Community Singing Research Articles

The Contribution of Community Singing Groups to the Well-Being of Older People: Participant Perspectives From the United Kingdom.

Current evidence suggests that participatory arts activities, and particularly group singing, may contribute to the well-being of older people. However, there is currently a paucity of prospective research from the participant perspective. This qualitative study nested within a randomized controlled trial aimed to assess participants' perspectives of the acceptability and effect on health and well-being of a community singing program for older people. Volunteers recruited to the intervention arm (n = 131) were invited to write comments on their experiences over three data collection points of a 14-week singing program. A subsample (n = 19) participated in a retrospective semi-structured interview. Data were subjected to content and thematic analysis. Comments and interviews from 128 individuals suggested that the singing groups led to specific, incremental benefits to physical, psychological, social, and community well-being. Benefits tended to tail off after the program ended. Suggestions were made for the future running of such groups.

Older people’s motivations for participating in community singing in Australia

Abstract The aim of this project was to investigate the motivations of older people who regularly attend community singing groups in Australia. Four focus group interviews were conducted with 64 participants belonging to three community singing groups. Participants explained their motivation to attend and sing with others in the groups. A total of eight motivating factors were identified via an inductive thematic analysis, including (1) the importance of singing in my life; (2) enormous pleasure of singing with little pressure; (3) challenge and achievement; (4) spiritual and uplifting emotions; (5) strength in overcoming my age, disease and hardship; (6) good leadership; (7) fellowship with others; and (8) purpose and meaning of group singing. The themes were discussed from various perspectives including positive psychology and the PERMA well-being model. The findings suggest that the older participants seem to experience different motivation factors while at different stages of their engagement in the groups.

Effects of Community Singing Program on Mental Health Outcomes of Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People: A Meditative Approach

Effects of Community Singing Program on Mental Health Outcomes of Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People: A Meditative Approach

Edward Meikel and Community Singing in a Neighborhood Picture Palace, 1925-1929

Edward Meikel and Community Singing in a Neighborhood Picture Palace, 1925-1929

Androgyny in Worship: An Analysis of Jayānanda’s Caitanya-Maṅgal in Bengal

This article deals with Jayānanda Goswami’s sixteenth-century Bengali verse biography of Śrī Caitanya, a Vaiṣṇava saint who revolutionized the practice of religion by releasing it from its earlier upper-class, patriarchal monopoly to make it available to the masses. The resultant shift is from the Vaidhi Bhakti Sādhana of the pre-Caitanya era, the doctrinaire faith focused on scriptural reading and performance of Vedic rituals, to a form of mass participation through community singing of religious songs and ballads revolving around the life of Lord Kṛṣṇa and his divine amours with Rādhā and enactment of these myths of the Kṛṣṇa-līlā. It was popularized as the Rāgānuga Bhakti Sādhana. Caitanya and his followers in this form of supreme self-effacing devotion, became Rādhā to their Lord. There is therefore an androgynous form of worship that runs across the spectrum of this cult, the internalization of a female identity to a degree where these male bodies begin to acquire female functions. At the same time, to the female followers of this cult, the fair-skinned Caitanya is their Kṛṣṇa, and they his Rādhā and the gopīs (cowherdesses involved in Kṛṣṇa’s divine amours). Caitanya therefore assumes multiple gender identities as highlighted in Jayānanda’s text.

Effectiveness of a participative community singing program to improve health behaviors and increase physical activity in Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people

AbstractAboriginal and Torres Strait Islander individuals continue to experience greater levels of chronic disease than the general Australian population. Evidence suggests that increased sedentary behaviors compared with the traditional healthy and active lifestyles of this population have contributed to this situation. This investigation aimed to examine the health benefits of a community-based singing activity intervention on chronic disease among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians.From 2010 to 2011, 291 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, from Queensland, Australia, were recruited through five communities to participate in a 1-year community singing program. Participants completed a survey, in the pre- and post-intervention phases of the study, that measured social connectedness, health behavior (e.g., smoking, alcohol consumption), frequency of exercise and art activities, and medication use.Improvements in health behavior were observed for both male and female participants with chronic disease of all age groups in the community singing program. Improvements in the male and female participants included decreased social loneliness and reduced smoking behavior, increased social support, and increased participation in exercise and art activities.The participative community singing program was successful in improving the health status and increasing physical activity among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adults.

