Before Rachel Drane was the current director of Sing Slavic, she was just a spectator who liked seeing great live music. She sat among the grass and trees in Bartram’s Garden, waiting for the West Philly Orchestra to start their performance. She was looking around, taking in the scene, when the opening act, the Philadelphia Women's Slavic Ensemble (PWSE), now known as Sing Slavic, caught her eye. This group, wearing colorful flower crowns, was talking and goofing around as they lined up to go on. 

The ensemble, which is scheduled to perform April 29 at Chestnut Hill Library,  walked onto the stage and started singing. Drane was mesmerized. “I was drawn to the sound,” she said. “There’s a lot of dissonance happening. A lot more clashing, unique time signatures, and I was taken back to my music history classes.”

“There's this one section in a song where the middles just go, ‘do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do’ for a prolonged period. You could tell that they were just having fun bopping along with it,” Drane remembered, and she wanted to learn more. “Before the choir was done with their set, I was messaging their Facebook group on my phone, saying, ‘how can I do that? '”

The choir began in 2011 with a handful of friends meeting in a West Philly living room as the Philadelphia Women's Slavic Ensemble.  In fact, there used to be a women's Slavic choir that only admitted members after a successful audition and a probationary period.  PWSE was formed as a more casual and accessible option. It slowly grew over the years, and in 2021, the group renamed itself Sing Slavic to better reflect its membership, including women as well as trans and nonbinary folks.

Sing Slavic focuses on Slavic folk songs and specializes in performing a repertoire of Eastern European folk songs from countries like Ukraine, Bulgaria, Poland and Russia. You don’t need any special language skills or proof of ancestry to join the group. You don’t even need to know how to read music.

This lack of entry requirements suited Devon McReynolds. She was a fan of the group, having watched them perform several times. McReynolds was also looking for a new hobby, something to get her out of the house. She works from home and needed a way to meet new people. Becoming a member of Sing Slavic was the answer — a place to reconnect with her choral singing past and make new friends. 

Most members do not come from Slavic-speaking countries, although there are a couple of Russian speakers and one native Bulgarian speaker who is taking a break this season. “When there are native language speakers in the group, they help with pronunciation,” McReynolds explained. But, when you are unfamiliar with the language of the song, “You kind of just get thrown in there and listen and repeat, which maybe is how it was back in the olden times when these songs were even being created.” 

When Drane joined the group, she started pitching in with the choir. When the current director found out that she had a musical, conducting, and teaching background, she was tapped to help run things. “I unofficially became the assistant director, probably early 2019. Then, in 2022, the previous director had to step away from the choir for personal reasons, and so I inherited the job,” she remembers.

At the start of every season, one of Drane's responsibilities as director is to select songs for Sing Slavic's repertoire. She researches the choices and shares her findings with the group to preserve the history and language. This is how she learned: she heard the stories from previous members. Her picks feature settings in dark, treacherous woods and captivating characters, including woodland nymphs and fairies.

The backstories on some of the music inspired McReynolds to explore the culture and folklore on her own. “I just love learning about the meanings behind some of these songs. And some of them are really spooky. Some of them are really romantic. Some of them are just straight-up creepy.”

Singing in Bulgarian about soldiers walking through the woods with bloody knives requires special skills, including navigating tricky vocal passages and nailing foreign pronunciations. However, unlike traditional choral music, Sing Slavic emphasizes emotional delivery over technical precision. "There’s way less emphasis on perfection, like hitting the notes perfectly or getting the pitch exactly right. Or even getting the words exactly right," said McReynolds with relief. 

“The first time I saw them, I was blown away by all of the harmonies and the dissonance and the energy behind some of the songs,” McReynolds continued.  “All of the different sounds, the ye and the yips and the yodels and the shouts, just work.”

Drane agrees. “You can expect yipping. So like a little yip that's usually in at least one of our songs.” In addition to the yipping, the group creatively uses rounds, harmonizing, and bringing their signature dissonance or, as Drane explained, “clashy, clashy sounds.” 

Drane said Slavic folk sound steps away from the classical world and the Catholic church music she experienced in high school. “It comes across as more direct, more raw, but that’s folk music; it tends to be like this. It’s the music of the people.”

And what about the connections McReynolds hoped to make after joining the group? She has made some of her best friends through the choir and said they have more in common than “just choir stuff.”

The vibes that piqued both McReynolds’ and Drane’s interest still run deep, and sharing these feelings with an audience is more important than ever to Drane and Sing Slavic.  “It's gonna sound cheesy. It does sound cheesy. It is cheesy,” Drane laughed. “There's just, like, a lot of joy. And I think, you know, that's another big goal of mine, which is accessibility, and that the group is enjoying sharing the music. That's true and happens especially at the performances.” 

Sing Slavic brings its special vocals to Chestnut Hill Library on Tuesday, April 29. Songs are introduced by a choir member with an English translation of the story and the country of origin. The performers wear a vinok, a Ukrainian flower crown or wreath, adding to the performance flair.