All About Us

Chechelele are an a capella choir from York, England, specialising in world folk music. We're interested in collecting, singing, performing and recording traditional music from just about everywhere outside of England: mostly Africa and the Balkans at present, but we also have songs from just about every continent except Antarctica (we’re negotiating with a penguin to run a workshop for us). We sing songs about harvesting and famine, love and death, sickness and war, slavery and emancipation, and women fighting about fish.

We have performed in concert halls, streets, shops, churches, cinemas, cathedrals, amphitheatres, tents, car parks, medieval halls, barns, ruined abbeys, campsites and a hairdressing salon.  We've sung at several major folk festivals in this country (including Bromyard, Beverley, Warwick and Towersey, Otley and Off the Tracks) and at Plozovet Festival in Brittany.  Our fees are negotiable, and for some charitable gigs we may not charge at all, other than for our transport expenses.

We operate on a non-profit basis, with all fees and proceeds from recordings sales being used to cover the choirs transport and other costs, with the remainder being donated to charities operating in the areas of the world from where our songs originate.

We're mostly people who love music but have little formal training, which we think makes us uniquely qualified to sing music from the folk traditions of the world.

We were founded in 1994 by John Low, and have now grown to around 24 members.

Some of us are in other bands as well, performing similar or different types of music, currently we share members with:

• Percussion Cafe: Five-piece world music group, specialising in percussion and songs from around the world
• Women@No13: All women a capella group
• Soundsphere: Four women world music a capella group
• Voice of the Drum: Up to 50-strong drumming group.
• Soon Amore: Mixed Voice Choir with a more classical repertoire

and we're happy to do joint gigs.