Peace Through Music

Peace Through Music

Sunday, October 26, 2014

Global Voices Blog 10/20/14



Last week we had some unexpected surprises. We started out with a small group, two regular members and a new Japanese man, however after awhile two other new people showed up. One is a Japanese man and the other is an American woman. It was nice having a few new people! It seems each week is a new adventure… Some regular people aren’t always able to make it, but then sometimes new faces show up and that’s exciting!

Each week I realize more things about how I’m leading Global Voices... Even though the main idea is to sing multicultural music, I haven't implemented any multicultural music yet - only American peace songs. Oh dear! So, I need to work on this, and get feedback from the members. Our German member suggested we sing multicultural winter holiday songs when December comes. This is a good idea. I'm realizing that we should do more lighthearted, familiar songs more often - for fun - so it's not always about world peace and other related topics, as that can get pretty heavy at times. And of course we should be singing more than talking...I’m still working on this! :) We get into such neat discussions about the lyrics and the meaning behind the songs etc., that I sometimes don’t devote enough time to singing. 

Last week we had a vocal warm-up time. I decided to implement this to help us warm up our voices and avoid causing any damage to our vocal chords while singing. This is a typical practice for most choirs. Even though I don’t consider our group to be a formal “choir”, we are still a singing group and it’s important to make sure we don’t cause our bodies’ any physical harm.

My goal for this week’s meeting is to continue to focus on more singing than talking, and to look for some multicultural songs for us to sing, as well as more familiar, lighthearted songs.

I’d like to reiterate that this group does not belong to me – it’s our group – so I always welcome feedback and suggestions, as I know you all have a lot to share about things I don’t know about! :) An important goal for this group is to share our countries, languages, and cultures with each other so that we can build a caring, supportive community and create greater cross-cultural respect and understanding in our group and our local/global community.



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