Been binging on choir videos on YouTube recently. Being a choir boy in grade school and high school, seeing videos like this hit different.
I've featured many a choir video here, and let me add another one to the pile. This one is the finale song from "Sister Act 2: Back in the habit."
Seeing his reminded me of those times when our HS choir would perform with choirs from different Catholic schools. Though they weren't competitions, there was a feeling of pressure to perform better than the other choirs.
This "Joyful, Joyful" number is a good reflection of what we used to do. That's why it brings me so much joy watching it over and over again.
Movie houses were showing this preview of a choir film entitled "Joyful Noise."
As a former choir boy, this film piqued my interest. Aside from the theme, it featured 3 of my favourite singer/actresses: Dolly Parton, Queen Latifah and Keke Palmer.
Strangely though, this film was never shown on the big screen. The reason behind that has always been a mystery, and I'm still looking for that film on Netflix or streaming services to this day.
Until I find the full film, let me just watch excerpts from the film, including this very heartfelt rendition of "Man in the Mirror." This was performed by Keke Palmer and the choir. And they did it beautifully!
As the character Randy just said: make some noise for this performance!
Today is a Good Friday. And it's the 2nd Good Friday that the faithful are remembering the Passion of Christ from our homes.
Normally, Good Friday is spent doing the Visita Iglesia and attending the "Siete Palabras" mass in Churches.
When we were kids, we'd often spend Good Friday in my Mom's hometown of Malinao, Albay, and we'd walk to the church just across the ancestral home to hear the "Siete Palabras." One of the highlights of that mass in Malinao is how the image of Christ on the cross passes on at the strike of 3:00pm. It's a poignant sight for all the mass goers there.
But while we can't go inside the Church during this time, one thing that this pandemic taught us is that faith is where we practice it. And even if it's been more than a year since I've last heard mass inside a proper Church, hearing it and participating in it online makes our home the House of God as well.
Faith should be boundless, and that's a truism these days. Wherever we may be, if we have Faith, if we practice our Faith, and if we share our Fatih, then He is with us.
This reminds me of one of my favourite Church hymns about Faith. A hymn that we used to sing a lot when I was part of the Grade School and High School choirs. And a fitting Friday Magic Madness song this Good Friday.
As we commemorate the ultimate sacrifice of Jesus, let's us also keep the Faith.
Christmas songs never fail to give me the warm fuzzies. There are a lot of wonderful memories around Christmas songs. These include family reunions when we were kids, the huge Morales Noche Buena in our old house in Tomas Morato, and performing Holiday songs as a choir member in High School.
One of the songs that we loved to perform in LSQC is this old, Filipino Carol about people waking up early to savour Simbang Gabi and the spirit of Christmas. A song that's aptly titled "Gumising."
While attending the anticipated Simbang Gabi tonight, this song suddenly popped in my head. That's why it is today's Friday Magic Madness song.
This is one of my favourite church songs to sing. We used to perform this a lot when I was in the school choir both in Grade School and High School, and its message and meaning is something that has always and continues to fill my heart.
So, for this Friday, I want to say the lines most repeated in this hymn:
This pleasant scene greeted me at the SM Megamall chapel for Mama Mary's birthday mass.
The choir for that mass was composed of sales people of SM Department Store. Although it was a bit jarring because I'm not used to seeing them out of their "natural habitat," it was nice to see them doing something aside from their work.
I enjoy singing Church hymns. In fact, that's the reason why I joined the choir when I was in High School. It was a chance to sing all these beautiful songs in Church during school functions.
One song that we used to sing was "Fill the world with Love." It's a song that I haven't heard in decades, and I just thought of it today. And that's how it ended up in my Friday Magic Madness list.
The song is enough to do what its lyrics state: Fill the world with love!
Just goes to show that there's no "choir-themed-anything" fatigue just yet. There's Glee and Smash. Long ago, there was "Sister Act," "Sister Act 2," and the more recent "Joyful Noise."
And now, there's "Pitch Perfect."
Seeing movies like this never fails to transport me to my choir days back in High School.
