Mara Simpson on the power of community choirs

When people sing together, they breathe together,

Their breath rises and falls to the shape of the music,

And in turn, their heartbeats begin to synchronise.

This has been scientifically proven.

I’ve been fascinated with choirs, especially non-auditioned community choirs, since moving back to the UK a few years ago. Amidst the many feelings bound up in coming home, especially at a time when our land and its people are suffering from divisions and fractures, I kept being drawn to the simple, beautiful idea of people singing together. Music continues to have the ability to unite.

On a muggy summer’s night not long after moving to Brighton, I meet Vanessa Thomas, leader of Soul of the City choir, at a gig. She’s awesome. We get chatting and Vanessa invites me along to a choir taster session. A few days later, following the instructions on the flyer, I arrive at St Nicholas School at 7.30pm.

In pour the choir. 180 people from every walk of life – of all backgrounds and ages, views, and opinions, lovers and loathers of marmite – come together. I’m in a sea of singers and it sounds brilliant. One of coolest things to me is that apparently a lot of these people didn’t even think they could sing. I mean – saying you can’t sing is basically like saying you can’t breathe and make a noise. We can all sing.

Fast forward a year and I’m working out how to tour my forthcoming album. I’ve made this record while pregnant – it’s title 285 Days being the amount of time it took to complete and deliver both projects (!). At a time when I felt the most open to the extremities of joy and fear that I’d ever experienced, and to the concept of motherhood meaning I’d be accountable to more than just myself, I had the idea to tour this album around the UK, getting local community choirs to sing with me and my band. It would be an exciting opportunity to enrich my songs with choral harmonies, and to meet and engage with people in each place I was touring.

I began scoring choral arrangements for four of my songs to send to choir leaders around the country. Brighton, London, Totnes, Woodbridge, Bristol… as each choir agreed to come on board, the tour took shape.

Each choir has been different and each performance unique. Even though I’ve provided the same pieces of music, each show has taken on the life and character of that choir and it’s been amazing to experience what each body of people can bring to the same piece of music. As the project has evolved, I’ve invested more time in workshops leading up to each gig. But perhaps most importantly, I’ve started sharing the stories behind each song.

Storytelling is something that I’ve done on stage, but the thought of doing this in a rehearsal environment where there’s no performer-audience separation (just a bunch of people with the lights on) was terrifying. As I worked more closely with the choirs, I started to feel it was important to expose the meaning behind what we were singing. It wasn’t terrifying, it was liberating.

The choirs have started singing louder. They’ve started sharing their stories with me and with one another. By sharing stories, we share trust. We weave collective meaning and seek understanding. Suddenly we sing together.

I’m starting to realise that by being prepared to be vulnerable, our performance is stronger: that with each layer I’m willing to peel back comes the opportunity for connection. That’s where the real power happens – when we share in breath and story, and our hearts fall into pace with one another. In those moments we have the capacity to heal because when people sing together connection happens and we are not alone. Perhaps now more than ever, in our cities, towns, villages and homes, we need that.

I’ve gone in deeper than I anticipated with this choir collaboration project. I don’t know where it will lead but I do know there’s a lot to discover and I really hope to continue working with groups of singers from different communities. I urge anyone to seek out your local choirs, join them or go see them perform. In every nook and cranny of this funny little island people are sharing in breath, stories, connection and heartbeats.