What to Expect When You're Expecting...the Pittsburgh Labor Choir at Your Event

Thanks so much for your interest in involving the Pittsburgh Labor Choir in your event! We are so excited to sing with you. We’ve developed the following list of need-to-know items based on our years of experience singing and sharing songs together. Please note them, and let us know if you have questions or concerns. Our mission statement is also at the bottom of this document.

Communication

We prefer to receive event requests at least ten days in advance of the gig so that we can practice accordingly!

We rely on direct contact with the organizers* to get the information we need to plan and prepare for a gig. This means that someone closely involved with the gig should be able to communicate with a choir member acting as the our point person. 

*This means whoever is taking on the role (even temporarily) of event organizer, chant leader, person holding a megaphone, scheduler, person sending emails, MC, etc.

Participation

Pittsburgh Labor Choir facilitates a participatory singing experience. We do not primarily do “performance”: in fact, we seek to overcome the division between performer and audience.

We can get the whole crowd singing, though it helps us a lot if event organizers make sure the crowd knows that everyone will be singing.

Please let us know if there are any special ways we should prepare for your event to enable that to happen!

Content

We’re happy to work with you on preferred songs and lyrics, but we will decide what we can and will do. In advance of a gig, we typically prepare a set of songs and lyrics to choose from. Knowing about your preferred messaging and/or key phrases in advance is helpful, if possible. We will match your event’s theme and tone as closely as we can.

We generally do not learn requested new songs for specific gigs. We have spent years finding, writing, and refining songs that work best for big group singing, and participants generally have a good time.

Time & Timing

Our minimum set length is 2 songs or 5 minutes. One thing that works well is to have several short sets of 2-3 songs mixed into the program of an event, but we can also do a longer block of singing.

Singing first or last: because we need everyone to participate in singing together, don’t schedule us for after all the important parts of an event. We can sing as the last part of an event, but not to “sing people out” or sing while everyone is packing up and leaving. Singing at the start of an event can be a good way to bring everyone’s attention together!

Tell us a start time and end time for when Pittsburgh Labor Choir will be active. While choir members will aim to stay for the entirety of the event, we all have diverse work and home schedules, and it helps to know our specific time (or an estimate) to get an accurate headcount.

Compensation

We usually offer our songsharing freely without expecting compensation, since many of our events are in support of a specific cause or may have a low budget. However, we do welcome payments or donations if possible and we do not scab on professional musicians. The money is directed to support choir operations, or toward causes important to us.

Mission Statement

Pittsburgh Labor Choir practices communal participatory singing and music-making to support collective action, morale, and unity. We sing, study, teach, and write union songs, anti-fascist songs, and other movement songs, old and new, from Pittsburgh and around the world, both at our practices and wherever else they are needed. Labor is a big tent–as is the Pittsburgh Labor Choir–and we embrace broad values of solidarity including accessibility, anti-capitalism, anti-fascism, anti-oppression, anti-racism, community care, liberation, and self-determination. We welcome anyone who shares similar values, no matter your age, experience, or skill, to come and do music with us. We break down barriers to participation within and through our music-making.