And don’t forget about Young@Heart, the American chorus of over 60s who sing the ballads of Queen and The Rolling Stones when they’re not collaborating with, say, Cambodian punk rockers. Audiences of all ages go wild, and documentary filmmakers have had a field day.
And yet the phenomenal success of Scala still fills Flanders with wonder. Not to mention the choir’s founders: “After all these years,” says Steven Kolacny, “I still get goosebumps from my own singers.”
Brothers Steven and Stijn Kolacny were pianists from Aarschot, Flemish Brabant, who in 1996 decided they wanted to work with voices instead of only music “in their free time”. They started with 18 girls, who sang traditional choir under the name Scala. They did extremely well in the niche genre, winning choral competitions across Europe and in both Japan and Canada.
But the 30-something brothers still ached for something different, something that would speak to their own contemporaries and to those of the girls. They began making choral arrangements of rock and pop songs, but reached beyond Nirvana and U2 (though those are also in the repertoire) to more cult followings, like “God in My Bed” by Flemish rock duo K’s Choice and “Muscle Museum” by British rock band Muse.
Listening to Scala is disconcerting. At first, all you hear is simple choral. Then suddenly you’re aware of a lyric that is wholly incompatible with choral music. Eventually, you recognise you’re hearing Radiohead’s “Creep”.
The first album, 2002’s Scala on the Rocks, consisted of 40 young Flemish women – mostly teenagers – and one piano. They became an overnight sensation in the Belgian music scene, and rock and pop musicians came knocking on the door looking to collaborate.
The new documentary Scala by Flemish director Bert Ceulemans, which is playing now across Flanders, will fill you in on the rest of the history of Scala: from their following six albums with an expanded choral repertoire of rap, electronica and metal, to their growth to more than 200 members aged 16 to 26, to their taking of Manhattan and the public broadcasting special that will be aired across the Unites States in August.
The film culminates with footage from last year’s Just for Laughs festival in Montreal, where 25 Scala girls are perched on a five-storey podium, surrounded by 250 Canadian backing vocals, amid an explosion of fireworks. They won the prize for Best Performance. There’s no end in site: the sounds of one era or one genre meeting another continues to be a startling, delightful surprise. And, considering the state Belgium is in right now, it might also be somewhat comforting to find that such discordant creatures can come together so beautifully.
Flanders Today is a 
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