I sing. At home, in the car, anywhere but the shower. I sing karaoke couple times a week because I am too lazy and cheap to actually hire a piano student at the local Univ for backup and try to find a practice space. I don't really care if the place is packed, or if the "audience" is several drunks of indeterminate gender. I can sing Frank, I can sing Stevie Ray Vaughn. Rough it up or smooth it out. I sing because I like it.
The only time I notice and enjoy the audience is when they are singing with the song. It hits me sometimes that I wish all of us would sing. It used to be the only group entertainment we had. We, as folk, all sang together. Then came the mass media in the 'teens and 'twenties, recordings and movies. All of us hearing, and then seeing and hearing how a singer "should" sound. We stopped. Individually at first, then as groups. The standard for singing had been raised, and we started cutting each other as to the quality, accuracy, etc of each others' voice. It killed public singing for the fun of it by average everyday folk.
This is why I smile when I hear some rap that everyone knows, and everyone chants. It's the closest we get to singing, without setting off the voice police, juries and judges.
Perhaps we, as folk, should just start singing again. Doesn't have to be loud, just enough to let each other know that we're singing. If we know the song, we should join in. Then we should shush the naysayers with a quiet "have some respect, fool".
So decreed.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
7 comments:
I think about this often. We used to sing together when we worked. Even as a child, I remember far more singing than ever goes on today.
I'm sorry. I miss it. I think it made us better together.
I have my two-year-old to thank for bringing me out of the singing closet. Now we sing everywhere, about everything, and although nobody ever joins in (since we're making up the words as we go along), they do smile a lot.
Mothers do seem to get special dispensation- and the world is better for it. I'm thinking MY mother should sing with me when we go out. Hmmm, Mother's Day is coming soon, is it not?
Yes it is. And perhaps Mom could try to pass as a lady of a certain age, who gets the same dispensation for singing aloud in public as a child does.
Now that sounds like a very fine Mother's Day.
So decreed, I will ask her to sing with me. Thank you.
Buy her a sparkly tiara. It's much easier to cut loose and sing when everyone's already looking at you funny, and besides, who *doesn't* love a tiara?
Thanks. She would wear it, and enjoy it. She would do anything for me. I am her first-born and her favourite. Just ask my sisters. They have volumes on the subject. If they give her a $300 gas grill and I give her a tiara, what do you think she will go on and on about? It took them years to understand grudgingly that I didn't do it on purpose and I didn't plan it that way. Or they say they do, anyway. Some days I'm not so sure. Thanks again!
Post a Comment