’t concerned. At the time I shared a house with some musicians. They were writing the music for the show. They assured the director that they would teach me to sing and prepare music that I could manage. Sounded good to me. In fact, that house was a perfect mix. One of the other people was a chef. Food and music. All in the same house.

So we spent however many weeks it was rehearsing lines. Music usually waits until the last couple of weeks before it gets serious. The show was humming. I wasn’t. I kept having this nagging thought about songs. Can tone deaf actors sing? At night I could hear this music being played on the piano at home. It sounded complicated – the sort of music that needed someone to sing the right note.

The time came for my big song. It was big too. My character was called Mr Big (a caricature of Henry Ford).  Out I went – centre stage front. Our little orchestra started playing. What was I supposed to do? I started singing. The orchestra and I could never agree on the note. Or the song for that matter. After a few tries the director asked me if we could make it a duet. Good idea, I thought. We tried that a few times. The director then wondered if the song would work as a chorus number. Why not, I thought. The song worked, I didn’t. Eventually we agreed that I would mouth the words while everyone else sang. We should probably have done that from the start and saved a lot of time. It worked. The show received good reviews and we eventually taped it for ABC radio.

More than ten years later I was again cast in a major role with the same company. And again, there were songs to sing. At the time I was commuting between Melbourne and Geelong by train. On the way home I used to find a compartment to myself and belt out these weird songs. No one ever seemed to want to sit in my compartment.  In this show we had a pianist for accompaniment. For some reason (not connected to my singing, I am sure) the pianist could never hit the same note as me when I sang. This went on for weeks. “Change the pianist”, I cried. “Tune the piano”, I implored. Still the piano kept hitting the wrong notes. Finally, the director and I agreed that if the pianist had any idea at all of where I might start singing he would join in. If not, I was to sing unaccompanied. Most nights I sang unaccompanied. 

About twenty years later – now – I had another go. A friend bribed me with food and wine to come to choir practice with what I later found out to be the Port Moresby Choral Society. I didn’t find that out till the night before our performance. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

The practice was in the music room of one of the International Schools. There were plastic chairs to sit on. Very small plastic chairs for very small international students, I suppose.  The choirmaster asked me if I was a bass or a tenor. It was a bit like someone asking me my name and me not knowing the answer. How can a singer not know whether he is a bass or a tenor? “I don’t know”, I answered. “Sing with the bass then”, I was told. Sing? You have to be kidding.  I was given this piece of music called The Magnificat, an eighteenth century song cycle. Even supposing I could sing a note, reading music was going to be an equally big challenge.

I did learn to read music once. Sort of. When I was in my early teens I had this one armed blind guitar teacher. He taught me to read music and play the guitar. Because I could see and had two hands (and he couldn’t and didn’t) I didn’t really learn a lot about music. I like the sound of music though. 

I managed to pick out when the notes went up or down. What really confused me was that the same words had four lines of notes. I knew it had something to do with the singers. It was not until the trip home that I recalled there was a treble clef and a bass clef. No wonder I couldn’t follow what the people next to me were singing. I must say, though, that at times it sounded really good. Apart from introducing myself to a few people I didn’t open my mouth that night. How could I? I had no idea what sound to make. Silly me. I thought I might have learnt how to sing. Or maybe sing some ditties that were nice and easy. Oh, no. Nothing puerile like ditties. Straight to the serious stuff. Pergolesi if you don’t mind. He died in his late twenties. I think he died of a broken heart because all the choirs found his music too difficult to sing.

So I went through the night sweating with embarrassment because I could neither sing nor read the music. At the end of the night I told the choirmaster that I didn’t think I could really add any value to the choir. Add value? I would drag it back ten years. He assured me that everyone felt that way the first time. I should come back next week. My friend said the same thing.

The choir was made up mainly of expats. But the real voices belonged to the Nationals in the choir. A woman called Natalie sang soprano, including a solo and the other women in the soprano group were medical students. Unfortunately, only Natalie returned after New Year. The choirmaster and at least one of the singers were doctors from the teaching hospital. One of the tenors was a part time member, who came along only when he was in town. He was evidently an ex attorney general, or chief magistrate (or chief something), probably in the colonial days. He sang very loudly. The wrong notes. At least I had the good grace not to sing loudly.

A lot of people in PNG are a bit religious. A lot are a lot religious. I am neither. In PNG that would be a bit like telling someone in the Western District of Victoria that you vote for the Labor Party. So it meant that reading the words to songs written in Latin was an extra challenge for me. This choir was definitely not for me. But heck, I’m in Port Moresby. What else am I going to do on Monday nights? As long as I was home in time to watch West Wing.  This was before the ABC kindly changed it to Saturday nights for me so that I could go to my choir practice unstressed about the time.

