Shereen Ali

Can you imag­ine 4,000 chil­dren singing Hap­py by Phar­rell, and One Love by Bob Mar­ley, on a Sat­ur­day af­ter­noon at the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah?

That's what will hap­pen on May 16 at the Grand­stand, from 4 � 6 pm, when for the first time ever, so many chil­dren here will be join­ing their voic­es in a mass choral event, to in­clude 12 songs.

The con­cert will cel­e­brate T&T chil­dren as one com­mu­ni­ty, through the medi­um of mu­sic, in a to­tal­ly in­clu­sive way that is not about com­pe­ti­tion (like, say, our mu­sic fes­ti­vals), but is rather about em­brac­ing all chil­dren in unit­ed per­for­mance.

For the past four months, thou­sands of boys and girls from 100 pri­ma­ry schools from all parts of T&T have been hard at work re­hears­ing their songs, in an ef­fort in­spired by the Young Voic­es UK choirs, who have been do­ing this for 18 years now.

Among the songs the T&T young­sters are learn­ing is: You Got­ta Be by Des'ree; Lean On Me by Bill With­ers; the Li­on King Med­ley (a big favourite among the chil­dren); Hap­py by Phar­rell Williams; One Love by Bob Mar­ley; and All Ah We Is One Fam­i­ly by Lord Nel­son.

Prof­it is not the point of the event, said the en­er­getic UK broad­cast­er and TV per­son­al­i­ty Gi­gi Mor­ley last Thurs­day, in an in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian at the Hy­att ho­tel in Port-of-Spain.

In town to help or­gan­ise the event on be­half of Young Voic­es UK, Mor­ley said all tick­et costs will go to­wards ba­sic costs for pro­duc­ing the show–such as light­ing, sound, stag­ing and staffing.

Young Voic­es UK has sub­sidised most of the costs so far, with valu­able help from the T&T Min­istry of Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism (which has waived rental fees for the Grand­stand) and Min­istry of Trans­port (which is vol­un­teer­ing use of PTSC bus­es to trans­port the chil­dren on the day). Dig­i­cel is spon­sor­ing the fees for the guest per­form­ers Ran­dolph Matthews (from the UK), Tes­sanne Chin (from Ja­maica), and lo­cal Dig­i­cel Ris­ing Stars win­ners Neval Chate­lal and Neisha Guy.

Young Voic­es UK goes glob­al

Gi­gi Mor­ley is orig­i­nal­ly from Diego Mar­tin in Trinidad, and left T&T at the age of 19 to pur­sue a ca­reer in the UK.

An en­thu­si­as­tic Mor­ley ex­plained what the project was all about.

Young Voic­es, start­ed in the UK, com­bines the pow­er of singing to­geth­er as one, with ac­com­pa­ni­ment from a wide range of mu­si­cians and artists, to cre­ate mass youth per­for­mances that are mem­o­rable.

Last year, Young Voic­es UK held con­certs in­volv­ing over 120,000 chil­dren tak­ing part in the UK and Ire­land. The aim is to pro­vide a mu­sic ex­pe­ri­ence for chil­dren that they will ben­e­fit from and re­mem­ber for the rest of their lives.

"Young Voic­es is lit­er­al­ly for the first time this year go­ing glob­al," said Mor­ley. "There's go­ing to be Young Voic­es Amer­i­ca on June 4, Young Voic­es Ger­many...and they're in talks with a few oth­er places, like Japan, and Croa­t­ia. It's re­al­ly ex­cit­ing."

The idea to hold such a large chil­dren's con­cert in T&T is so new here, she said, that many prin­ci­pals, when they first heard of it, prob­a­bly thought she was "some crazy la­dy."

Mor­ley soon re­alised she would have to per­son­al­ly go all over T&T to meet with stake­hold­ers, ex­plain­ing the val­ue of the learn­ing, shar­ing, and com­mu­ni­ty feel­ing that con­certs like this can cre­ate.

More­ly her­self has been di­rect­ly in­volved in host­ing Young Voic­es con­certs in the UK for the past ten years. She says this form of mu­sic ed­u­ca­tion is not on­ly fun for chil­dren, but al­so has a strong, pos­i­tive im­pact on them.

T&T chal­lenges...

Mor­ley's work to make T&T Young Voic­es hap­pen has opened her eyes to T&T's byzan­tine ad­min­is­tra­tive re­quire­ments com­pared to the UK. UK prin­ci­pals are au­tonomous, and do not need any min­istry ap­provals to em­bark on such projects, she com­ment­ed.

"Lit­er­al­ly, if I knew then what I know now, I may not have done it!" she joked, laugh­ing at the many un­ex­pect­ed chal­lenges that popped up along the way.

