Giving victims a voice: the choir using song to spread their message of resilience and hope to family violence survivors
Family violence may not sound like the stuff of beautiful music, but the all-women No Excuses! choir is using song to tell their stories, spreading a message of resilience and hope. Susan Horsburgh reports.
The performance opens with the choir chanting abuse, their ugly words slicing through the rarefied surrounds of the Melbourne Recital Centre – “Because you’re stupid”, “Because you’re not pretty anymore”, “Because you’re a terrible mother”, “Because you spend too much of my money”, “Because it’s your fault” …
They are the excuses too many of the women onstage have heard before – words used to justify past hurts, bruises and humiliations. This time, though, from the mouths of more than 50 defiant women, the barrage of abuse sounds more like a call to arms – each excuse exposed as no excuse at all. “Every time it’s powerful,” says 26-year-old choir member Jess Cochran, “and it gets you into the mindset of the performance – let’s do this, let’s raise awareness and tell our story.”
This Sunday afternoon, introduced by family violence campaigner Rosie Batty, whose son Luke was killed by his father in 2014, the No Excuses! choir takes the stage in scarves of suffragette green and purple to perform in the Melbourne International Singers Festival. Formed a year ago by the School of Hard Knocks, the all-women choir sings a collection of original songs inspired by true stories of domestic violence survivors.
The source material is sobering to say the least – the first song has a spoken-word part in which one woman recalls clinging as a child to her
three sisters as her father raged through the house with a shotgun – and yet the song suite is not a series of dirges. The musical styles range from country ballad to finger-snapping jazz, culminating in a feminist anthem with a ’70s feel. “Everyone said they wanted the audience to leave with a sense of hope – because these are all stories about women who have survived,” says conductor and co-composer Dr Kathleen McGuire.
Among the singers are lawyers and newly arrived migrants, high school students and homeless women, most of whom have been touched by family violence. “When I was growing up, I just thought it was something related to alcoholism or poverty, because it’s been so hidden for so long,” says Kathleen. “Now that I’ve seen this random group of women who’ve come together, I don’t think anyone is immune at all.”
Choir singer Felicity Porter is not a victim, but her memories of dealing with abused children as a young police officer formed the basis of one of the songs, Hide Me. Back then, more than 30 years ago, family violence was considered a non-issue. “We’d be sent out and if it was ‘just a domestic’, it was, ‘Don’t worry about it – get in, get out’,” recalls Felicity, 66.
Public awareness has improved in recent years, but even some of the choir members, says Kathleen, didn’t realise they had been subjected to domestic violence until they joined the group and started talking to the other women. Live in a situation long enough and it becomes your normal.
“I just got used to that way of being,” says one member of the choir, who endured 20 years of psychological abuse from her ex-husband. “He would go for days not talking to me for no reason, would constantly put me down. I made excuses for his behaviour all the time. I’d play along, try to please him. Other people could see there were cracks [in the marriage] and I couldn’t – because you’re in love with this person and you think it’ll get better.”
In hindsight, all the warning signs were there when she met him as a teenager. She was low on confidence and he capitalised on that. “I walked around on eggshells from day one,” she says. “He was always possessive, very jealous. He would always find my weak points and feed on those. That’s why I think I put up with it for as long as I did … I felt like, where did I go wrong? This has to be my fault. When you’re told all these reasons often enough, you start to believe them. But it’s not that reason at all – it’s just them transferring their crap onto you.”
Two years ago, when she sensed a shift in her sexuality, she told him – and that’s when the abuse turned physical. “I saw a completely different side of him and it scared me.” The couple’s children witnessed him threatening and pushing her, putting his hands around her throat and eventually leaving the family home in a fury. He went overseas and hasn’t been back since.
The past two years have been a traumatic haze of court proceedings, dealing with divorce and custody issues, but singing with No Excuses! has been cathartic – “because everyone in the room gets it”, she says. “It’s okay to, mid-song, just burst into tears – no one thinks that’s unusual and everyone at various performances has done that ... I just get all of that emotion out. It’s definitely put a lot of things to bed.”
The final anthemic song, Making No Excuses, is inspired by this woman’s story and she used to cry every time she sang it – until the choir performed at a Luke Batty Foundation fundraiser last year. “I stood there in front of Rosie Batty and all I kept thinking was, ‘I still have my children – she has lost everything and I still have my children – get through this’.”>>
Among the singers are lawyers and newly arrived migrants, high school students and homeless women.
When No Excuses! sang that final song at a Rotary district conference earlier this year in Bendigo, they had 900 Rotarians, mostly men, on their feet singing along. “It was incredible to have that sense of solidarity with the audience,” says Kathleen. “It just made me realise how important this is.”
Jess Cochran, who sings in the front row from her wheelchair, vividly recalls that performance. “I was trying to sing and cry at the same time,” says Jess, who has a host of medical problems, including arthritis and a heart condition. “It was this overwhelming sense of emotion, but I also felt the power and strength behind me. We’re there, saying we’re survivors ... You see them crying in the audience and you get these standing ovations that knock the breath out of you.”
Jess, who has experienced abuse in the past, has always used music as an emotional outlet, but the choir offers a support network, too. “I have playlists for every emotion,” she says, “but [with No Excuses!] you have 40 or 50 other women willing to sit and talk about it.”
Jonathon Welch – who founded the Choir of Hard Knocks for homeless and disadvantaged singers, the subject of an ABC documentary, 10 years ago – says community choirs offer the spiritual sustenance that used to be found at church every Sunday.
“People are really looking for that sense of belonging and community without that religious attachment,” says Jonathon, who expanded his choir group in 2012 to become the School of Hard Knocks, taking on a range of social justice programs. “We all need to feel valued, that we can make a valuable contribution. For many of these women, their sense of self-worth has been hugely diminished, so to be able to stand together, share their experiences and be applauded for that publicly is very healing.”
All of the school’s choirs have a no-audition policy, which he admits can be challenging for the conductors. “You have to have a few crunchy voices in there to make it sound like a community choir,” he says, laughing. “You put everyone in the pot, let them simmer, and you come out with that lovely, fluffy sound.”
Ultimately, says No Excuses! co-composer Christina Green, personal growth is more important than perfect pitch. “You may have the odd person who isn’t in tune or is there more in spirit,” says the singersongwriter and music therapist, “but participation is the higher goal – it’s not a classical choir in that way. It’s about transformation and change at least as much as the musical result.”
Before she joined No Excuses!, Jess had been told that she had a good voice, but she could not muster the courage to sing beyond the car or the shower. Like many new recruits, she was too timid to talk to anyone at that first choir rehearsal. “I was just a mouse in the corner,” says Jess. “Now I belt it out. This has given me the confidence to sing.”
I was trying to sing and cry at the same time.
The Australian Women’s Weekly has made a special Christmas donation on behalf of our readers to the inspiring No Excuses! choir.