Last night I attended a concert given by our local high and junior high school choirs. The kids and teachers did a great job and the enthusiastic audience loved every minute of it (think Music Man ).
But I couldn’t help but thinking, after it was over, that is was…uh, how you say…so…white.
And so 60’s. A mixture of sacred and secular music was offered; many “traditional” tunes were from Swahili, Liberian, Irish, Steven Foster, etc., but the most recently composed selections were Feelin’ Groovy and Standing on the Corner (watching all the girls go by), written 40 years before these kids were ever a gleam in daddy’s eye.
Would you believe that there actually are choirs that stand rigidly still while singing? Even for rhythmic numbers? No swaying or body movement was in evidence anywhere in the auditorium. And would you believe that clapping, on the rare occasion the choir initated it, was on beat 1 & 3 instead of a backbeat on 2 & 4? Incredible!
Not a flatted third or blue note in sight, not a hint of jazz inflection anywhere, not to mention a distinct lack of a syncopated beat anywhere for miles. The “only original American art form” does not exist in my community, in spite of the fact you can’t turn to any radio station without finding copius examples of blues & jazz influences in everything you hear.
I grew up in the Midwest, spent 30 years in professional music and computer technology in California, then returned to the Midwest. What a disappointment that music styles didn’t make the return trip.
Any parents or kids here that care to comment on their contemporary spring choir concerts? How does this compare to your school?
I’ve sung in many choirs and I’m currently in three (singing both secular and sacred music). In **all ** of those choirs we’ve stood still while singing - even for rhythmic pieces. We don’t sway. The audience certainly doesn’t! We’re performing Tippett’s *A Child of Our Time * next weekend and we’re not planning any rhythmic movements during the negro spirituals. It’s simply not an Anglo-Saxon cultural thing to do.
I don’t know if it is possible in Aussie-land, but if you can ever get to a black church service, experience it. You can’t sit still and everyone participates. I often said if my white protestant services were lilke that, I’d still be going to church for the shear joy of it.
I was in choirs from grade school through college, and we always stood still. Since then I’ve seen many professional choirs perform (in concert halls, usually backed by orchestras), and all of the formal choirs stand still as well.
Keep in mind, though, that with kids the age that you’re talking about, it’s hard enough to get them to learn the parts – it would be nearly impossible to have them also move to the music in any way that seemed even remotely natural, or to have them introduce any kind of syncopation or improvisation.
Regarding your advice to Cunctator: I love jazz and blues music, but can’t take gospel. I’ve been to “black” churches, and the swaying and clapping added nothing to the experience for me, nor did they inspire me to get on my feet (and I’m a musician myself!). It’s all in the eye of the beholder.
Eye? It’s in the heart, feet, limbs & soul of the beholder!
Do you stand still at rock concerts, too? When James Brown says, “Get on *up! * Boogie on down! Shake that thang!”, do you just stand there, staring blankly? “What he mean by dat?”
What? Kids don’t dance anymore? Did kids stop dancing when disco died? Kids! What’s the matter with kids today? Kids!
Skillful improvisation, I don’t expect. But syncopation is built in to today’s pop music from the bottom to the top. The only reason there was none at the concert was the director carefully chose the selections to avoid it, IMHO.
Maybe the fact that the accompanist – who was not a student – is the organist for a local church had something to do with it. I have a hard time envisioning ramrod-straight Bob gettin’ down & funky, groovin’ to a nasty backbeat.
I think Misnomer’s onto something here. In my high school choir (paler than the driven snow, but not quite as pure), more than half the people couldn’t read music and sang entirely by ear. Choir was their only experience with music, and most of them said they were too dumb to learn to read music. Forget rhythm; hardly any of them knew what a quarter note is. In order to get the entire choir to clap together on the right beat, it took a titanic effort. And, frankly, most of us (including me) weren’t talented enough singers to improvise. If there were solos that called for improvisation, then the best singers in the choir got them, and they were able to do it . . . with practice.
High school choirs aren’t about the pick of the crop. It’s more about choosing music that will challenge but not overtax your choir. Improvisation, syncopation, etc. are just out of the realm of experience for your average choir student.
You also have to skirt the issue of political correctness and “moral compass” of the community. When I was swing/show choir (slightly more likely to have improv and syncopation), we sang “All That Jazz,” and the line that goes “where the gin is cold and the pian-uh’s hot” was changed to “where the ice is cold and the pian-uh’s hot,” because high-schoolers singing about gin was just too risky. Obviously we would be enticed to live a life devoted to “jazz and liquor.”
My choir teacher practically went into paroxysms looking for non-devotional music for us to sing that wasn’t written in the 18th century and that wouldn’t cause the school board to squint with flared nostrils in her direction. Add that to the fact that a lot of the popular music selection for the high school level is white-washed and simplified to a mere ghost of itself, and you’re left with slim pickings when it comes to music. Pop music from the 1960s was often the best she could come up with.
