Accidental Harmony

[image: http://www.ascensionearth2012.org]

Yesterday I sang with a group at a nursing home. This group is always changing because the residents in this facility are there temporarily to recover from an injury or surgery, etc. Therefore, it's not possible to establish a set repertoire or group dynamic. I enjoy the challenge though and sometimes we have a group where everyone sings, and other times no one sings.

Yesterday there was one singing with me while the others watched and listened with amused expressions. This is because the woman singing with me did not have a very pleasant voice to listen to.   She sang very loud and coughed and hacked often in between phrases. So it would go like:

 "My Bonnie lies over the ocean --hack-whoop- cough-cough
my bonnie lies over the sea --cough cough hack...etc"

You get the idea. What was amusing though is that the singers' voice was much lower than mine and at times we made some interesting harmonies.(by accident!)   The other residents watched us with smiling faces--even after the coughing and hacking. It was actually kind of comical.

Sometimes group singing with a collection of people can be very challenging because some people like country, bluegrass, old time--others do not resonate at all with that style of music.  This was the case yesterday. When I got a blank look from some of the people during a country song, I'd follow it up with an old Fred Astaire song like "Cheek to Cheek" and then get the blank looks from the country music lovers.

This was the real accidental harmony ---that we could all come together with our varied backgrounds, gravelly voices, mixed generations and have a good time singing.