AllTheButtonsThatPop
ProudAsPunchVille
My oldest kid first sang with me in front of an audience of about 500 when she was four years old.
Now.
There are a couple of things I should make clear before I begin.
First, it was a captive audience given that E. came into sing to one of the big classes I teach on the last day of the year.
Second, pretty much from the from the beginning, it was actually me that was singing with E.
Not the other way around.
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In the ensuing years E. became involved with all manner of big singing projects, including a whole lot of musical theatre and a longterm stint belting things out with the Bach Choir.
But one thing never changed…..
Which is that E., and later littler e. too, always came to my last day of class for a sing-a-long.
This became such an event that students from the past and students from other classes, as well as members of our departmental staff, including some that had retired over the years, would stop by for the show.
And it is a show that has had a good long run.
Fourteen years long.
But next time out there will have to have a cast change.
Because earlier this fall E. went off to a college of her own.
A college that is not mine.
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Almost two years ago now, I decided I wanted to sing with my kids more often.
Well, actually, there was a little bit more to it than that.
And some of that ‘that’ had a whole lot to do with my long pent-up desire teach myself to able to do stuff like this.
But a bigger part of it had a whole lot to do with the fact that I wanted to give E. the feeling that she could get up anywhere and unleash her magnificent instrument in any way, and any manner, she so chooses.
In other words, there is no need for big productions and producers, and directors, and, yes, teachers, to validate anything you do.
Which is, of course, is a DIY ethic that is the very essence of busking.
So that is what we did, pretty often for a whole year.
Busk I mean – and the video at the top of the post, I think, will go down as, perhaps the best example of all that we did for most of that year.
Later, after the project was done, E. kept doing the project stuff, but she headed off, on her own, down at Granville Island to play for the vendors and the crowds.
Which brings us to yesterday.
Which was the day E. headed down into the bowels Montreal Metro after she was finished studying for the day.
Three hours later she emerged with $80 in her pocket that she didn’t have when she went down the stairs.
And a whole bunch of songs swirling in her head.
And, I know for certain, she left a whole bunch of smiles on the faces of the folks that heard her sing.
Can I possibly be prouder?
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E. is also hanging out with her friends, some new, some old, in their dorm rooms and the stairwells.
Here, too, there is music (and revolution?) in the air.
A wee bit of that music has been captured, by her new friend H……
Below.
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If you would like to see and hear the evolution of our Busking Year, it starts here….And the end is here.
And just in case you were wondering, littler e., who fronts the very first busking video, is actually the dancer in the family….Now, how the heckfire am I going to keep with that?
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