Freshman year, sorry. Um, freshman year, I was kind of looking, you know how freshman kind of look for things that they’ll fit in to, that they want to do. I’m catholic, but I had never really gone to church in high school, so, um, but I wanted to be in choir, but I didn’t want to do a cappella, so I was like well, what can I do. I ended up joining Jewish a cappella, by the way, but um, I came to church, just to check out the choir, and they were like yo, we need people, you know how they announce that, and then I went up and I just joined, and I’ve been with it ever since. It’s a lot of fun, it’s kind of scary starting out as a Freshman though, kind of intimidating, but it got a lot more fun as the years went by.
How do you feel like the choir affects your faith?
Umm, honestly, like I wouldn’t have gone to church if I wasn’t in the choir. Like, I go to church, now, I go to church twice, um, a weekend, and then, I guess, sophomore and junior year, um, no, sophmore year, I went to church once a weekend, and same as freshman year. But I really would not have gone to church as often; um, in high school, I was a baptized catholic, but I wasn’t a practicing catholic, and I didn’t believe in a lot of the things, but the choir has definitely forced me to, like, sit here, and listen to Father Bodah and he’s such, like, an intellectual priest, I think, he knows how to like I guess preach according to like, students, who are, like, I don’t know, at the stage in their life where they are learning about their faith still. So, um, just sitting here, because of the choir, definitely has brought me closer to god, and, um, a lot more religious, and faithful, I guess.
How do you feel about the people you sing with?
I absolutely love them, I mean, umm, they make me so happy. They make choir so worth while, um, we have so much fun, um, we laugh all the time, and I feel like that’s, I mean, my fault, a lot, and I don’t, I, well, I feel like sometimes we laugh too much, and that this is like a church choir, and I feel like we should be a little, a little more restrained, but like, this is like the one time in the week where we find, I think a lot of us feel this way too, where we really just find joy with people who share our faith, and who we just know are good people. And, um, I just absolutely love everybody in the choir, umm, yeah, they make me really happy.
Interview Excerpt:
For your listening pleasure:
4 comments:
This is a really faithful and good transcript of your interview. I think the questions you asked are really focused and pointed, and I think you can see that in the responses you got. How long was your interview? Did you get a lot more really good responses like this? This should make your presentation easy!
It sounds like you found the perfect representative for the choir. Obviously, this church group has been a big part of Samantha's life ever since she arrived at Brown. I think you asked really great questions in that you gave her the opportunity to go off on her own and not simply give short and simple answers.
Also, I admire the way you were able to focus more on the cultural aspect of the choir and not only on the music. Often times, I think it can be difficult to take a step back from the theory and musicianship involved and focus more on a bigger picture. In this case, I felt like I really got a sense of Samantha's passion through your bringing up her relationships with other singers and how the choir affected her faith.
I found this post very interesting. I think what struck me was its natural tone that comes from the conversational-style responses. Also I can somewhat relate, being a former church group musician who really didn't have much of a spiritual connection to the music or service. This response shows that there are a variety of reasons for being in the group, ranging from religious, to social, to musical.
Leading up to this assignment we didn't really talk about how to deal with "um", "like", etc. in interview transcriptions -- a lot of people choose to clean this stuff up (in part because they can't stand including it when they transcribe what they said themselves), but I think it gets across the rhythm of Samantha's speech in a very helpful way. As Jason noted, when one listens to the recording the faithfulness of the transcription really comes through. (Nice to have the musical example, too.) I have also been a non-religious singer in assorted sacred music contexts, and it's interesting to hear Samantha's contrasting perspective -- and her guilt about having a little too much fun in church!
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