This article was originally written in response to a barbershop music event, and was intended for a barbershop chorus music leadership team. I’m sharing it here, as I think many of the ideas are more universal.
The case for an increased focus on entertainment and showmanship.
The ideas below are “strong opinions, weakly held” — which means I’ve phrased many of them in a direct and opinionated way in order to encourage dialogue, but I’m not actually married to any particular ideas, and I’m very curious to hear what you think, including where you might disagree or have deeper insight. Let me know if you’d ever like to chat about this!
Know, as you read, that I love our chorus and SAI¹ dearly. And, I think it’s important to be candid about things that can be improved, and that’s why I’m writing.
[0] What triggered me to want to write this?
If you’re like me, you prefer singing to watching other people sing. 😉 One of the things I really appreciated about this barbershop music workshop, however, was that she not only focused our attention on watching international barbershop chorus packages, but also juxtaposed them with videos of musical theater performances like Ain’t Misbehavin’ and West Side Story.
This is an embarrassing thing to admit, because I sing in two barbershop choruses and love the art form dearly, but to be totally candid, I found the musical theater performances much more entertaining than most of the barbershop chorus performances we saw. Granted, I could chalk it up to professional vs. amateur performers, or to targeted vs. generic filming, or to familiar vs. unfamiliar genre (I’m still fairly new to barbershop). But it got me thinking:
- What makes a performance excellent, in general?
- Are there inherent factors about the form and genre of barbershop choral performances that make it hard to be entertaining?
- Can we, a versatile and multi-genre performing artist, adopt best practices from performances in other genres?
[1] What makes a performance excellent, in general?
To me, an effective performance is an experience that moves you in some way:
- physically — e.g. you want to get up and dance! You Make My Dreams
- emotionally — e.g. you feel tears well up. this scene from Up
- intellectually — e.g. you see a life situation in a new light or with clearer focus. Beautiful
An effective performance also entertains you. You’re captivated, in the moment of the performance; your attention never leaves. There are three factors that I’ve noticed consistently entertain me:
- story — often this means plot; sometimes it’s also character, or capturing a mood or a moment within a broader story. e.g. ballet, opera, and musical theater almost always have plot.
- for a barbershop example, Ronnige’s Magic to Do was stunning — they could have easily performed the same song as a much faster uptune, but instead they turned it into a slower and sultrier thing. Their choreography is all about creating a sense of mystique and magic. The music and the performance feed off each other.
- contrast — contrast equals interest. just as the eye is drawn toward places where the lightest light and the darkest dark are juxtaposed, we need change and contrast in our performances — whether that’s harmonic, dynamic, rhythmic, visual, storywise, or otherwise — to keep us engaged.
- for a barbershop example, I’ve always been a fan of Harmony Celebration’s Dancing in the Streets of New Orleans. you’re taken on a wild ride of dynamic and color changes paired with choreographic motion that enhances the excitement of the story. the song is never too much of the same thing.
- talent & skill — you have to be good at what you do, no question; otherwise you won’t be effective at telling the story. for us, this means there are no shortcuts to good vocal production and sync — those things are a given.
[2] Observations about barbershop and SAI that affect our performances
A lot of barbershop music sounds similar
I actually personally think there’s a lot of diversity in barbershop music, but many others have told me that a lot of barbershop songs sound very similar. All those seventh chords, after all. Nothing wrong with that of course, but it’s worth thinking about how this relates with the need for contrast in order to successfully entertain. There’s a reason why SAI only requires 1 out of 4 entertainment package songs to be a fully traditional barbershop tune.
Barbershop societies rely on judging scores
High scores are often, but not always, correlated with moving performances. Signature’s performance of Dance with My Father has been shared as one of the most moving ballad performances in history — but if you look at the comments, you can see that some people are confused about why their singing and music scores are so high:
- “I don’t really understand how it got the highest score of the contest in the MUS and SNG categories. Putting aside how moving it was, there seemed to be other arrangements in this contest that were more perfectly in the barbershop style and were executed with fewer issues…”
- “An emotional impact this strong is certainly enough to outweigh other factors in the performance category, but should it really be able to outweigh the other factors in the MUS and SNG categories?”
My candid reaction is — who cares?!? This is one of the most moving performances ever. That’s what matters, not whether they got high scores, or shouldn’t have gotten high scores. So, be aware — a focus on scores can distract from a focus on moving performance.
Also worth asking ourselves — who do we care most about entertaining? Other barbershoppers, or people outside of the barbershop societies? I’m personally more motivated to about the latter, in part because it’s a broader audience — though I think we can do both.
