Yesterday evening, I ran a song writing workshop for the Antiuniversity at the House of Annetta in East London.
Doing something like this is better if you don't walk in with a ready-made song for people to copy: it's one of those situations where you start the process and only intervene when things get 'stuck'.
It's amazing how far we got: a chorus, three verses and even harmonies. Too much, perhaps: I lost the plot halfway through and insisted that the harmonies went over a chord in the wrong place. Sorry to the participant who called that out!
It was a rousing song in the end, that captured the concerns of everyone who participated, I think. We worked very quickly and everyone put a lot of energy into it so the ideas came thick and fast. At the end it became a song that belonged to all of us, that can be taken away and changed and adapted by anyone who was there and used for their own purpose.
Inadvertent star of the evening was Cat. Cat decided to walk across the table, right across the centre of what the humans were doing. The table consisted of four narrow trestle tables in a square formation with a gap in the middle that was covered by a large white paper tablecloth; of course, when Cat got to that part of the table, it disappeared down the hole in a completely undignified fashion along with a pen or two and all of its self-assurance. Poor Cat.
I almost cancelled the workshop because the remnants of the virus are still punching my body and stuffing my brain, but actually I'm very glad that it went ahead. We wrote a catchy song from absolutely nothing in just an hour, and now everyone who came along knows how to do it themselves.
That's the way to do it!
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