Island Life Magazine Ltd December 2008/January 2009 | Page 21

PROPERTY

life

Find your
voice and
all that
jazz

Photo: Alison Eade

Alison Eade

Roz Whistance meets a woman on a
mission to help us unleash the song
within us all
Blood-curdling screams emanate from a
church hall – followed by the sound of
raucous laughter. Alison Eade is holding
a workshop for people trying to find their
voices.
“I believe everyone can sing. You’re
born into this world being able to sing.
Children of one, two, three, maybe up to
six- or seven-years old sing. But after that
something happens and people start to think
and believe they can’t do it.”
Alison is a vibrant, energetic lady with
vivid red hair and a warm, intimate manner
which puts her class at ease. She is not one
to stand on dignity: those noises require
silly faces to be pulled and one of her secret
weapons to get her singers to locate their
lower stomach muscles to gain a top note is

the “constipated push” – which she doesn’t
balk at demonstrating.
I meet her following a rehearsal for one
of two Christmas concerts to be performed
by a choir which has formed out of the
workshops she has held this year in
Bembridge, Totland and Newport. “It was so
cold we ended up doing All That Jazz” she
says, and bursts into ‘I’m gonna rouge my
knees and roll my stockings down!’ while
performing the rolling action. “Even the men
were doing it, really throwing themselves
into it!
She positively delights in such freedom
from inhibition. Yet there is great wisdom
behind her apparent frivolity. She draws a
comparison between our culture and that of
Africa, where she has spent time with some

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tribes. “Nobody sings flat, nobody sings
sharp, they just sing. In church it’s not just
the choir which sings in perfect harmony.”
It is her purpose to find out what happens
to us in the West, and why. Alison is from
Cornwall, and her mother was from the
Hebrides – so she has the music of the Celt
oozing from every pore. “Mother used to
sing all the time, lovely lilting Hebridean
songs, whose lyrics and music haunted
me.” School choir, chapel choir – music
was inevitably part of her life, but it wasn’t
until after her son was born that she sought
singing