The Cumber Poidy Choir. Cumber Poidians are known for the strength and beauty of their voices. The notice posted outside the Very Good Theatre in Jail, patron of the Poidian tenor Brynn Tearful, explains : "The people grow underground, so they are growing short, with deep wide chests. Because they have deep chests they sing good. The music comes off the bottom and it has lots of room to bounce around inside. This bouncing makes it like a big hum and good. We call this hum-tummy." Individual singers have always been able to establish themselves on the mainland, but until ten years ago no-one had thought of bringing the Poidians together in a group. Founder Brigette Floor remembers the origin of the Choir: "We've always sung. At first it was the usual thing, community singing, everybody coming together and doing it the way we always have, but one day I went over to the mainland and heard one of their singers and I thought, "This is crap, we could do better than this." 'These singers were getting paid for it too, these really bad singers. So when I got back to Cumber Poidy I got everyone together and told them, "Why don't all of us go around the mainland, doing songs?" It turned out it wasn't that simple, because not everybody could go. There wasn't enough room. So I started off by crossing off everybody who told me it was a shit idea. I said, "You don't want to go? Fine." Then we still had too many people, so I had to audition them. That wasn't fun because I had to throw out some of my friends and a few of them hated me after that. Anyway, we got the choir. Dylan thought we should start in the north and go down, so I went and booked a theatre in Ex. The theatre managers had never heard of us. They weren't too keen." She finally secured the small Anthill Theatre. Their first performance attracted a crowd of fourteen; one was deaf and two were reviewers whose papers had ordered them to attend. The reviews were rapturous. " How am I going to sit through any other group after hearing this? The singers might as well be biped bells, they hit their notes so purely, and with so little apparent effort. They are entirely solemn, do not bow after applause (applause seems to puzzle them), and do not appear to be annoyed by the small size of their audience (I was insulted on their behalf.) No, they were unperturbed and grand." "Intelligent ... stirring ... beautiful ... they make the flashy showmanship displayed by so many local singers look cheap and unprofessional. See the Choir quickly before it vanishes." By the end of the initial tour, the Choir was singing to overstuffed houses. Audiences sat in one anothers' laps to hear them. Today they are the standard by which all other Umbagollian singing groups are measured. "It's not just the quality of their voices. There's an intimacy between the singers that puts a charge through the air every time they open their mouths." (Werther Von Pout in the Goolooian Singer's Review.) You might also want to read about Musical Theatre in Jail.