This surgery is primarily carried out on laryngeal cancer patients but also in some cases of thyroid cancer, motor neurone disease as well as severe neck injuries. About 500 to 600 laryngectomies are carried out in the country annually.Ī laryngectomy removes part or all of the voice box, which contains the vocal cords that vibrate when the air we breathe passes down to our lungs to make sound. Laryngeal cancer, which affects the larynx, is rare, with approximately 2,300 cases diagnosed in the United Kingdom each year, accounting for about 1 percent of all Britain’s cancer cases - a ratio that is consistent with global cancer diagnoses. The choir’s ‘From Silence into Song’ performance marries the singing of laryngectomy patients and the sounds of trees that survived the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings in Japan during World War II ‘Huge impact’ They are singing to say that they do not plan to live in silence.
The singers onstage are cancer survivors who have had their larynx, or voice box, removed as part of life-saving surgery known as a laryngectomy, and use medical devices to recreate the voices they lost. It hits like a gentle electric current, unexpected and powerful. Then, the singers break into a refrain, in a loud, hoarse whisper that rings with a metallic reverberation: “Set your words free. The pace and volume increase alongside a collection of eclectic instruments: an electric guitar, a cello bow, an accordion, drums, the sound of B29 bomber engines and morse code, and the rattling of a Turkish coffee tin filled with rocks. Projected onto a large screen behind them are ethereal images of the arboreal survivors.
The four singers on stage, all men in their 70s and 80s and dressed in black, start to riff along, adding tongue clicks and tut-tuts to the music of the trees, some pressing a finger to what looks like a large button on their throat. These are the sounds of the swaying, creaks and groans of the trees that survived the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bombings. A gentle crackling and clanking, echoing as if trapped in the hull of a ship, fills the room. London, United Kingdom – It is a sunny day in early April, and a performance is under way in a gleaming concert hall in central London.
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