Dan Krieder is doing a great service for the world of choral music with his thoughtful posts about choral music.
We’ve featured his previous posts when he talked about listening, communication with the audience, and the essence of rhythm.
This new post lists ten marks of a singing culture. The first mark holds the secret for the rest – that singing will be a natural activity:
A singing culture recognizes that, just as we would consider it “natural” to be born with a fully functioning larynx, so also the act of using it to sing is completely natural. Singing is as natural as eating. There might be those who don’t – but that’s just not the norm.
There is a mindset, of course, that we can’t sing.
I suspect this mindset stems from the misconception that singing is somehow a mysterious, transcendental ability belonging only to the exclusive club of the “musically elect.” In reality, singing is a physical process – admittedly not measured out to all equally, but (except in rare cases) certainly attainable by all. We all have respirators, phonators, resonators, and articulators. This is what I mean by singing being natural: the majority of us were born with all the tools we need to sing.
Go hear to read the rest of the article. How close are we?
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