Singing is supposed to be good for you

Singing is supposed to be good for you. Singing in a choir has the added benefit of providing social interaction among the singers. All of this sounds a bit clinical.
We had just performed in our last Sweet Adeline Convention. There was something rather poetic about the fact that it took place in our city, Wollongong. For me personally, it was doubly significant because the Wollongong Entertainment Centre was where I had first seen Out of the Blue Singers in 2003 and became instantly captivated by the chorus’s four-part a cappella performance of Simon and Garfunkel’s famous song, Sounds of Silence. It was the performance of this beautiful, hypnotic song that made me realise that I just had to become part of the choir. Being a ballad, the singers performed the song with intense emotional engagement but with very little physical movement. This was in contrast with what seemed to me to be curious choreographic movements that accompanied the performance of ‘up tunes’ by all of the choirs that graced the stage on that day.
However, Out of the Blue’s performance was so compelling that I momentarily ignored, and as it turns out, set aside for thirteen years, the weird idiosyncrasy colloquially called ‘choree’. I soon discovered this was but one of many anachronistic norms of women’s barbershop singing as advocated by Sweet Adelines International. Unlike some musical imports that change to suit and reflect local conditions, the performance practices that characterise women’s barbershop singing in Australia – and anywhere else in the world including Japan – are strictly upheld by the Sweet Adeline movement.
As a young child I was notoriously hopeless at picking up the words of songs or even committing to memory poems learnt at school. The exception I realise is the few prayers that I was required to learn by heart at the convent schools I attended in Perth. So, it is with a sense of amazement and deep satisfaction that I ponder the fact that I know many songs, and can hold my part in them in the choir: that I can contribute to the beautiful four-part harmonies that we sing.
Competition is the lifeblood of the Sweet Adelines, the centrepiece of the annual calendar for many member choruses (the term they use instead of ‘choir’), and a biannual requirement of maintaining membership.
Normally, each chorus must sing two songs: a ballad and an up tune, on which four judges from the US each allocate the chorus a score on four different criteria: music, sound, expression and showmanship. So, the judges award points not just for vocal quality and vowel accuracy (according to various American ears) but also for the way in which the chorus members make their way onto a stage, move into position and add choreography to the song. Of course, choice of costume and personal presentation of the singers are also important criteria. I recall one year our chorus losing points for the lack of uniformity of our eye make-up and the lack of ‘style’ of the hair do’s.
However, a few years ago, a new people’s choice category was introduced. As well as avoiding the burden of being subjected to a formal judgement and score, the new category’s focus on presenting a themed ‘show’ package (lasting no more than 10 minutes) appealed to our sense of creativity and play.
In what turned out to be our last performance in the national convention, we sang a set of three songs which were poignant, funny and joyfully rebellious. Replacing stories of unrequited or long-lost love somewhere in Mississippi or Carolina in the 1950’s, we were contemporary Australian women coming to terms with the realisation that we had lost our youthfulness and instead were at risk of becoming like our nagging, tired parents.
In place of the typical satin and sequins, we wore dreary brown aprons, and carried bright pink tea towels and fluffy dusters. Instead of the usual energetic stride and wide mouthed smiles that are expected of contestants, we dragged our way on to the stage, our hunched shoulders and sullen scowls conveying our weary acceptance of the abysmal lot that life had served up to us.
In yet to be revealed contrast with this suburban motif, one of our members, a sixty-year-old playing the role of Tinkerbell and wearing a lime green fairy dress and carrying a wand, skipped across the stage and into position on the risers. A second woman, also about sixty and dressed to look like an overgrown Pinocchio, wore a bright red tunic with yellow sleeves, black waist coat and a huge white collar from under which appeared a blue satin ribbon neck tie. This matched the ribbon that wrapped around her straw boater. Nodding at the audience with a silly gawky grin on her face, her entry was a perfectly clumsy caricature of the overgrown pointy nosed Disney character that she was portraying.
Their role in our daring little musical drama, part parody, part romance was to roughen the silken edges of the child-like dreams of these famous Disney characters with a touch of grown up reality.
The first word of our forlorn song was ‘help’, which we repeated over and over, beseeching the audience to save us from our demise.
But, by the end of the first song, we had ripped off our aprons in a bold rejection of the stereotypes that we had feared we were becoming to reveal gorgeous lolly pink and crimson costumes beneath. By contrast with the dreary reality of the first song, our second song, the well-known Disney theme, When You Wish Upon a Star, was the most romantic and lyrical of our set. It suggested that dreams come true when your wishes come from the heart. (When we first heard that the song was to become part of our repertoire, we shared childhood stories of having dinner in front of the TV while watching Disneyland on Sunday evenings.)
