House Music dewinners!

The House Music Competition has been a key date in the Christ College calendar since 1956. Each Michaelmas Term, the competitive spirit takes over as rehearsals are squeezed into days already packed with lessons, sports, activities and everything else that makes school life what it is. For recent joiners, it all feels a bit mysterious until the competition day arrives and the friendly, fierce rivalry finally makes sense. The House Music Competition is a highlight of the year for good reason.

So spare a thought for the 21 de Winton girls who walked onto the stage of the Memorial Hall (now Y Neuadd Goffa) in 1987. They weren’t the first to blaze a trail – in 1985 Sally Stewart had won the Senior Vocal prize for School House Red and in 1986 the seven girls who had recently joined the L6 entered solo preliminaries for School House Blue, but the de Winton girls represented a girls’ House for the very first time in the competition’s history.

The 7 U6 girls and 14 new L6 girls quicky threw themselves into the spirit of the event in 1987. They entered just about every preliminary round (vocal, piano, guitar, recorder, woodwind), with 11 entries in the recorder solo, and winners in the vocal rounds and the piano solo. On the evening of the competition, de Winton sang the same Unison song as the other Houses ‘A Smuggler’s Song’ by C Le Fleming. With the Mem. Hall still ringing with the deep voices of School House Red, the 21 de Winton girls made their entrance.

We are so used to the House Music Cup being awarded each year to equally matched Houses, it's hard to imagine what it must have been like for them to be the only female voices that evening. More than that, they performed to an almost exclusively male audience and were up against Houses of 50 or more boys, many of whom were taking part in the competition for the 6th or 7th time.

Given the extent to which these trailblazers were so outnumbered, it says something of the early spirit of the new House that they were placed 3rd in the Unison section. School House Red were the overall winners by some length but de Winton can lay claim to beating School House Blue by a wide margin. 

A rule change in 1989 allowed Houses to choose their own songs, giving the girls an opportunity to make their mark. While the boys chose traditional male voice selections, de Winton’s performance of ‘Oklahoma’ showed the girls as a force to be reckoned with – even if there were only 36 of them. 

For the following year, the preliminary rounds were dropped from the competition and all focus turned to the familiar pattern of Instrumental, Part-Song and Unison, which all took place on the same evening in those days. With choices inspired by de Winton’s bold approach, the audience enjoyed the variety of ‘I Wanna Be Like You’ (Alway), ‘Nessum Dorma’ (SHR), ‘The Drinking Song’ (SHB), ‘My Way’ (Orchard) and the Donaldson’s boys’ ‘There is Nothing Like A Dame’. Last on, de Winton lit up the stage with their version of Cole Porter’s ‘Anything Goes’. It didn’t win but it definitely stole the show.

Building their own traditions of practice and performance, the de Winton girls blazed their trail with spirited determination. Very quickly they gained a reputation as serious contenders for the House Music Cup – no small feat for the smallest House. By bringing their own style and new energy to an already intense competition, they raised the stakes even higher for everyone.

In 1992, the House Music Competition moved to the Sports Hall, a venue that enabled parents and guests to enjoy the evening. Alway engaged the expectant audience from the outset with their personalised verison of 'A Letter Home', followed by 'New York, New York ' (SHR), 'Lullaby of Broadway' (Orchard), 'Luck be a Lady' (SHB), the Donaldson's boys' haunting 'Myfanwy', and de Winton's rousing 'Do you Hear the People Sing?'. It was a closely-contested competition but, with a confident performance in all three categories, it was the de Winton winners who held the House Music Cup aloft in victory to secure their place in the Christ College history books. 

In the year we celebrate co-education at Christ College, this week we especially celebrate with gratitude the House Music trailblazers who helped the competition evolve into the highlight of the year - no matter which House claims the cup! 

Comment to tell us all what you remember of those competitions. Or contact Huw or Felicity if you have a longer story to tell. We'd all love to know more. And if you have any photos you'd be willing to loan or donate, contact Felicity to arrange scanning.  

If you have a copy of the words to Alway's 'A Letter Home' (1992), we'd love to have that in our Archive.