Songs in the Key of Love: The Vocal Blokes

Many of the men, I have sung alongside over the years in Wellington Community Choir and it was a complete joy to be in the audience, to bear witness and celebrate such vocal excellence. When men come together to sing the story of love and what that means to them.

How beautifully this story was interwoven so clearly together as a group. You could very much tell in the listening of this. The story is told through the singing, all the very deliberate choices of music, and the beautiful interwoven spoken word from the men throughout the Vocal Blokes. I felt very charmed by the eye contact, hands-on heart, sparkling eyes, robust energy, the songs being sung to me and by the storytelling. You had me at the first harmony.

Photo Credit: Ralph Gracie

There is nothing quite like being a song leader knowing where the song's going to go. It goes there and feeling that joy with the people on stage that they got there with ease. You can feel that audience around you feeling that success as well and there's a completeness in that moment and that was all of this performance of Songs in the key of love by the Vocal Blokes lead by Nino Raphael and supported by Andreas Lepper. It speaks beautifully to the performance.

You can read this excellent review here.

I'm always quite keen to get a seat near the front and I was lucky enough to get one in the second row so I could make good eye contact with everybody and that made me very happy as I had a smile from the beginning to the end of this performance on my face. I had brought my friend Cissy who was feeling quite discombobulated energetically when we arrived from all her work, it didn't take long to be discreetly singing along from the second row and by the conclusion of the Cissy was asking me to sign her up to Choir. That had very much to do with the excellent leadership of Nino.

There's a specialness about collective singing when men come together to sing but somehow it feels more precious to me when it's sharing about the vulnerabilities of their experiences. I spoke with Nino after the show and he told me about how they had created the foundation within the group for this storytelling to emerge and it had opened all sorts of unexpected delights within the group and threads for them to chase and new understandings about love, which helped to create the show but also to see each other more. I recognize this as such a strength from doing facilitation work.

All things for us as an audience to cherish in the end product. What a gift.

May the Vocal Blokes long continue to have the capacity to continue to build an open space for each other for the real dialogue that is had in creative spaces.

I cherish and celebrate the sound that was created in the glorious space in the Salvation Army Hall that Andreas and the gentlemen so lovingly filled with instruments, voices and sounds.

It was a delight to be invited back into this beautiful space with the lovely Andreas Lepper, who I had the great fortune of playing in a music circle with only a week earlier under the trees in Island Bay in his other show in the Fringe Festival with Barbarian Productions U R Back and now we are treated to this most wonderful collaboration with Nino.

For those of you that don't know, Andreas and I have spent many years interweaving throughout the disability industry. It is a complete joy to see him in a professional capacity celebrating this work with creativity, expression and sometimes playful corruption, holding the tempo and structure of the music in such a loving and supporting way.

His presence on the percussion bolsters the men's nerves and supports their confidence. Everything has been very considered and permission giving.

There was this moment I looked over and noticed Andreas singing wholeheartedly whilst playing quite a complex set of rhythms with ease, there was no separation in the performance of Songs in the Key of Love between any of the performers and that made it all the more inclusive and invitational to sing along and enjoy the journey.

What a delight to see such joviality between all the men as they shifted through the show particularly as Nino guided them from the piano for accompanied music and acapella love songs. Such an exciting voice in Song Leading bringing brilliant energy balanced with calm reassurance guiding the way.

Here is a taste of the robust joy from the evening Songs of Love

 Hand on heart, I can not tell you what a joy it is to have love songs sung to you. As sounds wash over you.

I am sharing a tiny clip of silly love songs to give you a taste. But if you get a chance to see them live, don't hesitate. Get in there to celebrate Men's singing at its best in Wellington, The Vocal Blokes.

Claire Hewitt