But of course, we also knew that Pinocchio doesn’t always tell the truth and that Tinkerbell’s promise that little girls will all blossom into beautiful happy ever after women was a mere fantasy. Nevertheless, in our third and final song we boldly dared to claim a new identity. Our bodies swaying and twisting in different discordant directions, the mantra was to ‘chillax’ and let yourself go, as we rejoiced in the newfound freedom of becoming whatever we wanted including crazy hipsters.
Only one other chorus performed in the people’s choice category. Being one of Australia’s largest and best choruses, they were taking a break from competing in Australia this year because their ambitions were focused on a much bigger target, the US convention that was to be held later in the year. Although the audience loudly cheered their support for us (mutual support of this kind is the norm at conventions), among the women that had been allocated the task of judging the two choruses, we were deemed to be the less popular chorus. Still to this day, we are very proud of our rebellious last hoorah to Sweet Adelines, and we laugh out loud when one or other of our lot claims that we were really cheated of that people’s choice award.
Normally, we take a break from rehearsals on the Wednesday following the convention and then celebrate our efforts and achievements with a party on the next Wednesday night.
Typically, a handful of partners, children or friends come along to the convention to give us support, to cheer us along, but the post-convention revelry is usually just for choir members. This year, an exception was made for one of our groupies, Pat’s daughter Jane who was visiting Wollongong from Melbourne.
About 18 months earlier, Jane and Pat’s son and grandson, Nick, then 17, had been seriously injured in a car accident. Every few weeks, Pat, retired and on a pension, would make the trip to Melbourne to see Nick, whose return to health continues to be painfully slow. On her return to rehearsals, we would ask how he was and offer sympathy and hugs. Every few months, Jane would post an update of Nick’s progress on Facebook and some of our members would respond with comments of support. Many also offered various forms of practical support.
Like many other women, Pat has been in the choir for many years. A former training manager for David Jones, she has a beautiful resonant bass voice – the lowest of the four parts that we sing, and is renowned for the smooth, seemingly effortless, physical warm-up routines that she frequently leads at the start of our weekly rehearsals. Indeed, she is one of our foundation members that date back to the choir’s establishment in 2002.
But that is all really immaterial. Friendships run deep among many members of the choir. More fundamentally, mutual respect and caring among all of our group are rock solid. Just as we rejoice in somebody’s good fortune, and celebrate birthdays, weddings and the arrival of new grandchildren, we are also there to offer support or to come together in grief, when the wheel of fortune is less kind.
When Pat mentioned that Jane was coming to Wollongong but was disappointed that she would miss out on seeing us at the convention, our directors not only decided to change the date of our party so that Jane could be there, but we performed our set for her, complete with our aprons and two-tone floral pink outfits.
The fare at our post-convention parties was, as usual, simple and make-do. Chicken, coleslaw and potato salad (picked up from the local Chicko’s takeaway outlet), soft drink and lots of wine were shared as various speeches gave due recognition to many in our ranks that had contributed in some way to our participation in the convention.
We thanked Vonny and Janette, our musical directors for their choice of such great songs and for their tireless commitment to guiding our performance over the previous five or so months. Lucy, Helen, Bronwyn and Rosemary, our four section leaders were also thanked for the many section practices that they had organised in their homes. Lesley and other women who had organised our costumes and this year’s very successful ‘harmony bazaar’, a pop-up market of more than 20 stalls selling clothing, jewellery and a miscellany of artwork and crafts at the convention, were also given a round of applause.
We exchanged stories about the comments that women from other choruses made about how much they enjoyed our very entertaining performance. We whooped with delight about the various reactions to the wonderfully bizarre installation that Rhonda and Di (sisters) had set up in a particularly busy corner of the main walkway of the convention centre. Capturing the beachy setting of our gorgeous city, the centrepiece of the installation was a bikini clad, red lipped blow-up doll that lay, drink in hand, on a banana bed surrounded by beach balls, brightly coloured towels and other gaudy looking beach apparel – including outsized bright yellow sunglasses. Not quite an up yours, the installation was nevertheless a quiet chuckle at the conservative female norms – the faux glamour – of the competition.
Jane took the floor and gave us an update on Nick’s rehabilitation. She thanked us for our interest and support, and we listened intently, witnessing with awe her down-to-earth courage, and drawing her into our circle of love. Then we sang a few of our favourite songs; chatted, laughed, ate and drank some more.
28 June 2017