Community singing: what does that have to do with health?

No abstract available.

Improving Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians’ well-being using participatory community singing approach

AbstractThere is increasing international interest in the idea that well-being and health are related to resilience. Participative community singing is beneficial for well-being not only in people who are free from health problems, but especially for those whose physical and mental health is compromised. This study examined the development of five Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander singing groups and the benefits relating to promoting resilience and ultimately preventing chronic disease in this population. Mixed methods, including both quantitative and qualitative approaches, were used. Questionnaires were administered to collect data on chronic life stresses, resilience, social support and social connectedness. Focus group interviews were conducted to obtain data on the participants’ and stakeholders’ perceptions of the impact of the singing groups. Multivariate analysis of variance was used to test the effectiveness of the intervention program on improving resilience at both the individual and the community levels. Structural equation modelling was used to analyse the pathways from the benefits gained from the singing program to the prevention of chronic disease. The results suggested that the singing groups served multiple functions, which are underpinned by social ecological resilience mechanisms to promote self-esteem, learning and education and confidence at the individual level, as well as community connectedness, reduction of loneliness and promoting social support from family, community and the social context such as support from community-controlled health services, and ultimately preventing chronic disease.

A place for singing: Active music engagement by older Chinese Australians

Positive, active engagement in community singing groups can provide emotional, social, cognitive and physical benefits to older participants. This article explores these benefits through the experiences of a group of older Chinese Australians still active in their local community. Using a qualitative, phenomenological case study approach, it draws on the participants’ own understandings and experiences with singing and music. In settings such as this, language barriers can compound social isolation and loneliness in individuals, and may hamper studies of culturally and linguistically diverse older people. Thus, participants were interviewed in their first language, Mandarin Chinese. The data from these interviews were thematically analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), which explores how participants make sense of their personal and social world. Four broad themes were identified from the data: Emotional well-being, connections with the past, shared interests and mental and physical well-being. Each of these themes is explored in the article through the words and experiences of the participants.

The Makers of the Sacred Harp (review)

