To quote Abba, Dancing Queen to be specific. If not the most celebrated group in time and space, certainly the most recognisable. The appearance lately on social media of back garden summer parties where the rifts of Abba songs play in and the crowd goes wild, also, as I write here, the haunting sound of Kate Bush ‘Running Up That Hill’ made popular by the ‘Stranger Things’ phenomenon echoes over the airwaves. Two great tracks that are now in deliberation within the ‘Sound Of The Crowd’ weekly group!

“This is a journey into sound: a journey which along the way will bring new colour, new dimensions, new value.” (Sumner, 1958).

The ‘Sound Of The Crowd’. A group of young people surrounding themselves in the excitement of music. A group or ‘spark’ that came about from great teachings by the Community Circles workshops as delivered by Cath Barton for a short period of time earlier this year to myself and team. Cath spoke about a ‘spark’ to forge something from nothing. The hammer and anvil within my brain set about doing just this, creating a spark and with that three people got together with me and created ‘Sound Of The Crowd’. DJing to the sounds of all summers and beyond. The group came about from my passion of DJing and a transference to those with similar passions. We stand around the mixer and speaker and look at each other like our quest to pursue fire although in this instance that of sound! On that cold March morning we plugged in, we turned up the sound and we tuned in. We had in that moment created something special from something else. The feet tap and the commonality is felt. We met again and again, the group feeling the beat and sync of the music arriving now at a place where a 30 minute ‘crate’ of tracks can be played simultaneously in synchronisation! A wonderful feat, a proud moment for all. The all of which I refer to are people, people with disabilities who through the revels of music forget the time and space of ‘labels’, how disability is viewed and judged. In this space as Depeche Mode reminded us ‘People Are People’!

In a few months the Sound of the Crowd have come a long way, the mysterious art of Djing which takes years to grasp, a science, an unbelievable world of sensory perception, timings and beat. The group have now been invited to play at a festival in September 2022. A real spark to a flame creation.