Singing
in Protest
Around the whole country, planning is well underway for our
protest actions against the big arms expo, called the Asia Pacific
Defence and
Security
Exhibition (APDSE) which is due to run in Adelaide from 11 to 13 November
this year.
This is a report on the first of the singing protest workshops in the
lead-up to APDSE which was held on Saturday 16 August at the Quaker
Meeting House, 40A Pennington Terrace, North Adelaide.
The workshop was fun. It was led by Mary Heath and Vicki Bennet who
together perform (and record) as the singing duo, Standard Deviations.
It was organised by the Women's International League for Peace and
Freedom (WILPF).
There were 65 of us at the first workshop, eight of whom were men -
yep, we'd like to have increased representation from men at the next
workshop!
On Saturday 16 August, we sang together in unison and in harmony under
Mary and Vicki's friendly and encouraging tutelage and we laughed
- Mary encouraged us to laugh and to yawn. She said it gets the throat
and voicebox in the right position for singing!
Here's the lyric of one of the songs that we learned:
APDSE
Selling weapons
Makes no sense to me
(to the tune of "Dona Nobis Pacem")
Mary, a very experienced protestor herself, said that singing is very
useful at protest actions especially when we (protestors) are scared
or bored. Maybe also to "disarm" the police? (my addition).
Mary and Vicki are both planning to take leave from their paid work
for the whole three days of our protests against the Asia Pacific
Defence and Security Exhibition - maybe those of us with paid work
might wish to emulate them in this!
This workshop was the first in a series of three scheduled workshops.
The next two will be held in the same place on Saturday 13 September
and Saturday 11 October, 2pm to 4.30pm. Though there's no cost for
the workshops, a donation towards the cost of afternoon tea would
be welcome.
It may be that we, as a singing group, also decide to organise additional
workshops before the protests in November.
Thanks to Mary and Vicki, and thanks too to the Quakers (the Religious
Society of Friends) for making the Meeting Hall available to us at
no charge!
And finally, Mary has set up an email group for us and has uploaded
to the website the MP3 recordings that were made at our first workshop.
Mary says: "You can listen to [the recordings] or download them...
teach other people... rehearse..." This will be especially useful
for people interstate as the songs can be learnt from listening at
the website.
For the MP3 recordings, go to:
http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/adelaidepeacesingers/
and follow the link to 'files' in the bar on the left side of the page.
You need to be subscribed to the email group to access the recordings.
You can be subscribed to the email group by going to the same URL and
clicking on "Join This Group!"
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