Find Your Voice: How This Weekend's Choir Festival Could Be Your Way In

The public centrepiece, a mass choir of some 600 voices will gather in Dock Park for the festival's big public performance, while individual choirs busk their way around the town.

Catch the Massed Choir in Dock Park at 12 noon on Saturday and the Choirs busking in town centre from 1pm at various locations in town.

As the last note fades on Sunday, the feeling you get standing in a crowd while 600 people sing as one doesn't have to be a once-a-year visitor. Dumfries has a quietly thriving, welcoming musical life of its own. You don't need to read music. You don't need to have sung, drummed or piped since school. In a lot of these groups, you don't even need to audition. You just need to show up.

So if the festival leaves you humming on the walk home and thinking I'd love to do that — here's where to start.

Singing

If you've never sung in a group before, Dumfries Community Choir is the gentlest possible doorway. It meets on Tuesday evenings from 6pm to 8pm at the Supper Club on the High Street, there's no audition and no music to read, and newcomers are welcome to sit at the back and simply listen until they feel ready to join in. It's relaxed, friendly and built around having a good time.

The Dumfries Vocal Collective offers a smaller, more performance-focused environment for singers who want to push a little further.

For those drawn to the bigger classical repertoire, Dumfries Choral Society brings together around 80 singers from across the area, rehearsing on Monday nights at The Bridge on Glasgow Road and staging three concerts a year.

Younger singers, meanwhile, are well served by the NYCOS Dumfries Choir, which meets weekly in term time.

Singing isn't the only way to make a joyful noise. If you'd rather restrict your singing to the shower maybe an instrument is more up your street.

Drumming and samba

The Samba Sisters, a long-established Dumfries samba drumming group, play everything from the booming surdos to agogô bells and shakers, and run workshops that make a perfect taster session.

Bloco Fênix Dumfries offers another route into Brazilian-style samba, and the Dumfries School of Samba is there for anyone who wants to pick up the sticks.

For a different rhythm altogether, Africadabra, based at Heathhall Community Centre on Barnett Road, brings African drumming and music to the town.

Are the pipes calling?

Dumfries Pipe Band welcomes new pipers and drummers and is most easily reached through its Facebook page. Don't be put off by the idea of an audition — many bands offer free tuition to learners, so it's a genuinely open door even if you've never held a chanter.

Lessons and instruments

If you'd rather learn one-to-one or get your hands on an instrument first, John Douglas Music on Great King Street is a long-standing local music shop and a good first port of call for tuition contacts.

Lovers Lane Studios on Rae Street offers rehearsal and recording space for anyone ready to take things further. And for younger learners, Dumfries & Galloway Council runs Scottish Government–funded instrumental tuition in local schools.

The real invitation

The public performances of the Street Choirs Festival will be something to behold, but its best gift to Dumfries might be the reminder that music here isn't something you only watch. It's something you can walk into on a Tuesday night, drum sticks or song sheet in hand, and find a whole roomful of people glad you came. The 600 voices in Dock Park all started somewhere — most of them with nothing more than the nerve to turn up for the first time.

This weekend, go and listen. Next week, give it a go yourself and take a pal along.