Vox Populi to Music

Abstract

For decades, music and the arts have suffered cutbacks and neglect on the grounds that they are frills we can no longer afford. But all the while, choral singing as one form of musical expression booming. A 1997 National Endowment for the Arts survey found that one in ten American adults performed publicly in a choir in the previous year, and that choral performance was the most popular form of public arts activity in the nation (United States 34). Oh, no, you say, not possible; that's 20 million people. Just ask around. Tell people you're researching an article on choral singing in America-community choruses in particular-and they will tell you that they (or their brother-in-law or their best friend) are in one, and that their once-a-week evening rehearsal the most important and most personally satisfying event of their week. Why that? And what, in the first decade in America's new millennium, does it signify that community choruses are flourishing while school districts cut back their in-school music activities and government support for the performing arts appears to be as hard a sell as ever?1 There no question that choral singing on the rise. In the greater Philadelphia five-county area alone, a choral census turned up 145 choruses not affiliated with churches (Membership); in mid-size Tucson, Arizona, there are 35 (Cook, Personal interview, 12 June 1999); in the Bay Area, nearly 500, 119 of them new since 1990 (Whitson). Helene Whitson, who along with Valerie Howard has compiled a directory of choruses in the Bay Area, speculates that 20,000 people are rehearsing or performing choral music there every week. And Chorus America-a loose confederation of professional, adult amateur, and children's choruses-has nearly 550 member choruses and growing (About Chorus America). The American Choral Directors Association in Lawton, Oklahoma, boasts 18,000 members (American); the Barbershop Movement, including the Sweet Adelines International (see below), more than 63,000 worldwide, of which the majority are in the United States (SPEBSQSA: Fact Sheet; SPEBSQSA: Sweet Adelines). Demographically, African Americans have the highest rate of public singing in groups (26%) and female participation slightly higher than male (United States 35). Otherwise, the popularity of choral singing seems to cross all age, income, and educational boundaries. The fastest-growing segment by far, according to Tom Hall, president of Chorus America and music director of the Baltimore Choral Arts Society since 1982, are children's choruses. Faced with diminished school support for music, middle-class parents are looking for some way to expose their children to the joys and discipline of music participation, and choral singing the most accessible and easiest to organize. Music, Hall predicts, is going to be the 'soccer' of the coming decade, the game middle-class parents will want their children to play (Personal interview). Parents, especially parents who sing, could of course respond to the canceling of music in the schools by using their choral and other political networks to lobby their school district to restore music programs. But with the exception of gay and lesbian choruses which generally have political action as a formal part of their mission statement, there appears to be a disconnect between widespread personal commitment to singing as an art form and the environment within which music performed. As president of Chorus America, Tom Hall's intention to change that. He has already advanced the idea that choral directors use the program notes they write for every concert to educate their audiences as to the state of the performing arts, locally and nationally (Telephone interview, 11 Nov. 1999). He negotiating for more and more frequently appearing public service announcements on behalf of choral singing and to maintain the airing of The First Art, the only exclusively choral music program nationally broadcast on radio. …