Singing Together

Ten years ago my partner, Sam Troxal, conceived the idea to start a men’s chorus in Bloomington, Indiana. This year the resulting Quarryland Men’s Chorus celebrated its tenth season by premiering a commissioned work, Will and Testament, by composer Greg Gilpin, at its spring concert at First United Church. The chorus followed that with its first-ever performance at the GALA Choruses Festival 2012 in Denver, Colorado, in July. The new commission was part of their festival set. A clip from Will and Testament, sung at the sendoff concert in June, can be heard on YouTube, along with other tidbits of performances and rehearsals.

GALA was a signature event for the ten-year-old chorus. More than six thousand performers and others from more than 250 gay, lesbian, and ally choruses crowded into the mile-high city for four and a half days of sheer magic—the magic of singing together. Choruses ranged from a handful of singers to well over a hundred voices. Overlapping strands in three, sometimes four, concert halls made it impossible to hear every chorus. But the sounds were incredible, by turns funny and moving.

The power of communal song was never more evident than in this gathering—not a competition, but a celebration. A celebration of our collective strength as gay men and lesbians and our friends, our collective voices as singers and supporters, and our collective humanity, having gathered for the most positive of all artistic endeavors: singing together.

Personally, one of the most moving and energizing aspects of the festival was the inclusion of youth choruses. Some forty years ago, when I was a beginning teacher in a Wisconsin junior high school, we used to troop all of the students into the auditorium from time to time for what we referred to as a “community sing.” It was an opportunity for students to learn proper audience behavior, of course. But most of all it was an opportunity for all of us—students, teachers, and administrators—to sing together.

This occurred before the assault on the arts began to rob schools of art, music, and theater programs; before the energy crisis led to the disastrous decision to convert the school’s WPA-era auditorium into a cafeteria; before the more recent ill-conceived advance of test, test, test ideology that today overwhelms and often edges out good teaching in all subjects and the arts writ large, in particular.

Recently I glimpsed that positive power of communal singing in a group I discovered on YouTube: Only Boys Aloud. This 133-voice chorus composed of Welsh lads, ages 14 to 19, is mind-blowingly inspiring. One can only hope that educators here, across the United States, can rediscover the positive power for community building, cooperation, collaboration, and learning of singing together.