GOING viral happens when a message spreads round the world in seconds via the internet, sometimes before the original sender has had time to make a cup of tea.

It happens with films, songs, fads, fashions, personalities, and conspiracy theories. But choirs?

Funky Voices has gone viral, with a vengeance. Sandra Colston, the Essex choir’s founder, arranger, conductor and choirmistress, happily admits: “We’re very much internet based. I sort of think online.”

Equally at home with piano and computer keyboards, Sandra knew how to get her message out.

Almost before the first note had been sung, blogs about the choir had spread like wild fire. But it’s not just online that Funky Voices has gone viral. Flesh and blood branches of the choir have sprung up across the county, in Colchester, Tendring, Rayleigh, Chelmsford and Romford. More are about to pop up.

The point about going viral, though, is it is hype-proof. It happens spontaneously, by people power. Singers want to join Funky Voices for the music-making, not just because Sandra is a dab hand at social networking.

The viral message about Funky Voices is that, from a singer’s point of view, it isn’t just funky but fab.

Proof lies in the number of traditional awards that Funky Voices has already won.

The latest is the regional heat of the BBC Choir of the Year. After just three years of existence, Funky Voices is a contender for the title of top British choir.

The key to the choir is the charismatic Sandra, funkiness personified. She conducts like someone at a night rave, oozes cool, pursues a workload like six workaholics in a chain-gang and attracts pop-fan levels of devotion from her singers.

Toby, 39, a service engineer, is typical. A tenor, he lives in Colchester, Sandra’s home town, but follows her to rehearsals in Rayleigh.

“This choir is so different from all the others,” he says. “The feelgood sensation is like nothing I’ve experienced, singing or otherwise.”

Toby, it almost goes without saying, discovered Funky Voices on his computer. He has now become part of the viral process, eagerly plugging and blogging about the choir.

“The internet doesn’t do it justice,” he says. “You’ve got to participate. Everyone in Funky Voices feels they’re part of something special.”

Sandra, 34, has a degree in music from the Colchester Institute. She has played and sung in bands, choirs, and orchestras, but is almost dismissive of anything that happened before Funky Voices. “This is my life,” she says.

“When I’m not working and thinking about Funky Voices, I’m asleep. Funky Voices is my life. It keeps me on a permanent high. I never get tired. I love hearing the choir and seeing the effect it has on the people singing and listening.”

Funky Voices could with equal justice be called Funky Arrangements. When Sandra conceived the idea of the choir in 2007, the starting point was her unique style of crafting a song for massed voices.

Performing anything from Forties swing to Queen, the choir has the passion of gospel, the sophisticated harmonies of classical music, the drive of heavy metal and a little pizzazz from Sandra. Funky Voices is a demanding vocation. Sandra travels the county, taking rehearsals every night of the week. Back home, she says: “I can be up all night working on arrangements. I want the sound that’s in my head to be the one the choir expresses.”

And the choir performs a valuable social function too.

Toby says: “There are people here who are unemployed, whose self-esteem has sunk out of sight. But when they make music here they become a changed person. They’re in love with life and it shows in the music we make together.”

Sandra agrees. For her, it is ultimately not about music, let alone computers, but people.

She says: “So many people tell me, ‘it’s changed my life’. That’s music to my ears.”