Reviewed by: The Makers of the Sacred Harp Drew Beisswenger The Makers of the Sacred Harp. By David Warren Steel with Richard H. Hulan. (Music in American Life.) Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2010. [xv, 321 p. 9780252035678 (hardcover), $70; ISBN 9780252077609 (paperback), $25.] Illustrations, bibliography, index. In the twentieth century, The Sacred Harp emerged as the preeminent nineteenth-century shape-note sacred tunebook in the South. In fact, in my experience, many people today believe shape-note singing and Sacred Harp singing are synonymous; for them there is no other shape-note music. The library world reinforces this understanding slightly in the way it places the heading "Sacred Harp singing," but no other tunebook-specific heading, within the syndetic structure of the "Shape note singing" subject heading. David Warren Steel's book fills an important gap in the scholarship about The Sacred Harp by focusing to a large degree on the individual people and songs associated with the early years. Before I comment specifically on the importance of Steel's book, I would like to place The Sacred Harp within the broader field of shape-note music as a whole. When The Sacred Harp was first published in 1844, many similar oblong-style tune-books already had been published (more than 100, according to the Sacred Harp Musical Heritage Association's Web site: http://fasola.org/shmha/, accessed 6 July 2011). The compilers of The Sacred Harp copied liberally from existing tunebooks that utilized a four-shape-notation system—a system that was most popular in the South—including the Southern Harmony, published in 1835. Such tunebooks, which [End Page 381] typically contained a few hundred religious songs notated in three- or four-part harmony, were widely sung in a congregational style at community singing events outside of formal church services. In the decades that followed, several other oblong-style tunebooks, many of which incorporated a newer seven-shape system such as the Christian Harmony and the Harp of Columbia, enjoyed substantial success. In the twentieth century, over thirty Southern publishers, most notably James D. Vaughan and Stamps-Baxter, published hundreds of smaller shape-note gospel songbook titles that typically featured newer songs. Shape-note hymnbooks such as Heavenly Highway Hymns and Favorite Songs and Hymns, both published by Stamps-Baxter, became very popular and are still found in many Southern church pews. The history and variety of shape-note music traditions are complex and rich, and stretch far beyond The Sacred Harp. That being said, the extraordinary popularity of The Sacred Harp music is undeniable, and for reasons that will perhaps never be fully understood, the singing traditions associated with most other shape-note tunebooks have diminished or ended (although singings and singing conventions can still be found that use The Southern Harmony, The Christian Harmony, The Missouri Harmony, The New Harp of Columbia, and various newer shape-note gospel song-books). The Sacred Harp Musical Heritage Association Web site lists over 375 locations where Sacred Harp singers gather regularly, mainly in Georgia and Alabama but also throughout the world. The tunebook, which has gone through numerous revisions, has become the primary song book used at informal singing events not only in rural churches and community buildings in the Deep South, but also at college campuses, music-related conferences, and informal house gatherings on a national scale. Typically, the songs are sung by everyone in attendance at a Sacred Harp singing, and the singers, who are organized by vocal part, sit in a square facing a song leader. The Sacred Harp has been the subjects of several books and recordings, innumerable articles, and a feature-length documentary titled Awake, My Soul (the movie's trailer is, in and of itself, a striking piece). The tunebook clearly deserves the attention of researchers of American music traditions. With his book The Makers of the Sacred Harp, David Warren Steel makes an important contribution to the scholarship on The Sacred Harp, in large part because he includes biographical sketches of over 250 composers and poets whose songs are contained in its early editions. He also includes data on over 550 Sacred Harp songs, including source information. Most of this information is...

Alsangen 1940

Puk Elmstrøm Nielsen: “Community Singing”In 1940, during the first summer of the German occupation, Denmark experienced a surge of nationalism. This manifested itself in several well attended meetings, alsang, where the Danes expressed their national feelings through singing. This article analyses the songs and describes how alsang became a manifestation of the idea of a national community in which the people was not divided by social, cultural or economic interests. Furthermore it is discussed to what extent alsang was anti-German.

Communication and responsibility: Open universities in China and community music education

In the process of building a learning society in China, the government has paid more and more attention to education in communities. Community education is oriented towards all social members of society and offers a vast space for the popularization of music education. China's open universities are able to provide a learning platform and systematic support and service for music education in communities. Open universities can play an active role in promoting the construction of a harmonious society. This article discusses the necessity of music education in communities, advantages enjoyed by open and distance education, and the channels and methods for conducting community music education. This is illustrated by several recent initiatives made by the open universities in China, particularly the organization of the 2009 National Community Music Activity Broadcasting and Exhibition and the Community Singing Rating Activity. These efforts have generated new community music experiences and serve as examples to further study the concept and the social impact of community music.

The Lived Experience of Doing Phenomenology

This article provides a reflective account of the lived experience of undertaking phenomenological research. Three postgraduate health science researchers and their supervisor share their experiences of understanding phenomenological theory, study design and application of phenomenological principles to a range of research topics including: first time motherhood, community singing and familial breast cancer. The article commences with the theoretical context; however, the main intention is to reveal the development of the students’ thinking and experience of doing phenomenological research. Such revelations are intended to encourage future social work and health science postgraduate researchers to consider phenomenology as having direct practical application for real life experience.