SAI places heavy emphasis on choruses over quartets/soloists
BHS² has three rounds of quartet contests and only one round of chorus finals, plus a youth quartet competition. SAI has two rounds of quartet contests and two rounds of chorus contests, plus a small chorus competition. Notice the difference? Yup, there’s a bigger emphasis on quartets in BHS than in SAI. (If I had time, I’d look up quartet membership and chorus membership ratios in both organizations; but I’m pretty sure I know the rough answer.)
I’ve also noticed that many women in our Region are afraid to sing pickup tags and quartets. Sure, you might chalk it up to women’s cultural conditioning to be more interested in socializing and less interested in tagging — but, I wonder (and maybe it’s politically incorrect, but I’ll just be candid) whether it might also be that SAI people are less confident and more self-conscious about singing on their own than BHS people. I hope we can help to change this part of the SAI culture.
The thing that’s weird to me is that in most traditional music genres, the chorus number is often a special occasion, not the only feature. In Handel’s Messiah, after soloists’ arias and recitatives, the chorus explodes into the climactic joy of “Glory to God in the Highest” while the trumpets blare. Masquerade from The Phantom of the Opera is a colorful cacophony of costumes, creating a festive atmosphere. And even when choruses are more common, soloists are critical. The company in Hamilton is involved in nearly 60% of the numbers, and plays a critical role in filling out the tonal quality of the musical, but people need individual characters like Washington and Eliza to latch onto. Without those individuals, the story wouldn’t be nearly as engaging, and there wouldn’t be contrast in who’s taking the stage.
One sort-of-exception to this rule is symphonies. But even symphonies often have brief solos and contrasting musical textures with different instruments brought out.
Stories need faces
I still remember when someone in the audience mentioned that one of the performances of a “wagon wheel” barbershop song was less engaging because the camera never zoomed into the individuals’ faces. Faces are immensely powerful for storytelling; when people watch a compelling performance, it’s not just the music, but also people’s faces, that moves them to tears. When I watch a barbershop chorus perform, I’m usually not watching the whole chorus — I’m usually watching a few individuals at a time.
[3] What best practices could we adopt to become more performance-focused?
“Performing” isn’t an afterthought. It’s embedded into the music part of rehearsal.
Character shouldn’t be something you only think about in the last two weeks that you’re working a song. What if we discussed the message of the song at the same time that people first start learning and listening to their music (even if the chorus can’t necessarily execute that expressiveness quite yet)? What if the director regularly shared with the chorus how the message of the song shapes their musical and expressive decisions?
I also think we can dedicate some more rehearsal time and energy toward visual engagement, choreography, and staging. We know this is a growth area for us; let’s put our time where our goals are!
Create coherent sets that tell a story
For the past while, our shows have been a mix of songs in our current repertoire, chosen for general contrast (good), but without an overarching story (less good). What if — like we’re doing for Harmony Classic — every show we did had a central theme? What if we chose our show repertoire months in advance, just like we do for competitions?
Also — dumb, or maybe not-so-dumb, idea — in college, a lot of a cappella groups use hokey but funny skits in between songs to thread through the set, provide continuity and plot, and keep people laughing. What if we did a classier version of this?
Make every song a special performance
I’m thinking again of Ronnige’s Magic to Do and how they infused it with meaning, from the musical choices like tempo to the costume / choreography / staging choices. That song wasn’t just a song; it was a production, all in service of one artistic vision. What if we made each and every song we do that special? What if every song in our set could be someone’s favorite song from our performance?
Choose set ideas that really resonate with people
I think it can be argued that you shouldn’t create art for the sake of catering to the masses — that you should create art only for yourself, and it doesn’t matter if it doesn’t resonate with others. In my view, however, if you want to create art that is truly relevant for people, then you need to listen, and respond to what you hear. What if we thought carefully about what the people in New York City want to hear about, want to laugh about, want to dance to? What if we used that as a basis for our set and our story?
Contrast = interest
If the song is sounding too much the same, how can we create musical contrast — in the tone, in dynamics, in specific phrases? Instead of performances with only a large chorus structure, how might we work in small ensembles, quartets, duets, and solos? How might we choose repertoire that allows us to move people in different ways, but still with a sense of cohesion?
Core skills, of course
We should never stop growing core skills of vocal production, sync, etc. We need that in order to tell an effective story. But we should also agree — moving and entertaining is better than perfect!
Other
Singing for us vs. singing for them
We are not just a performing artist, it’s true. We are a community, and being a community is a critical part of our identity. When we sing, we should be singing for our own enjoyment. But, ambitious as we are, that can’t be our only goal. A performance isn’t a performance unless we also successfully convey something meaningful to our audiences.
¹ SAI = Sweet Adelines International, i.e. the women’s barbershop organization.
² BHS = The Barbershop Harmony Society, i.e. the men’s barbershop organization.