Posted on 05/02/2020 8:05:47 AM PDT by CharlesOConnell
100 years ago, everyone who wasn't deaf or tone deaf, sang together, on average, at least weekly. Between 1900 and 1909, nearly one hundred songs each sold more than one million copies of sheet music. 1 million instances of "WHAT"? Page-clicks? Streaming downloads? MTV video views? Compact Disc purchases? Walk-Man cassettes? Juke-box dime drops? 45 rpm or 33-rpm store buys? Age of radio program listens? NO. Multiple 1-million sales per year of sheet music which each family's piano player in a country with 300 piano companies in the US alone before WW1, played casual-popular SHEET MUSIC sung to by another 5 or more family members and friends because THERE WAS NO RADIO and phonograph recordings were just an adjunct to brisk sheet music sales. Records an expensive novelty that didn't take off until WW2 because people's actual, practical experience of "music" was to SING IT.
Children who were daily exposed to fine singing quickly themselves became proficient at it in own their turn, in the absence of culturally corrosive social media devices–they had to meet the Muse in the first person. Prior to broadcast media, everyday singing was the default cultural condition, a widespread social habit more ingrained than just a hobby, a full dimension of interpersonal life completely atrophied today. Part-harmonization was then the daily social habit of millions. These actors didn’t need to be specially coached to sing beautifully, because they were just exercising the customary cultural habit, that nearly everyone except the deaf or the tone-deaf practiced, singing impromptu in groups, a vastly expansive music club rather than a concert. Old song film clips in classic Hollywood films are an accurate, nostalgic echo of the daily experience of the common people, casually repeated in dozens of old films, portraying the disappearing legacy of the once-routine habits of legions of real people who had actively, spontaneously, habitually made quality, casual vocal music as part of their ordinary cultural lives, in the period before the dominance of portable, transistor radios.
The social, artistic interaction of singers in an ensemble, even the most informal, contrasts vividly with the current experience of “music” through social media. Harmonic singers must listen closely to each other simultaneous with producing their own vocal output, maintaining their place in the key, concentrating on the implied leader, constantly moderating their volume, tempo and timbre, giving way to a temporary soloist or themselves preparing to take the momentary spotlight. (Singing in multiple, harmony parts creates distinct, expressive head-space niches that individual singers could never occupy when singing in unison. ) This constant, dynamic, artistic socialization varies starkly from the social media experience, confined to the sometimes spaghetti-wide aperture into which the internet forces users’ attention.
May I suggest that the subject has multiple subsets.
There is a difference between vocalizing, playing an instrument and the the psychological dynamics of performing live.
I have been in situations many times where I had to stand up in front of groups and talk. I have no problem but I would have to say that, at a guess, at least 50% of my peers are terrified of talking to crowds and another 25% percent are reluctant to do so.
Singing in public is even worse. For a good par of my life I could not do it. The local artist’s group of which I’m a board member used to go out after meeting and, when it was somebody’s birthday, celebrate at lunch. Singing Happy Birthday was a part of things.
Oh what a hot mess ‘o stuff that was. Everybody was trying to sing as quietly as possible, hesitant to stand out, people were out if synch, there was no leader.
Me, I’m a big fellow and I’ve found that I sound best when I let go and belt out a tune in a type of controlled yelling. While I too had no desire to sing in public I also cringed at the quiet cacophony erupting at the lunch table, so...
The next time we got together for a birthday I let loose with all my basso-profuseness and shocked my companions. It sounded much better and at times our subsequent performances were even applauded by patrons and staff.
My controlled bellowing found a use when bringing a meeting to order. I don’t know how many of you reading this have ever been in a similar situation, but everybody is jibber-jabbering with their friends and paying no attention at all to the person standing at the from t of the room trying to get things started, at least ‘till I I hit upon a somewhat novel solution.
After standing in front of the group for a few minutes with no results I gave a five second countdown on my fingers and let loose with the first few bars of “Ride of the Valkyries”. The room suddenly became dead quiet as though I had flicked a switch. My next words were “Now that I’ve got your attention...” and proceed to start the meeting.
My point to all this is that, up until a few years ago I never would have done any of this. Maybe it goes with being over 60 and just not giving a flip anymore what other people think.
Live performance on a musical instrument I’ve found to be similarly affected by the fear of failing in front of strangers. Over the years I’ve gained some proficiency on the keyboard but my skills are such that I comp together a piece from several takes. I do, however play a number of iPad instruments and have performed in public, in part because I can do a passable job playing them. Many of the same people on the board have iPads and iPhones but want nothing t do with performing as an ensemble.
I would posit that one look at the psychological differences between playing or singing in an era where there were far more amateurs with similar skill levels as opposed to a time when everybody could compare themselves to recordings of professionals and find themselves wanting. “I’m never going t be as good as Fats Waller so why even try ?”
A college and friend of mine at a small company years ago was never confident about speaking in public or meetings. He was American of Chinese ancestry (his parents emigrated from China). He did something I never thought of doing - he enrolled in an Improv Comedy class and found he really enjoyed doing that. Talk about putting yourself out there! He was probably in his late 30s or early 40s when he did that, so he wasn’t in the age 60 bucket where you just don’t care anymore.
I really have to hand it to him for doing that. It really helped him a lot in business settings.
“Even in the 1950s when I was a kid, music was far more important at home, church and school.”
I vaguely remember my youngest uncle, my mother’s brother, playing piano as we all gathered around in our grandparent’s home when I was a wee one. Late 50’s/Early 60’s. I know he had taken piano lesson. His mother, my grandmother played an instrument, I believe flute, as a young girl. She definitely loved music. Maybe where I got my passion.
A side story. I remember this like it was yesterday. 1967 summer. I got to stay with my grandparents and my mother was living with them at the time, working in the local Kresge’s at the lunch counter.
It was the period where the Monkees were the big pop group. I was 11 at the time. While at the Kresge’s my mother said she would buy me something that week. I scoured the store and picked out “More of the Monkees” their second album.
When she got home from work that night she did NOT have it. She told grandma that she didn’t like the looks of the group on the cover. My grandmother told her they were fine. Based on that, she brought it home for me the next day.
We had very few pop records and I played the living crap out of that record. I still have it to this day and found an older console stereo - the decorative wooden piece of furniture style - similar to what I grew up with. When I load that on there and hit ‘reject’ and watch that record drop and start to play I’m instantly a pre-teen again and fondly remember both my late grandmother and mother.
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