Which is to say, we attempt to assist a lot of people who claim to want to sing.
We give advice. We cajole and reassure. We demonstrate, and encourage, and smile, and give feedback in an attempt for our students to attain some knowledge about what they are doing (physically) and why they sound the way they do.
It's a very difficult task, for a couple of reasons.
First, the voice is the most personal of instruments. You can't see it, you can't tune it artificially, and you can't trade it in for a newer, or older, or more expensive, or more 'vintage' voice. You play the vocal cards you're dealt, friends, and sometimes that can be tough. If you want to change your voice, you have to do the work. The long, complicated, frustrating, joyful and oftentimes lonely work.
Second, our society, in my opinion, does not value authentic voices, and by that I mean "voices that are not contrived to sound a particular way that the performer assumes the listener will like". We all have unique bodies. Therefore we all have unique voices, because our voices are embodied. We are afraid to stand apart from the herd, or to sound differently.
We now live in an era where women in popular music sing in a similar range to men - Carrie Underwood - and men rarely sing down in their lower registers - no more Johnny Cash. Sopranos (with the notable exception of Alison Kraus) and basses are a thing of the past.
Third, as a consequence of #1 and #2, people are so hesitant to sing. They do not trust their bodies, and they do not trust their voices. They are afraid to be heard, and to take the physical and emotional risks it entails to make a sound and have someone hear it.
It is heartbreaking.
We regularly see parents seeking music instruction for their children. These people are lovely people whose intentions are heartfelt. But they won't sing with their own kids, so their children never learn to vocalise in a manner that resembles singing, because the parents are too afraid.
I often wonder if there is a connection between this lack of singing and the larger public ambivalence we see - very few people will speak up when 'the powers that be' overstep their bounds, and people seem incredibly reluctant to add their voices to the public discourse on many issues.
It brings to mind sayings involving singing and birds. The first is from a novel by Farley Mowat, which I have not read, and yet, somehow I seemed to know. Apparently this novel is a fictionalized account of the Italian campaign to liberate Italy from facism during WWII:
"I was staring down a vertiginous tunnel where all was black and bloody and the great wind of ultimate desolation howled and hungered. I was alone....relentlessly alone in a world I never knew....and no birds sang."
Lately I have been waking in the early morning hours, hearing the birds, and falling back asleep again. Many composers (notably Mozart and Messiaen) were student of birdsong. The second quote was often found at the bottom of one of my professor's emails during university. This particular professor was eminently practical, and understood the beauty of choral music: the whole is more than the sum of its parts
"Use what talents you possess: the woods would be very silent if no birds sang there except those that sang best." Henry VanDyke