Along I went for week two. There was no talk of a performance. I sort of hummed along in week two. I didn’t really sing. But I had nailed the difference between the treble and bass clef. As well as the really serious stuff we sang some carols (it was November, after all). But not simple stuff like Jingle Bells. Not for the Port Moresby Choral Society. Stuff written a million years ago for people that knew how to sing and read music. For all I knew they might have been Christmas Carols sung to Gregorian Chants. By the third week I was singing along very quietly. Mainly to myself. If I made too much noise it would spoil the sound for the others. There was a core of about a dozen or so singers and then some hangers on who came and went. The music was still a challenge to me – especially when we had to repeat things. So I just followed the person next to me.

Then one night we had a couple of spirituals to sing. That was more like it. By now I was a bit of a regular. I still was making only very small sounds because they didn’t sound anything like the sounds of the other singers around me. I did wonder if we were going anywhere with this Monday night singing. We were. All the way to a performance. This was more serious that I had bargained for. I thought maybe a bit of social singing around a barbeque with a few glasses of wine. Not for the Port Moresby Choral Society. Oh, no. The PMCS was giving a full scale, pull out all the stops, big time performance in St Johns Anglican Church in the lane behind the Crowne Plaza Hotel. Luckily, it turned out to be a very small church. We had two rehearsals in the church before the big night.

A couple of days before the performance I was told we all had to wear white shirts and black trousers. I had neither. So it was off to the second hand clothes shops. Second hand clothing is big business in PNG, like most of the Pacific. Second hand clothes are imported by the container load. They are sold in barn like warehouses with no air con or fans. I had quite an adventure looking for a white shirt and black trousers. We also had to put our music in blue folders.

I still had no idea at all of when I was supposed to repeat some verses or start singing. Up till now I had just been doing whatever the other bass singers did. I turned the page of my score (that’s a musical term for the music sheet) when they turned theirs. It meant that I was always half a beat behind them, but because I was not really making any noise it didn’t matter. No-one cared anyway. But I was not the only one. One of the choirists is an older National lady. She has been with the choir for more than twenty years. She had about as much idea as me about what the music meant, but she was not as good as me at pretending she knew. One of the tenors was a Zambian whose wife works for the WHO. There was a computer geek, a Welshman about whom I know nothing, an Indian woman who joined a few weeks before the performance and a few English people and a few Australians. An Italian woman came once and never returned. Smart lady.

Two nights before our performance we had a final rehearsal. It was pouring with rain. There was thunder and lightening. The church has a tin roof. There were dogs barking all over town. Get the picture? I wasn’t sure if the dogs were barking because of the thunder and lightening or because of us. One of the members of our bass troupe had just got off a plane from Geneva a couple of hours earlier – Geneva, to Singapore to Brisbane to Port Moresby to choir practice.

I invited only a few people to our performance. To my horror, they all came. So did about fifty other people. Before we started we all went outside for some warm up exercises. That consisted of singing scales. Finally, I thought, I was going to be found out. But still no-one was commenting on my lack of singing ability. We marched into the hall, led by the bass. That was me. The first few songs were sung without accompaniment. For the first time since we had started I was able to follow the music and know when to start, stop and repeat. I just made sure that I made a soft enough noise not to be heard. The first song was pretty awful, but it sounded better after that. I could hear because I was making so little noise. The audience clapped after every song. Weren’t they nice?

Then it came to The Magnificat. Now this is a really serious piece of music. Real orchestras and choral singers make records of it. They sing it in concert halls. We are the Port Moresby Choral Society in St Johns Church in the lane behind the Crowne Plaza Hotel. La Scala? Sydney Opera House? This was class.

Luckily The Magnificat only goes for about twelve minutes. Less if you manage to rush it. Our choirmaster turned pianist which meant there was no choirmaster. We were on our own. Did I feel exposed or what? One of the songs in the cycle had a bass solo – not an individual solo, but just the bass line singing alone. There were four of us so I was able to get away with it. It did sound really good. After the last Amen or Gloria the audience went wild. Well, they clapped. Luckily they didn’t ask for an encore because we had covered our whole repertoire.

Then there were a couple of little speeches where everybody thanked everyone. Then they passed around a collection plate for donations. The stars mingled with the audience. So did I. I kept looking around for someone with a clipboard, because that might mean a recording contract. The choirmaster came to me and said, “So, aren’t you glad you didn’t give up after the first night?” Either he hadn’t realised my lack of talent or he is just a very sweet man. One of the audience members told us that she would have stayed all night if we had kept on singing because it sounded so good. I noticed she had a hearing aid and wondered if it was switched on.

Then we had a couple of glasses of wine and a chat and all hopped in our cars and drove home. That was it. Over and out. My first performance as singer. We start rehearsal again next Monday. I have heard a whisper that it is The Messiah. Whatever happened to Bob Dylan, The Beatles or the Dave Clarke Five?

What I do expect now is a hoard of visitors to Port Moresby for our next performance. Whenever that might be. Bring a contract.