Dur­ing 2013 and 2014, she net­worked with T&T min­istry of­fi­cials, and many oth­ers, and she said she wrote more let­ters in a year and a half than she'd ever writ­ten be­fore in her en­tire life.

In T&T, Mor­ley soon re­alised that in ad­di­tion to the lay­ers of lo­cal per­mis­sions and bu­reau­cra­cy to be ne­go­ti­at­ed, there was al­so the mat­ter of over­worked pri­ma­ry school teach­ers, many of whom felt too over­whelmed with ex­ist­ing work­loads to take on any­thing ex­tra.

"So I re­alised I'd have to get on a plane," said Mor­ley.

She en­list­ed the help of Lor­raine Grander­son, a mu­sic teacher for the past 41 years, who be­came the prin­ci­pal choir con­duc­tor for T&T Young Voic­es. She then con­nect­ed with cur­ricu­lum of­fi­cers, and de­cid­ed to speak per­son­al­ly to pri­ma­ry school prin­ci­pals all over T&T.

"Miss Grander­son and I lit­er­al­ly got lost all over T&T! Rio Claro, Va­len­cia, up­per Cumaca, Biche, Pe­nal, San­gre Grande, Ari­ma, you name it, we've been there... talk­ing to prin­ci­pals and say­ing: 'This is what the Young Voic­es pro­gramme is, have a look at the YV videos on­line,' and then Miss Grander­son would ex­plain to them, from the point of view of a T&T teacher, why this was some­thing they should not let their chil­dren miss out on."

"I got Chikingun­ya in the process!"

"I went to Va­len­cia and couldn't walk, and didn't know why! I lit­er­al­ly didn't know why my knee hurt me so bad­ly I want­ed to cry. I couldn't get out of the car by the time I got home.

"Then some­body, who saw me drown­ing in this process, said: you need Natasha Solano. Natasha has spent 12 years in bank­ing in the UK, and came back to T&T to live two years ago. I met Natasha in Jan­u­ary, and she saved me! She was a god­send. She is our project co­or­di­na­tor: what­ev­er the task is, Natasha does it, keep­ing con­tact with prin­ci­pals and oth­ers, and do­ing so much valu­able work," said Mor­ley.

Help from all over

"We have had so many peo­ple just help," said Mor­ley.

Fam­i­ly mem­bers and friends would vol­un­teer their cars, or their con­nec­tions, or oth­er kinds of prac­ti­cal sup­port, such as stuff­ing en­velopes un­til 4 am in the morn­ing, or pack­ing chil­dren's con­cert kits, to help en­able the project, she said.

Mor­ley has high praise in­deed for the teach­ers who vol­un­teered their time to re­hearse with the chil­dren.

"It's three months worth of work, where you have to help the chil­dren learn 12 songs. We re­al­ly have to take our hats off to the teach­ers who've done that, be­cause most of them are not mu­sic teach­ers, and they want some­thing good for their chil­dren," said Mor­ley.

"It's been re­mark­able, to see the teach­ers' lev­el of com­mit­ment, be­cause it's com­mit­ment be­yond what they are paid to do. And a lev­el of un­der­stand­ing of how this will im­pact their chil­dren, not just as a fun ex­pe­ri­ence, but long-term," said Mor­ley.

Mor­ley men­tioned the many ben­e­fits of mu­sic ed­u­ca­tion–in pro­mot­ing lit­er­a­cy, nu­mer­a­cy, lis­ten­ing skills, mem­o­ry skills, and team­work skills.

"Choral singing has al­so got health ben­e­fits: it re­duces stress lev­els. When kids sing to­geth­er in a choir, their heart rate ac­tu­al­ly comes down, their breath­ing syn­chro­nis­es and calms them down. We've cho­sen mu­sic with a mes­sage, to en­cour­age ca­ma­raderie and a sense of com­mu­ni­ty," said Mor­ley.

"We are very unique peo­ple in T&T be­cause we have so many mix­tures," said Mor­ley. "What I'm hop­ing is that when the founder of Young Voic­es in the UK, David Lewis, flies in next Mon­day, for a week, he and his team will have learned some­thing from us."

"In the UK, Young Voic­es packs out the O2 (a large en­ter­tain­ment com­plex in Green­wich, Lon­don) for five nights in a row with 8,000 dif­fer­ent chil­dren and 15,000 to 20,000 dif­fer­ent par­ents. There's no rea­son T&T can­not do the same thing. There's 1.3 m of us; why can't we have three nights of T&T Young Voic­es every year?" asked Mor­ley.