Music at the Table Gives Hope to Falmouth’s Most Vulnerable
Musician Gene Bourque performing for guests at a Music at the Table gathering in February at St. Barnabas’s Episcopal Church in Falmouth.
On a cold, frigid Tuesday in the middle of February, over 40 people sat inside the community hall at St. Barnabas’s Episcopal Church in Falmouth.
Visible from the large picture windows at the rear was snow on the ground leading to the ice-covered Siders Pond. If you needed a reminder of how difficult a winter this was on Cape Cod, the scene outside served it up in spades.
For the group enjoying the free community meal, it was arguably the most difficult winter of their lives. That’s because the majority were homeless, forced to live in their cars, in the woods, and on the coldest of nights in motels.
On this day, they were warmed up not only by the food — homemade shepherd’s pie cooked up by volunteers — but the gentle strumming of the guitar and singing of musician Gene Bourque.
Launched in December 2023 by the Falmouth Cultural Council, Music at the Table offers a weekly dose of humanity for those who need it most. It comes in the form of live entertainment provided by Cape musicians that have included Bourque, Natalia Bonfini, Fred Boyle, Dawna Hammers, Mwalim DaPhunkee Professor, Kim Moberg, Pat Ryan, Julian Loida, and Falmouth Academy’s International Ensemble, among others.
“The tagline we use for this is ‘fund the joy,’” said Cultural Council Chair Alice Kociemba. “It really provides a sense of uplift. It creates an ambience of joy is really what it does.”
The Arts Foundation has funded that joy since January thanks to a grant it awarded to the Cultural Council to support the program. “It means the world,” Kociemba said of the grant. “We know this program means the world to the people it serves. There should be no barriers to the arts for anyone, especially those who need this element of comfort. It adds so much to their lives.”
If you looked around the room this day, you would have witnessed what it means to be a community. Counselors from a variety of social service agencies sat side-by-side guests, working to connect them to the help they needed to get housed.
Students from Falmouth Academy volunteered to serve food and clean up at the Music at the Table gathering in February.
Falmouth Academy students joined church volunteers in cooking and serving meals, and cleaning up after everyone was done. “This is humanity’s home,” Rector David Rider said about these Tuesday meals.
A perfect example of that was volunteer Dave Swift’s first day. “Somebody needed socks and shoes, and they came off of me that day,” he recalled. “Not everybody here is in need like that.”
It’s an example of how the smallest of acts – a little music on a Tuesday afternoon – can make a world of difference for those who may be struggling. “It makes it more of a family gathering. There is some comfort there,” Swift said. “On Thursdays, another group serves a meal and there isn’t music and there’s a huge difference.”
Giving to others, he said, “fills something in us. It is the easiest thing in the world to give with care and love.”
It is exactly what Bourque was doing on this day as he played background music for this community meal. “I love this,” he said afterwards. “It gives me hope in these crazy times we live in — that there is hope for people helping people.”