‘When you sing with other people you are literally on the same wavelength’
Ahead of next month’s Edinburgh Wellbeing Festival music producer Felix Buxton of Basement Jaxx and Maryam Ghaffari, founder of Scotland’s Got Soul Choir, discuss their event, The Love Frequency, which explores the transformative power of music.
1) Tell us about your event at the Edinburgh Wellbeing Festival. How did The Love Frequency come about?
Felix: The event was the brainchild of Angela Robertson, founder of the festival, who worked with me at my record label XL, and Jim Byers, of Edinburgh Music Lovers. They approached me with an idea to work with the choir to show the power of music to change lives.
Maryam: Angela was a member of the Got Soul Choir and I have worked with Basement Jaxx singer Sharlene Hector so it was a natural, organic collaboration. Got Soul is a charity which helps combat loneliness through coming together to sing and celebrate that togetherness.
2) What is it about music that enables it to combat loneliness?
Maryam: Music isn’t an isolated experience, it brings people together. Music creates connection, and lack of connection is what makes people feel lonely.
Felix: I have an interest in sound healing and how certain frequencies relate to our body and how our bodies connect. One of the best things you can do to promote wellbeing is to sing with other people. When you do this you are literally on the same wavelength, which is where the phrase comes from.
3) Do you have a personal experience of how loneliness
is impacting our society?
Felix: Social media obviously has a lot to do with it. Even though it connects us, it does so on a superficial level, and reflects what we want to project, rather than our true selves. I see this at festivals where I DJ, people on their phones and not enjoying the experience as a communal thing.
Maryam: Because of technological advances, we can spend whole days without talking to any other humans. We don’t have as many of those small, everyday interactions any more. So many of the people who have joined the choir have done so because they are lonely and going through difficult times. It is a place where they can escape but also express themselves in a supported space.
4) What are the benefits of joining a choir? And be honest, can anybody sing?
Felix: It’s about oneness and the connectiveness of humanity, and physically your body benefits from the harmonics and resonant frequencies of everyone singing together.
Maryam: Achoirisa community. When people come together, you don’t know who they are, when they’re from, what has happened to them. By giving their whole selves to the music they are creating space for themselves and meeting their basic human and spiritual needs. Every human being can sing, but we are not all Beyonce. It’s not about singing well, it’s just about singing. I have worked with grown men in rehab, crying because they couldn’t believe what they had just done, in a group, chemical-free. Music has this incredible power to heal.
5) Your event at the Edinburgh Wellbeing Festival sounds uplifting. How can we incorporate that into our lives on a daily basis?
Maryam: If you come to the event, you will experience the joy for yourself. It might inspire you to join a local choir and take some action.
Felix: If you want to join in (the option is there) you will hear the harmonics in your own voice and feel a connection to yourself that you will carry with you into your life. Many people are feeling pressure, anxiety and fear at what is going on in the world right now. This is about taking action and doing something positive for ourselves.
6) What’s next for you?
Felix: I am hoping to take this piece, ‘birthed’ in Edinburgh, to the Peace One Day Festival on International Peace Day and more international platforms. Things are changing out there. There might be doom and gloom but we create new things, and old things die.
Maryam: I am busy starting a new season for Got Soul, and I am also starting a children’s choir. I might also join Felix at the Peace festival. This is the start of something big.
● Edinburgh Wellbeing Festivalison1and2 February, www.edinburghwellbeingfestival.com