I’m from Wisconsin, though not near Sturgeon Bay, if you’re curious. I imagine my school was a lot smaller than the one whose concert you attended, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they were about the same politically and socially.
Say what you want about the Mormons, and there sure is enough to say, but they have a pretty damned good choir! However, more blondes than on Malibu beaches.
But when you watch a film like Sister Act or a gospel documetnary, you know how much fun choir music can and should be!
There was a black church in my neighborhood when I was growing up, and we white boys would hang out on the corner Sunday mornings and listen to their choir singing. Will never forget how truly inspiring it was.
Imagine if the Mormons had a black choir director!
Yeah, been there. I saw video footage of my high school choir performing Sam and Dave’s Soul Man once, and it was kinda funny in its Caucasianality. A song like Soul Man just doesn’t work if you sing it with perfect diction and don’t get INTO it. There was some choreography, but if you think of it as a vocal exercise or what have you and don’t put something behind your singing, no meaning comes across and it’s painfully obvious. I don’t find the whole a capella thing very interesting in general, so I may be biased. But the reason it bores me is that this happens a healthy chunk of the time - any soul or rock-type song they interpret comes out flat and starched. Doesn’t always happen, though. A few years ago I heard a college a capella group do a terrific Stevie Wonder medley.
Chalk it up to the conductor (probably straight-laced with a classical background), and the fact that junior high and high school kids are usually way too embarrassed to shake their groove thing.
On top of that, the kids usually don’t get to pick the songs (you mentioned nothing modern), it’s generally just given to them by the instructor and out of their hands from then on.
I heard the boringest rendition of Hey Jude out of a college choir club once - choirs really know how to kill a good rock and roll tune.
Thankfully, my Junior-High/High school choir director was a young - very young - guy. Straight-out-of-college young. White guy from New Jersey. Loads of talent and ambition and broad musical tastes. Mad for the “crunches,” he was, always picking pieces with trace examples of jazz chords or the odd dischordinant passage. Inflection was important to him, too: if we were doing a spiritual, it was “Angels watchin’ ovuh us” as opposed to our 98%-white-bread northern speech patterns with full nasality.
Thank heavens for Mr. Detwiler. He’s now leading an award winning choir down in Jakarta!
For what it’s worth, if our choir had started swaying en masse, I would have been afraid that the risers we were standing upon would have given way…
As a former (very white, very Catholic) high school chorus member, I have to say that trying to get our group to actually move in rhythm would have been prohibitive timewise. Getting us to SING in rhythm was hard enough!
And you get mucho points for slipping in a Bye-Bye, Birdie! reference…
Are you saying that all music sounds the same to you? :dubious:
Gospel music is not the same as rock music. I like rock music. I do not like gospel music. Why is that hard to understand?
I can tell that you were never in a junior high or high school choir. Kids dance, but they don’t dance when they’re part of a choir and they sure as heck don’t dance on stage. Some of the kids in choirs are natural musicians, but most aren’t, and the director has to cater to the lowest common denominator.
And for the record, it’s: “Kids! I don’t know what’s wrong with these kids today.”
Music being listened to is VERY different from music being performed. Hearing it is not the same as being able to do it, or even realizing what you’re hearing. When you’re a high school kid who doesn’t know squat about music, and might even be in the choir against your will, it’s all you can do to learn a simple voice part. I have no doubt that the director carefully chose the selections, for exactly the reason jayjay mentioned. For the most part, if a high school choir sings in tune it’s an accomplishment.
You spent 30 years in professional music: was it as a musician? If so, your comments surprise and confound me…
I sing in the local gay men’s chorus, and one of the most difficult things is getting people to unlearn what they learned in previous choral experiences, especially school choruses.
Some guys are surprised that they’re now **allowed **to move while they sing (except in more “serious” pieces). We can be singing something that you just can’t stand still to, and inevitably someone will ask whether we’re allowed to move. Old habits die hard.
Another problem is getting people to have some kind of facial expression when they sing. It’s amazing that people don’t know to smile when singing something happy. It not only looks appropriate, but actually produces a happier sound.
We also have a few dance numbers in each concert, not involving the entire chorus. We have a professional choreographer who’s always telling us not to dance so “white” (she’s white, and so are most of us).
Buy yeah, sometimes it’s hard enough to get some people to just sing the right notes and words.
I don’t think there are many “black gospel” congregations here, although I’d be surprised if there was none at all. I’ve been to concerts given by visiting American choirs singing similar repertoire and, to be honest, it just doesn’t grab me. I agree with Misnomer. I find the swaying and clapping irritating and distracting. My style of sprirtuality is inclined far more to the beauty and order of the traditional Latin mass, with polyphonic choral music where the connection with God is at a cerebral, rather than a physical level.
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