A Rhotic RebellionAn Accounting of Piratical Exploits Along the Southwest Shore

Non-rhoticity. It’s a curious word whose precise meaning is familiar to relatively few people, most of whom fall into two general groupings. First, academics and researchers immersed in the complexities of linguistics, phonetics, and regional dialectology will need little encouragement to embark on a detailed and exhaustive discourse on the word’s meaning, complete with historical, cultural, political, and societal context, preferably with the aid of charts, diagrams, and noisily enunciated verbal examples. Some in the second group might never actually encounter the word, but they all come to understand its meaning as efforts are frequently, repeatedly, endlessly (sometimes fruitlessly, always exhaustingly) made to remind them to … “Drop the R!” It is an exhortation that choir directors throughout English-speaking North America (and parts of both rural Southwest England and Ireland, ancestors of whose present-day denizens are generally understood to have been the ones to blame) are obliged to utter due to the stubborn refusal of the rhotic R to disappear from everyday speech, in defiance of the trend elsewhere in the English-speaking world. For the technically-minded, R-dropping, or post vocalic r-lessness (yes, that is an actual alternative description), helps maintain the purity and consistency of the choral sound at the conclusion of phrases ending with words whose final letter is R. Put simply, the open vowel is markedly more pleasant to the ear than the restricted and harsh unvoiced consonant.

Looking back through committee reports and Board meeting minutes, it appears that, although he might not have originated the idea, Bill was the strongest advocate for cobbling together the repertoire for a “Pirates and Sea Shanties” themed concert to reflect the choir’s micro-tour of venues along the Southwest Shore. The irony is deliciously transparent as it is also Bill whose life’s ambition is to win the battle against the sounding of the rhotic R, and whose commandingly stentorian reminder that “there are no Rs in choral music!” is guaranteed to ring out repeatedly during every rehearsal.

It’s fun to speculate at what point Bill might have first thought, “What have I done?”, for it was he who was the main driving force to put together a concert stuffed to the gunwales with ample opportunities to enunciate rhotic Rs with gusto and infantile glee! Moreover, it was soon discovered that coaxing the most convincingly authentic “Arrr!” out of singers for whom the mere thought of doing so had been anathema until this juncture involved a great deal of practicing. And practice we did - some might say to excess – as often as we saw fit (especially whenever we could take poor Bill by surprise as he finished a direction to the choir with a hard R!).

End of digression.

Getting on the road to allow adequate time to cover the 300+ kilometres to Yarmouth meant an early start for those of us who rely on plenty of beauty sleep, and we were soon denied the opportunity to doze off by others who were either well into their regular morning routines or enjoying the short-lived benefits of an extra jolt or three of caffeine.  Having collected our full complement of passengers from a handful of locations along the way, persistent fog concealed the progress of our conveyance for the early portion of the journey, and it was easy to imagine making our clandestine way down the coast aboard a brigantine in full sail, preparing for a piratical encounter with a treasure-laden merchant vessel hurrying towards Yarmouth’s safe haven. 

Bright sunshine had deigned to greet us on our arrival at the hotel (much gratitude to the Comfort Inn for accommodating us so … um … comfortably) and, following an all-too-brief pause for orientation and recuperation, we were whisked away for our initial performance in Yarmouth’s Holy Trinity Church. But first, there was an important obligation to take care of. Earlier in the year, upon first hearing rumours of a forthcoming visit, the local lower-voice choral community had issued a request that we present a workshop on vocal technique, and both Bill and Bryan eagerly pounced on the opportunity. An important pillar of Nova Voce’s remit as Nova Scotia’s Provincial men’s choir is to promote and encourage the continued Province-wide presence of live TTBB repertoire, and it was a delight to be welcomed by an enthusiastic group of men and women eager to take the opportunity to learn from our accomplished artistic team. We worked our way through a handful of pieces chosen to explore a wide variety of techniques and styles, one of which was later featured in our concert when the small group of singers was ushered on stage to add their voices to its performance. Thankfully, it wasn’t a Pirate song, so there was no need for them to rebel against their own years of non-rhotic practice.

The workshop concluded with spontaneous applause, confirming that we really should be doing this kind of thing more often, responding to a demand that goes far beyond the HRM. We’re looking into it. Workshops burn a lot of calories, so our party was more than happy to stroll the short distance over to St. Ambrose Co-Cathedral Parish Centre to partake of a veritable feast of delicious comestibles and spend some time with our hosts.

All too soon, we returned to Holy Trinity to embark on the serious business of entertaining a paying audience with a collection of songs spanning the spectrum from restful to rambunctious, via risible, rousing, and raucous. All performed by a coterie of choristers bedecked in comic opera pirate garb. All the lads simply adored taking part, not least because it fulfilled a (second?) childhood wish to dress up as pirates, but more significantly because it afforded the opportunity for some of the more stalwart but otherwise unsung chorus members to step up and enjoy their special moment in the spotlight with a solo. Even the usually shy, retiring Bryan Crocker was cajoled into revealing his vocal prowess in a “bit” that might have been written specifically with him in mind.

Regular patrons of our concerts will doubtless recall the undeniable highlight of last season’s Sacred Secular & Silly show, flamboyantly delivered by our meticulously rehearsed then-rookie, Jeff Johnston, despite repeated wardrobe malfunctions. Recognising a golden opportunity to revisit this triumph, and at Bill’s urging (of course, it was Bill), I spent all of five minutes coming up with unashamedly bastardised lyrics to Monty Python’s magnum opus “The Lumberjack Song” and creating (drum roll) “The Buccaneer Song”. There are many reasons for anyone to consider experiencing one or the other of our forthcoming pair of concerts reprising the Arrr! Pirates and Sea Shanties production, but this should be near the top of the list.

The remainder of our brief sojourn on the Southwest Shore was a blur of plastic cutlasses, frock coats, tricorn hats, and toy flintlocks, punctuated by the smiling faces and rapturous applause of satisfied audiences, copious quantities of victuals prepared and presented by our generous hosts, and fond memories of Holy Trinity Church in Yarmouth, Digby Baptist Church, and St. George & St. Andrew United Church, Annapolis Royal. We are all counting the days until we can return.

My own abiding memory? The highly surreal experience of standing before an expectant audience proclaiming the solemn land acknowledgement whilst dressed in full piratical garb, and following the solemn words “we are all Treaty people” with “Come aboard, me hearties!”

Richard Gooch