[kad_vimeo url=”https://vimeo.com/1100680214″ width=600 height=370 ]
(Which happens to be the name of a children’s radio programme from the early sixties. Broadcast to primary schools who were, presumably, without a music teacher or anyone who could play a piano. It had a sister programme, called Rhythm and Melody: we used to call them Stinking Together and Rhythm and Smelody. But that is by the by.
The aim today was to start work on the song which ends the first half. Although the show has been performed several times, we have never established a fixed tune for either of the two songs. And this time, Oswin sir, the music teacher at one of the campuses, has been assigned to work with me on the music, so it falls to him to write something. We had had a meeting in which he had played the tune to me, and we had incorporated some ideas on the phrasing, so that every syllable is not stressed equally, and that the tune incorporates a bit of Drama. And he had done a fine job.
Not that the rehearsal started exactly smoothly. I had, for the third day running, been promised the Examination Hall to conduct the rehearsal. And for the third day running it was in use. So once more I led the students, pied piper-like, down one floor to the Dance room. Previously, it had not really mattered, as I had only been rehearsing scenes with a few characters. But this one, for the first time since the first day of rehearsals, needed the whole cast. And I very nearly got it too. Mind you, since there were but a handful of chairs, I insisted they all sat on the floor. And, after a certain amount of grumbling, they did.
The song is fine, simple enough to be easy to learn, especially by non-singers. And after I had taken them through some vocal exercises, gone through the meaning of the words, and got them to speak the text to establish the phrasing, Oswin started to teach them the song.
It was clear that there had been some misunderstandings between Oswin and myself. Were we using microphones? No we weren’t. OK, you could hear him thinking, as he then explained to the cast that there would also be backing singers, and they would be microphoned. Mm, I intervened, no they wouldn’t – if Oswin wanted to swell the numbers, that was one thing. The more the merrier, so far as I was concerned, but I was not going to have them drown out the cast with an electronic advantage.
It was unfortunate that we had not confirmed these matters in advance, but actually Oswin had done a fine job, and in very short time the cast were producing a pretty fair sound. Much to my surprise, we even had time to block the movement for the end of the Hare/Tortoise race which leads into the song (and which also incorporates Lion killing Stag.) I was pretty pleased with it, one way and another, even allowing for the fact that we were squashed into a long narrow room (plus the fact that Hare was absent through illness.)
Even more pleasing was the fact that there was a pretty good atmosphere all round. I have long enjoyed getting a cast motivated into including their bodies when singing a song as a large group, and this was no exception. And dealing with Lion, who because he could not be involved in the song was proving a slight distraction, was fun… as you can see from the video.
