CJ Replay: Vocal Athletes

       Consider the baseball pitcher. Human arms did not evolve so that people could throw a baseball as hard and accurately as possible for over 200 times in about two hours. That strenuous and “unnatural” use of arms and shoulders takes a very exacting toll on the nerve and muscle fibers, ligaments, cartilages and skeletal joints involved. To maintain such a specialized athletic activity at peak efficiency over time, careful conditioning, training and hygenic care of the whole body are necessary. Eventually, a pitcher’s effectiveness wanes when his arm-shoulder has been debilitated gradually so that he can no longer throw with sufficient force or control.

       Consider the singer. The primary functions of the human larynx are not the production of speech and song. Its primary functions relate to survival of the person in which it is housed. For instance, the vocal folds go into spasm when any foreign matter approaches them, thus protecting the delicate tissues of the lungs. “Noise-making” is a survival function – frightening away potential predators, maintaining emotional equilibrium through moaning or crying, for instance – but those are not nearly as extensive a use of voice as speech and song. Language and its use in singing evolved in a social context as the human nervous system developed the capacity to process sounded symbols.

       Singers are vocal athletes. Those who use their voices to an extent which is beyond occasional, quiet conversation are engaging in athletic voice use. Singing, teaching, acting, and other athletic uses of the human noise-maker are specialized, strenuous functions which have been imposed on the larynx, for which it was not primarily intended. Careful conditioning, training, and hygenic care are necessary, therefore, if the owner is to use it well over a life span.

 

(From the Choral Journal article, “Putting Horses Before Carts: A Brief on Vocal Athletics,” by Leon Thurman.)