Candy Verney - Need Time

Topic: Movement - Learned By Adults
Someone once observed the difference in vocal style between Pete Seeger and his sister Peggy stemmed from the fact the mother of one was a classical musician when their father aspired to be a composer, and the mother of the other was interested in children’s music when their father was an ethnomusicologist. The music they heard when they were young differed, and so Peggy could become a traditional singer while Pete created a unique style based on folk music. [1]

Talented artists can always absorb elements of new musical styles when they are adults. The small adjustments that betray their roots are detected only by the most knowledgeable insiders or outside observers, and most outsiders prefer the ones who are able to merge their aesthetic with another over purity.

Candy Verney subscribed to the idea that "if you can walk, you can dance, and if you can talk, you can sing." [2] She organized small community choirs in Wiltshire, England that she brought together in a 2009 concert where they sang Lightnin’ Hopkins’ "Needed Time." A member of one of the constituent choirs uploaded his own video of a March 2010 outside performance.

She apparently told the singers to move while they sang, but imposed no uniformity beyond the basic choreography: stand in place for the first three sextets, first rows walk forward during the first three lines of the fourth repetition, back rows walk forward through the scattered rows on the final three lines of the stanza.

Members of the choir may have been trying to imitate African-American stepping, but within their own kinesic vocabularies. Most of the women stood with their feet about four inches apart, and thrust out one hip, then the other. This caused their skirts to move and sometimes forced them to lift their feet. They maintained that pattern when they walked forward, often in a zigzag fashion.

Some men rocked from one foot to the other. One of the men in the outdoor video raised his heels, which forced his knees to bend one after the other. He also managed to tap his toe to keep time, as did several others.

Performers
Vocal Soloist: none

Vocal Group
2009: Five Singing in the Round choirs, and Sounding It Out choir
2010: Sounding It Out

Vocal Director: Candy Verney
Instrumental Accompaniment: none
Rhythm Accompaniment: none

Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Verses: needed time, bended knee/don’t stay long, own verse

Vocabulary
Pronoun: I
Term for Deity: Jesus

Special Terms: they had their own verse which I could not hear clearly: it began "when will" and may have been "we meet a sign," followed by "because now it’s a needed time." The language may have been dictated by peculiarly British religious interests.

Version: Lightnin’ Hopkins
Verse Repetition Pattern: AxAxx
Ending: vocables

Unique Features: they solved the problem with "don’t stay long" by singing "Even if you don’t stay long."

Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: Lightnin’ Hopkins
Tempo: moderate

Basic Structure: one group sang melody and others sang guitar parts. Sometimes the men sang words and sometimes "do do." The outside performance ended with everyone singing "do do" for their parts. The video for the Christmas concert was cut short.

Singing Style: unornamented

Notes on Performance
Occasions: 2009 Christmas concert and 24 March 2010 performance

Location:
2009: Wiltshire Music Centre, Bradford on Avon, England
2010: outdoors

Microphones: none. The interior space amplified the sound of the combined choirs and gave it depth. The sounds of their voices were dissipated when they were outside.

Clothing:
2009: most people wore some red. Men wore red or other colored shirts and slacks; one man wore a kilt. Women wore dresses or tops and skirts; some were red and some, instead, wore red scarves or jackets. Verney wore black slacks and a black dress coat that fell to her knees.

2010: most wore casual clothes, slacks and shirts or tops. Verney wore a tie-dyed-style print dress.

Notes on Movement
Inside, they stood on the floor and three low risers. Outdoors, they were on pavement.

Verney moved the upper part of her body when she conducted. She used her right hand to maintain the beat, but did not use the standard cruciform pattern. Both arms were kept within a few inches of her body.

Notes on Performers
Some of the Singing in the Round choirs had middle-aged members, some with gray hair. Members of other choirs and Sounding It out looked younger. One woman sat in a motorized scooter that she moved forward with her group.

Verney studied music at the University of Bristol, [3] and had taught music in Steiner Waldorf schools. [4] She and one of the choir members organized a trip to the Himalayas that led to the two forming a partnership to lead groups on singing holidays [5] in Skye, Orkney, and Donegal. [6] She later bought property in Donegal to host her groups. [7]

She became involved with Frankie Armstrong’s Natural Voice Practitioners Network [8] that believed singing had been suppressed by society and "creating a sense of an accepting community is an essential element of our approach to working with groups." [9] Verney rephrased this on her website when she said she wanted

"to inspire and create, through singing, a sense of harmony which gives an experience beyond the ordinary." [10]

Availability
Concert, 2009
You Tube: uploaded by Candy Verney, 30 April 2010.

Performance, 2010
YouTube: uploaded by Nick Hart-Williams, 24 March 2010.

End Notes
1. I think it must have been Kenneth Goldstein in a class on folk song at the University of Pennsylvania in 1967. Pete’s mother was Constance de Clyver Edson. Peggy’s was Ruth Crawford. Their father was Charles Seeger.

2. Candy Verney. Quoted in "Tuning Up for the ‘Song House’." Donegal News website. 31 March 2017.

3. "Candy Verney." Steiner Books website.

4. "Candy Verney." Hawthorn Press website.

5. Caroline Bithell. A Different Voice, A Different Song: Reclaiming Community through the Natural Voice. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. 274.

6. "What are these Holidays about?" Her website.

7. Donegal News.

8. Bithell. 274.

9. Natural Voice Practitioners Network. "NVPN Philosophy and Working Principles." Quoted by Bithell. 48.

10. "About Candy Verney." Her website.