A Musical Evening Essay

No, I haven’t been to a musical (lately). But Friday â€Å"my† choir and I had an appointment with, well, the rest of the population here, really. The local choirs (5) and whoever else who wanted to come along, were gathered to sing. The choirs had 2-3 songs each in between, but the rest was pure singalong (not karaoke..). Before going I felt as if I was a hundred years old, because that’s what I expected the average age of the people attending to be – but no such thing. Admittedly, average age was possibly 50, but there was such a genial atmosphere, and fun songs to sing! It was great listening to the other choirs and there was even food and drink. Very un-Norwegianly, people smiled and talked to complete strangers, and I doubt not that the compere was right when he said you couldn’t sing and be a sourpuss. I didn’t feel like a hundred years old, and I even answered when called upon by strangers†¦ I’ll just give you a couple examples of the singalong (as usual, it’s sound only – for atmosphere, the localities where wrapped in semi-darkness). It’s not particularly beautiful, but it’s kind of silly-funny, it’s two songs phonetically translated to Norwegian – Ferje over Mjà ¸sa (= ferry cross Mjà ¸sa, from â€Å"ferry cross the Mersey†, of course – at least it’s about a ferry ride too) and Du kan godt fà ¥ sitte innte meg Leif (= feel free to move in closer, Leif, from â€Å"got to get you into my life† – it’s got absolutely nothing to do with the original, but it sounds like it†¦) Our performance? It wasn’t too bad, actually. We’d had two practice sessions before this evening†¦ The second song (a medley) I won’t go into, but the first one had several people coming over to us afterwards saying things like â€Å"most enchanting of the evening†, â€Å"most special† and â€Å"most true (= in tune) singing they’d ever heard†. I can live with that.