“Why are you doing this?”

Regal Blend is my barbershop quartet. We go out singing Valentines on February 14. While we’re traveling around town, we like to visit schools and sing for the chorus classes, to give them a little demonstration of what adults do for fun. The classes enjoy the change of pace, and we can do a little tutorial on barbershop singing.

Of course, the first thing we do when we get to a school is report to the office to check in. As long as we’re there, we sing for the secretaries and administration. It always draws a crowd, and not so subtly shows that people keep on singing long after they leave school.

One of the students this year asked that question above. I mumbled and stammered about how much fun it was. But she made me think about it. There are more reasons than “fun” to sing in a quartet, a chorus, a band, even alone in the shower.

Fun

Of course, it’s fun to make music with friends. The music you make together can be lots more satisfying than the music you make by yourself. It’s also fun to work at it and find ways to improve your skills. And it’s fun when you perform in front of other people and they applaud.

When you sing in a quartet and you all hit just the right notes and your four voices join and the chord rings and you can feel the harmonic vibrations going up into the sky it can be a glorious and transcendent moment that raises goosebumps all around. It’s a joyous thing and you can share it with listeners. You can express your own deep feelings and make someone cry. You can certainly bring yourself to the edge of tears. You can change someone’s frame of mind. That, and more, is the joy in barbershop.

Like many other things, the better you are at it, the more fun it is. And most of the time, the more you work at it, the better you get at it. The more fun it is, the more you do it. So, the more you do it, the more fun it gets. That’s a good path to get on.

Physical and mental health

Studies are out there that show improvements in physical health from singing. It’s good for your lungs and overall muscle tone. Plus, socializing with others is good for your mental health. It’s not just older people who can use the mental stimulation that singing together in a chorus can bring. Everyone in the group benefits. Coming together with others to build something greater than you can make by yourself can be a beautiful thing.

Children who take music lessons build areas in their brains that help them become better thinkers as they age.

At one level, making music on an instrument, say a piano, can be as simple as pushing the right buttons at the right times. But it can be so much more than that. When you put your feelings into it, you can make the piano sing. And much more so when the instrument is your own voice.

Mission

If you have the talent to sing, and a singing voice that pleases people who hear it, then you have a responsibility to use it. Using it includes taking care of it and developing it. Learning how to sing better is within everyone’s reach, and many of the skills needed are simple: stand up straight, relax your throat, etc.

Another question related to this occurred to me some years ago: Once you get the audience in the palm of your hand, what do you do with them? There are many good answers to this question. You could preach the Word, you could sell them something, you could make them cry, you could make them want to go out and do something good for a stranger. Music can be powerful, and can make changes in the world. Why wouldn’t you want to do that kind of thing, if you could? My quartet sang a song some years ago called “Tie Me to Your Apron Strings Again,” and our goal for that song was to get the audience to go home and call their mothers.

Many hugely popular performers – Lady Gaga comes to mind – have said that they feel called to their art. They feel a mission, a higher calling, to do what they do. They feel compelled to perform. Back in the 1960’s folk song era, when a new singer came onto the scene the question everyone would ask was “Do they have something to say?”

To me, it comes back to this: if you have the ability to make music, you should use your powers for good in the world.

Why do we do this? If you need a sound bite answer, I’ll stick with “because it’s great fun.” But there’s really so much more to it than that.

Joe Larson

March 20, 2018