HONG KONG (SE): To celebrate the Year of St. Joseph, Our Lady of Perpetual Help Chapel, Tai O, has organised a songwriting competition and is looking for compositions to honour the saint.
Winners will perform during the celebrations of the Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary on September 8. Claretian Father Jojo Ancheril, assistant parish priest of Epiphany Parish, said the chapel organised the competition because there aren’t many songs composed for St. Joseph and he hopes the event can inspire music lovers.
Father Ancheril said that songs are good ways to evangelise and he was inspired by one of his Filipino parishioners in Tai O whom he met on the bus. She told him that her husband was a musician singing at bars and restaurants, but now, due to the Covid-19 restrictions and the closing of the entertainment venues, he had no work. After listening to her family struggles, Father Ancheril invited her husband to come to the chapel and organise a one-hour music programme to honour St. Joseph.
However after a week, they told the priest that the event might have to be cancelled as there weren’t many songs composed for St. Joseph. Father Ancheril then shared the story with some Filipino friends. After a few weeks, another Filipino woman told him that she wrote a few songs to praise the Lord. Under the priest’s encouragement, she composed two songs in a few days.
Father Ancheril realised that there are lots of parishioners with musical talents who are yet to be discovered, so he came up with the idea of a song competition. He said the competition is, in fact, open to everyone around the world and that some people from India and Macau had expressed an interest in joining the competition.
Lyrics can be emailed to wingcho20@gmail.com before the deadline of the competition on August 31. Winners can receive cash prizes, with $2,000 going to the winner.
