“You may have heard of choirs with no name, they are just choirs, but how often have you heard of The Choir With No Name?” asks Xavier, a choir member.
The Choir With No Name is a pioneering choir for people who have been affected by homelessness, started by Marie Benton. She was working at St Mungo’s and singing in a gospel choir in 2008, when she saw a choir in Australia called The Choir of Hard Knocks and thought about combining gospel singing with helping people who are without a home. There are now four choirs across the UK, in London, Birmingham, Brighton and Liverpool. We caught up with Sam Chaplin, the London choirmaster, and a few choir members and volunteers ahead of their gig on the 13 March, to see what the choir has done for those who have experienced or are experiencing living on the streets.
“I got a taste for community music making... I worked with some fantastic people and saw how they could get people singing. I thought, this is amazing”, says Sam. He has been working with the choir for over six years and originally heard about it from friends working in community music. He ran a choir with his wife in Hammersmith before becoming choirmaster of The Choir With No Name. When he started working with them, he dove straight into the deep end, exactly as he sought to do. “Essentially, I seek out situations where I feel a bit scared and vulnerable, with scared and vulnerable people, and we work it out together.” Sam has worked in choirs for mothers who have had their children taken into care and even in prison choirs, using his jazz band’s gigs (Jazz Bomb) to fund community work. “The best thing for me,” Sam tells me, “is not the venues, it is not the famous people. The best thing is seeing people find their sense of community and home and finding something that lifts them up out of themselves, gives them confidence… it fills them up.”
The choir is not only for people who have experienced homelessness but also for people who find themselves on the margins of society, such as those with mental health issues, addictions or in recovery. Sam explains that people who have given up addictions find it difficult to stay clean or keep dry because they have an emptiness they used to fill with substance misuse. He calls this emptiness a “fun vacuum”. But when they join the choir, “it becomes their fun place, it’s where they get their thrills, their rush. They don’t need to drink or do drugs anymore.”
The choir has supported members through rehabilitation, finding homes, through mourning, through illnesses and much more. Choir member Lou, who was an alcoholic for five years before she went into rehabilitation and joined the choir, shares her story. “I felt like the choir was my family straight away,” she says. “It keeps me alive. When I get depressed I won’t get out of bed for the world, but I will come to choir. It gives me that little flicker of light to get up and come.”
When it comes to choosing songs, Sam tries to choose ones with uplifting lyrics and always asks for suggestions from choir members. The lyrics from This is Me, The Greatest Showman, “another round of bullets hits my skin, well fire away because today I won’t let this shame set in” chime with Lou, who sings the solo. Despite her troubled past, her face lights up as she describes coming to rehearsal, never having sung before and singing her first solo in front of thousands of people. The recorded single, This is Me, is due to be released later this year alongside a campaign to highlight the individual stories of choir members and destigmatise homelessness.
Fifty to sixty people turn up for rehearsal each week, with around hundred on the books, all from different walks of life. Before rehearsal there’s tea, coffee and biscuits and following it a delicious hot dinner cooked by volunteers. The members sing in three-part harmony, unison, even two-part contrapuntal – some with no musical experience at all. To teach people who have never sung before, Sam has some tricks up his sleeve: “We spend a lot of time on warm up exercises that seem like silliness, but I’m helping people feel the ups and downs in the music. I take the words away and put silly noises to them, like 'na na na' and suddenly they’re not thinking about the notes. They let go of something and they’re bang in tune.”