Local choir director Jessie Vintila is a facilitator and leader on the Sing the Camino tours.
Vintila has been both lucky, and privileged, to find her calling in life as a choir director. Choir directing deeply fulfills her. Her Raise the Roof singing communities nurture everyone in them, Jessie included. They nurture each other through the friendships naturally formed, and through the music they make together, which lifts them up, every time they meet.
Vintila’s love of sharing songs, and connecting fellow song lovers, is central to her life, and she is profoundly grateful for that. On her first Camino in 2013, Jessie, like countless modern pilgrims from all over the world, loved the many riches on offer. Treading ancestral footsteps, and connecting to her European heritage, to the land beneath her feet, and to her spirit. Connecting to fellow starry-eyed pilgrims, their hearts similarly, sweetly open. Connecting to new cultures, languages, food, and the beautiful replacement of life’s usual duties with the gift of simply walking, all day, refreshingly, restoratively purposeful. The purpose being to nourish body and soul.
But Jessie missed singing, because she is a singing endorphin addict. Singing for Vintila is like salt, or good stock, it is what life needs in it for her to experience life at its best. If there was a way to enrich the Camino’s beautiful melting pot experience, it was to add some generous dollops of ‘song stock’.
Two kinds of song stock were added, in cooking up the Sing the Camino recipe. Firstly, intimate afternoon concerts from local folkloric musicians, who through not only song, but also generously shared stories, dance and costume, connect us more deeply to the people, culture and history of the land we are traversing. Secondly, a daily dose of the delightful drug that is group harmony singing, songs easy enough to learn and sing together after long days on the track.
After many years running Sing the Camino on the most famous Camino route (which heads west across northern Spain) guests were asking for another one, so Jessie explored the lesser known Camino Portuguese (which heads north into Spain). This became a lovely opportunity to dive into fado, the iconic Portuguese folk music she had a longstanding fascination with. Fado is imbued with the uniquely Portuguese emotion saudade (akin to longing). Jessie is proud to say that after substantial live fado ‘research’, the best and most moving fadistas she’s come across are the ones sung on her trips.
There is some space on the upcoming May 9-21 Sing the Camino Portuguese 2025 tour, and expressions of interest are also welcome for May 2026. www.singthecamino.com.
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