Confidence builder

I'm an American, and I've been living in the UK now for seven years. I started getting involved in Starling Sessions directly after the coronavirus lockdowns. So, before the coronavirus, I didn't really play music at all. I'm from Virginia and part of my family is Appalachian, which is where the kind of center of white banjo music is. And so, during the lockdown I was homesick, and I listened to a bluegrass album, and I heard an interview with a banjo player, and I was like, “I could try that”. So, I bought a banjo and had enough free time and space to get the basics down, but I did not intend to play with other people. I had an online teacher, and she encouraged me to play with other people, but it didn't seem like something I would want to do. 

Two things got me involved in Starlings. I knew Lauren socially, and she had my partner at the time and I over for dinner, and encouraged me to bring my banjo. I played some songs I knew, and she could just play along on the fiddle, and that's the first time I ever played music to somebody, and it went pretty well! I felt very comfortable. Shortly after coronavirus, I went on a vacation in Wales with some friends who had heard of or were involved in Starling Sessions and they told me about it. They told me it was an international folk group. And I thought, “Well, I'm international, and I would like to do that,” and so as soon as they started up again, I joined.  I messaged Lauren and she was very encouraging, and I think I went to one of the early sessions after the lockdown ended. We did vocal harmonies. I was never a comfortable singer, but John and Lauren did a great job of loosening everybody up. We sang O Tha’n Tombaca Daor, and it was really fun.  

The session opens with a warmup activity, usually a little game that involves finding harmonies or rhythms that you can play around with and also moving your body so that you’re loosened up and ready to go. Someone brings a song that they facilitate everyone learning, and there's a big whiteboard where they put the words up. One of the fun things is that most of the songs are not in English, so you're learning how to pronounce a different language. The person who brings the song often talks a little about what the song means, and you get a little window into the culture and the person and how they see their own culture. We have food, and people often bring regional food that connects to their culture and we have about ten minutes where we just hang out, and you catch up with people, and make friends. Then we come back and practice some of the previous songs which we already know, and then we go to the pub afterwards. And not everyone goes to the pub, obviously, but going out to the pub was an important part of it for me, because you got on with people and made and solidified friendships with people that you were meeting at Starling Sessions. 

I lost a friend to suicide during coronavirus, and I was really depressed. Regularly, I was going to Starling Sessions directly after going to therapy, and it was just a nice place to be. I'm a very extroverted person, and it was a good place to have that social dynamic at a time when I really needed it. It was very supportive, everybody there was very friendly. So, in addition to the musical aspect, the purely social aspect was really valuable for me. 

I started attending regularly, and in that early period, I was just learning to play along with a group. It was the first group musical experience that I'd ever done. I was learning these simple melodies on banjo, and because Starling Sessions is this really international and quite eclectic group, I was learning both to do vocal harmonies and to follow along on these songs that had very different rhythms from the ones that I was playing on banjo. American old-time banjo has basically one rhythm. I got a chord book, and I would show up and try to figure out whatever the chords were. It really expanded my knowledge of how to use the instrument. I now know a lot of chords that I almost never use in old time music. So that was really helpful. It got me more comfortable playing along and slotting in. The cool thing about Starlings is that they play international music, so you know it's going to sound different. It’s like, “Now we're going to play something from Azerbaijan!” and it's fun because we are all taking our traditional styles and adding them in.   

They invited me to bring a song, fairly early on. The idea is that, because it's an international group, you bring a song from your own tradition. I was learning American old-time music, so I brought an old-time song that I liked called The Cuckoo. You bring a song, and you teach the song, but they teach everyone else what they can do along with it. They came up with a chord progression in different harmonies, and we figured out a verse and chorus pacing. They take a lot of the teaching pressure off of you, but you're still leading the session. So, I came in and led the session, and it went really well, but it was the first time I had played in front of people in the session, which is somewhere between a dozen and two dozen people. That's a pretty good crowd! I remember I got so nervous at one point, that my glasses fogged up. But the environment they've created there is really welcoming, and people were very supportive of me being nervous, and it was a big confidence builder. John and Lauren are there supporting and leading you, almost like parents at a school talent show who will be in the wings, mouthing the words. They make it very fun for the whole group. I have confidence and skills from Starlings when it comes to playing with people, and I don't want to under emphasize it also helped me get better at music. There are chords that I know, ways to play rhythms, how to follow along and play with instruments that I would never have played with, all by going to Starlings. They do a lot of facilitation in Starlings, which helps you understand what you need to do. 

Starlings made me feel much more connected to Oxford, culturally. Because it’s for international residents of Oxford, it’s a very good way to get to know people when you're in a new place. I'd been in Oxford for a while, and fairly connected through the bike community, but this opened up a much wider connection, because it is a very musical city, and there are a lot of good folk musicians. It made me more aware of when and where I could go see music. And then when I did see music, it made me more comfortable talking to the musicians. 

Having a community is incredibly valuable. Community and feeling at home are really important and Starling Sessions helped me with that and I'm sure it helps others. The focus of the group on international people is really good in creating a welcoming environment for people who are new to Oxford. They do have a significant number of English people there too, but it's good to have locals to welcome you into the community. It’s nice when you don't feel like you have to hide your home culture in some way in order to fit in. Instead, everyone is celebrating it with you. And then you feel very honestly at home. It's like, now I'm being my real self and not changing who I am, and I have a community that supports and likes that. That's cool.  

The kind of facilitation that John and Lauren do in constructing the songs, coming up with different parts and different things for people to do is really valuable in enabling people with all these different skill levels and backgrounds to come together and all feel like they're contributing and upskilling or challenged in some way. They bring together this diverse community that is both local and international, that everybody is contributing to just by being there and participating and bringing their own culture and their own self. But there is a lot of behind the scenes work that John and Lauren are doing, that make that possible, and enable somebody like me, who had very little musical background before joining to become a full member, and leave with more skills than I came in with. They share tasks and are really good at bringing enthusiasm as well as support, checking in with you and playing along. They’re a great team and have such different personalities. They collaborate very well together and are very much building on each other - they ‘yes and’ each other's ideas. 

I've moved to Glasgow, and when you move to a new city, especially like if you're an extrovert like me, it's good to have a plan for how you're going to gain a community. Part of my plan was to find a session that I could go to regularly, and I did that. I started going to a session, and like Starling Sessions it was very eclectic, and was a way for me to make a community quickly. I learned that you could do that by doing Starling Sessions. Now I play music all the time, and I feel very comfortable playing both in public and with other people. I like music, and that's intrinsically valuable for me now, it's my main hobby. I've been here for about a year, and now I have a number of friends who I mostly connected with through music, and we either play music or go see music.