Mediocrity Prevails But It Makes Them Happy

Winnipeg choir joyfully celebrates mediocrity
Updated Mon. May. 21 2007 10:29 PM ET
CTV.ca News Staff

It's a phenomenon that would shock American Idol's ruthless judge Simon Cowell. In Winnipeg, dozens of mediocre and terrible singers have formed a choir, and their shows are now selling out.

The tone deaf, the pitch-poor and untrained vocalists have gathered to sing in the Spirit's Call Choir, critics like Cowell be damned.

Member Fred Brick stopped singing after he was kicked out of a school musical decades ago, but fate intervened and now he's singing again.

"A fellow, a bass, said, 'Can you sing?' I said not a note, not even in the shower," Brick told CTV News.

"He said, 'I don't matter, get over here. We need male voices.'"

Some members have been told their entire lives they can't sing. But there are no stern vocal instructors at the Spirit's Call Choir, and anyone can join without even trying out.

"People have been thrown out of choirs in school, in church," said another member. "And it's a very, very hard thing to be told that your voice, the very expression of your being, is not OK somehow."

Jan Wehner was her own worst critic. She enjoyed singing as a child, until she happened to hear her own voice.

"There was one occasion where I was singing and I thought I sounded great," she recalled. "But there was a tape running and I heard my voice, and I realized it didn't sound so great.

"I stopped singing for about 35 years."

The choir began with just nine people in Winnipeg. But it continued to grow as amateur singers throughout the city heard about the idea, and now there are more than 130 members.

The choir meets regularly and has put their voices to good use, by raising thousands of dollars for inner-city programs. They've also helped villages in Africa.

For many members, they have finally found an outlet to sing, and where no one is judged for hitting the wrong notes.

"One word: joy," said Brick of the choir. "Just wonderful joy. It just lifts you up."

With a report by CTV's Jill Macyshon in Winnipeg