Abiding memories: the community singing movement and English social life in the 1920s

AbstractThe community singing movement was a distinctive feature of English popular musical life in the mid-1920s. Although initiated by individuals who saw it as essentially educational, it was rapidly appropriated by sections of the press, and especially the Daily Express, as an instrument in the circulation wars of the period. It was typified by a restricted range of music comprising ‘national’ songs, hymns (with the performance of ‘Abide with Me’ at the FA Cup Final singing particularly important), and songs of the First World War. This mixture and the concomitant neglect of modern popular song reflects the rather nostalgic thrust behind activities, with calls for community singing to recreate a ‘Merrie England’ that would heal the deep social divisions of the 1920s. Whether the singers were fully aware of these various musical and socio-political agendas is unclear, but community singing undoubtedly enjoyed a period of considerable popularity, with the music appreciated for allowing displays of individual and collective emotion.

Community Singing In Rhodes, Greece: Maintaining Cultural Continuity, Local Community And Individual Identity

Community Singing In Rhodes, Greece: Maintaining Cultural Continuity, Local Community And Individual Identity

John Richard Gallon 1944-2003.

John Richard Gallon 1944-2003.

Ideas for community singing

Ideas for community singing

Towards a Creative Approach in Scotland - a Personal Experience

Music education in Scotland has a long-standing tradition of community singing, originally taught using the sol-fa method. Virtually every Scottish secondary school possesses cupboards full of dusty piles of Burns song books and Hebridean folk tunes with the sol-fa and the rhythm printed underneath. Some may still be in use! Sol-fa is not nearly so prevalent in schools as it was twenty years ago, but for the majority of Scottish schools singing still forms the backbone of music classes. After all, there are definite advantages of ‘singing’ as opposed to ‘music’ classes; large numbers of children can be taught together, there is probably less preparation or effort involved for the teacher, and other staff, parents, and the pupils themselves may readily accept that music in school is singing.

A Comparison of Two Stagings: Stratford-upon-Avon and London

HE stage practice of the Elizabethan theater promises to yield a remarkable second harvest in the modern theater. With this opinion Richard Sothern opened his report to the International Conference on Theater History, in London, i8 July, 1955. Mr. Sothern supported his opinion with seven specific points, but they may be summed up in a single generalization: the nonrepresentational stage of the Renaissance was ideally adapted to the creation of poetic drama, and is adaptable and available to the modern poetic dramatist. It is also, of course, particularly pertinent to the revival of Scholars have long been aware that, under the stage conditions for which the part was created, Cleopatra appeared before her first audiences in Elizabethan dress, that the stage on which she acted was unencumbered by tables and chairs and potted palms, that locales were shifted by the words of the actors and the imagination of the audience rather than by the art of the scene painter or the stage mechanic. If poetic action constituted, as estheticians maintained, a kind of speaking picture, it was a picture without a frame, and the spectator had direct and immediate contact with it. Mr. Sothern was suggesting that this scholarly awareness could be, had been, impressed upon modern producers and directors, that glorious poetry was once more free to live an abundant life in the professional theater of England. It is a sweet dream. But a sampling of the Shakespeare being offered to the public at the time of Mr. Sothern's speech revealed how insubstantial was the dream and how substantial the pageant. The modern producer nods respectfully in the direction of William Poel and Adolf Appia, but he sits at the feet of Henry Irving and Beerbohm Tree. There are exceptions (like the enchanting Pericles of I954 at the Birmingham Repertory) which in their proverbial way attest the continuing rule of what John Gielgud has called Wagnerian Shakespeare. The Memorial Theatre at Stratford-upon-Avon has been in the Shaklespeare business so long and so continuously that its life and success with audiences is hardly a matter for speculation. It can do the classics with its eyes shut and its mind elsewhere, and the faithful tourists will attend. To save itself from boredom it can even do Titus Andronicus, and reverently, without the accompaniment of community singing and the incitements to riot that are de rigeur when the commercial theater undertakes the revival of dead melodrama. Sometimes the new insights of scholarship or criticism are invited to participate in

Community Singing Goes to war

Community Singing Goes to war