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A world music singing group from Staffordshire England |
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Welcome to the Pebbles website. We are a group of friends from Staffordshire who get together because we enjoy singing. We sing a wide range of unaccompanied material from around the world. Our repertoire includes songs from South Africa, Zimbabwe, Croatia, Georgia, America and Scotland.
The Pebbles are Peter Kingston, Barbara Wardill, Irene Kingston, Jane Headley, Martin Jones, Jane Plant and Sue Ward.
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The music we sing comes from a wide variety countries and cultures, much of it coming from oral traditions. Songs that we sing include:
Erile – A South African freedom song with words in both Sotho and Khosa-talen. This song was important in uniting people from different ethnic backgrounds in the common fight against apartheid.
Dream Angus – A lovely traditional Scottish lullaby.
I’ll fly away – A popular southern gospel song. This song commonly appears on southern gospel and bluegrass compilation CDs, often sung by different artists. The arrangement we use is based on a version by the ‘Chuck Wagon gang’.
Beulahland - A song that we heard on a recording by folk group ‘Swan Arcade’.
Steal away – An African American spiritual that is believed to contain hidden meanings about escape. This song was featured in Tippett’s oratorio ‘A child of our time’. Our version was arranged by Ysaye Maria Barnwell from the group ‘Sweet Honey in the Rock’.
Tula Baba – A Zulu lullaby that has been featured on CDs by the Soweto Gospel Choir and the Drakensberg boys choir.
Kingdom – A modern song following the American shapenote tradition. It was written in 2003 by Don Jamison, and is published and performed by the group ‘Northern Harmony’.
Shosholoza – Traditional song about the train that carries migrant workers between their homelands in Zimbabwe and work in South Africa’s diamond and gold mines far from their families.
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Click on the following links to hear the Pebbles singing |
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We regularly perform concerts, generally in the Staffordshire area. Forthcoming concerts include:
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Why not book the Pebbles for your event? For more details phone Martin or Jane on 01630 620220.
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Northern Harmony. An American choir and institution. Northern Harmony have done a lot of collecting and arranging of songs from Africa, Georgia and the Balkans, as well as music from the New England shapenote tradition. They tour, run workshops and publish an excellent range of songbooks and CDs.
British Choirs on the Net. Phillip Tolley’s excellent website and resource for choirs.
Stone Choral Society. A great choir and a great local institution. Stone Choral is where the Pebbles met, and most of us still sing with them.
Innominata. A small group of singers in Kent who were influential in the formation of the Pebbles.
Voicehouse. A wonderful inspirational community choir from Edinburgh. Yvonne Burgess, who leads it, kindly provided some material and advice when we started out.
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