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Stick Time: More Male Voices, Please

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Your college choral director did it.  You’ve done it.  Yes, I’ve done it too.
 
We’ve ALL complained in one form or another about the need for more male singers in our choral programs.  The challenge is so daunting that in the spring of 2012, ACDA devoted both the April and May issues of the Choral Journal to matters related to the cultivation of male singers.
 
While it’s easy to wring our hands in woe, try to remember that even Bach complained about this issue; so we’re in pretty good company.
 
Take heart as you listen to this boychoir performance from a recent ACDA Divisional Conference. If all goes well, these young men could soon be coming to a rehearsal hall in your neck-o’-the-woods.
 

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  1. Having taught high school and church youth choirs for years, I learned that boys love to sing. So what is stopping them? I struggled to recruit but when I started to separate the boys at least as beginners and my numbers exploded. By creating a community of guys, we confront and expel the fear of being the one boy in a chorus of girls. I have counted the number of boys in mixed children’s choirs and have consistently found that there are only 25% boys. At a Canadian festival, there was one boy choir who outnumbered all the boys combined in the other children’s choirs.
     
    Create boy choirs for the sake of the boys and for the sake of future male singers.  My experience corroborates Ron’s comments about the hierarchical nature of males in the choir and I also love the fact that they are goal-oriented. 
     
    By the way, my boys love the slow music as much as the highly rhythmic. They secretly enjoying exploring their emotional lives. 

  2. A couple of thoughts came across my mind listening and watching this:
     
    1.  It is important; no, absolutely CRITICAL that men model the fact that music is a “people” thing, not a “girl” thing.  Reason I say this:  I took over directing a church children’s choir which had 27 choristers, of whom one – yes, exactly one – was a boy.  I did two things immediately:  because my son (who is now a voice major in college) was in the 2nd grade at the time, was quite capable of reading words, and was musically apt, I immediately expanded the choir to include 2d and 3d graders.  My choir almost immediately doubled in size – parents couldn’t come fast enough to put their daughters – and SONS – into the choir.  I went from having one to 12 boys.  (The other thing I did was to move rehearsals from Wednesdays at 3:00 to Mondays at 3:00 – thus taking advantage of the local school system’s short Mondays – AND – allowing the kids who were NOT attending the parochial school to also participate in their parish’s life in an active way.  Sadly, when I was forced to leave three years later, the parish’s powers-that-be went back to the original schedule – and the original intent, it seemed – and the choir lost not only membership but parental and parochial enthusiasm.).  The last summer before leaving, six parents approached me in the parking lot and wanted their child to go into the choir – and five of those were parents of BOYS.  I believe, to the bottom of my heart and the top of my brain, that that happens because boys see IT’S OKAY TO SING – there is safety in the numbers and the fact that a man is doing the leading (it didn’t hurt that the accompanist, our superb music director, was also a guy).
     
    2.  It is beyond critical to provide music that engages, and to find methods to deal with the fact that boys are physically oriented, rather than verbally so – yes, there are exceptions, but let’s be honest about it, guys tend to need to move around and be kept moving in some way – even if their feet never take a step forward.  A recent speaker I recorded talks about these sorts of differences between boys and girls, men and women – boys and men are hierarchical in the extreme – there is a leader, and everyone needs to figure out their relationship to the leader; boys and men are linearly focused on an objective (we’re goal-oriented) and when that is clear (kill the mammoth, find the new world, get to the end of the song), they’ll buy it.  Now, that process is involved is not denied; but again, let’s be honest – goals sing to guys.  Talk all you want about how you get there, ultimately it’s noise in their (our) ears – they want to know what”s the end game.  What I loved about the song depicted in the clip was that it was a very physical song – yet not a guy moved.  It was highly rhythmic, lively, upbeat, had a realtively straightforward melody and message – and the guys nailed it (did you note, though, at the end of the first refrain, the lower voices got out of rhythmic whack – they wanted it to go faster – but in the end, they kept it together – and that’s because the leader wouldn’t let them drive him; he drove THEM – and I bet you he could’ve picked out the specific guy who started leading the speedup – a leader within the group – and if the director’s as smart as I think he is, he’ll talk to this young fellow about how it’s important to lead by being right when it comes to the music). 
     
    I realize it doesn’t directly address the issue of our constant bemoaning of the lack of guys – but insofar and as long as we insist that young male choristers have the best possible models for them – male models – we stand a far better chance of getting more guys in our choirs.  Pray God….
     
    Chantez bien!
     
    Ron

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