Three of us made some attempts at Jgyragish, one of my favorite Svan songs. It's strange to be working from my weakest link -- sight reading, particularly with Svan songs which aren't usually taught that way, but we were able to get mostly there with 2 people sight reading and me singing from memory. Worked out okay. We switched over to Sacred Harp pretty quickly, and then discovered that we all had similar ranges and moving the pitch of the song around didn't really do anything for any of us. Fast forward to everyone having arrived -- we sat in a circle and sightread (again) from the 25th Anniversary VH book, with different folks knowing different songs. 
I decided right away that it was okay to write in it and it was going to be my well loved copy. We made quite a nice sound as a group, and quickly moved in to Bogani teaching us South African songs. We did four in an afternoon -- with polyrhythms and syncopation between bass & soprano. There will definitely be dancing, but I think he is kindly letting us learn the notes first! Bogani made a fascinating speech about the whole choir having the same vision of how each vowel is sung -- so much so that if someone were to arrive and join your choir, they would say, "hmm, what is that thing that holds them all together? Why don't I have it? How can I do it exactly?" It was very inspirational and I wish in had it on video. Speaking of which -- I seem to be the only one recording. Are the rest of the folks not planning on singing these songs later with their own groups? Or teaching them? Maybe not! Either that, or they're all young and still trust their memory!
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