What Is Social Singing?

[David Olson]

合唱的社交とは何か？

Dear Singers From Many Tribes and Clans,

The term “social singing” is often used to differentiate what we do with shapes from what choirs do. 

We all seem to understand this term instinctively.

A year ago, when I looked for “social singing” on Google, the first 15 pages were regional Sacred Harp groups. 

Today, the top hits are “Social Singing Choir” (of the simple Margate community); “Smule is the social singing app that lets you enjoy millions of karaoke songs;” “Five Mobile Apps | you can download for social singing.” etc.

(Is this what Covid-19 has done to us?)

Regarding GoogleScholar... I can’t find any definitions of social singing. Maybe because there’s no such thing as a standard musicological glossary: everyone seems to cobble together a glossary for the purposes of their own thesis topic. 

Has anyone a book that lists “social singing” in the index? 

   • Social Gospel, 144, 171, 173, 175

   • The Social Harp (1855), 165

   • Social justice, 187-8, 189

   • Social service, 149, 259-72

   • Soloists, 232

   • Solomon, 85

   (Harry Askew & Hugh T. McElrath, _Sing with Understanding_ 1980)

How is “social singing” translated into other languages? Scots? Gaelic? 

When a young person visits a singing where no other young people are present, is it really a “social singing” for that individual?

Madeleine Forrell Marshall (_Common Hymnsense_, 1995) sometimes talks about "the missing critical vocabulary of hymnology". 

Could "social singing" be one of the missing terms? 

Is "social singing" real?

David Olson

Los Angeles

[Tim Cook]

David, hi,

 

I’m not familiar with the term “social singing,” but I’m not familiar with a lot more than I’m familiar with. Is 合唱的社交 a term in East Asian languages? Shouldn’t it be社交的合唱 ? And would any of that be different from “communal singing,” “community singing,” or “group singing”? Sometimes I hear those terms used to describe the singings where they use the Rise Up Singing book, but that’s quite a bit different from what we do.

 

Tim Cook

Iwaki, Japan

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[Will Fitzgerald]

David,

I'm not sure the term "social singing" is a technical term. I think it merely means singing together mostly for non-specific reasons or for the joy of it (as opposed to for learning how to sing, for performance, or for gathered worship, for example). 

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[Mary McFate]

I've heard the term used in context of someone declaring they came to love the music despite its religious lyrics. They were involved in the folk arts. 

Mary Lou McFate marym...@msn.com   Sarasota, FL

We need to be in the word of God daily to have a positive and joyful attitude. Psalms 119:111

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From: fasola-di...@googlegroups.com <fasola-di...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Will Fitzgerald <will.fi...@gmail.com>
Sent: Saturday, December 11, 2021 7:22 AM
To: Fasola Discussions <fasola-di...@googlegroups.com>
Cc: David Olson <da...@thirdculture.com>
Subject: Re: [fasola-discussions] What Is Social Singing?

 

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[Wade Kotter]

I agree with Will. I don't think "social singing" is intended to be a technical term. I've been singing over 20 years and have never heard it before. It sounds like a colloguial term used by singers in some areas in an attempt to distinguish what we do from what people normally think of when a group of people get together to sing. I think it's similar to the use of the term "sing" for a gathering of singers in some regions instead of "singing."

Wade

Wade Kotter

South Ogden, UT

"Make a Joyful Noise Unto the Lord"

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[Will Fitzgerald]

The full title of of Lloyd’s Primitive Hymns is "The Primitive Hymns, Spiritual Songs, and Sacred Poems Regularly Selected, Classified and Set in Order and Adapted to Social Singing and All Occasions of Divine Worship,” and of course it appears in other hymn and tunebook titles, descriptions, and introductions. 

David, you’ll be interested to know that “social singing” does appear in the index of “The Oxford Handbook of Community Music” [1]

I suspect there are also echoes of the controversy of singing only psalms to singing (the “usual way” vs “regular singing” controversy), out of which the singing schools, and shape notes, emerged. 

I also found this “national hymn” in National Hymns, Original and SelectedFor the Use of Those who are "slaves to No Sect” edited by Abner Kneeland (1836), who was an interesting fellow—the last person to be jailed in the US for blasphemy (according to Wikipedia). I’m sure he uses “social singing” here to mean singing in non-religious contexts.

LXXXIII.-AIR-"Cauld kail in Aberdeen."

Social Singing.

1 THERE is a land of liberty,

Where oft church bells are ringing

But nothing fills the heart with glee

So well as social singing.

That mortal's lip no pleasure shares,

Whose fortune's ever swinging

Whenever I am fill'd with cares,

I drive them off with singing.

2 Thus joyfully my time I spend,

With spirits brisk and springing,

Blest with my life, my bosom friend,

My comrades and my singing.

Then haste and give a noble song,

Which other days are bringing

A noble song comes never wrong,

To one that's fond of singing.

[2] https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Oxford_Handbook_of_Community_Music/Uj9FDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22social+singing%22&pg=PA762&printsec=frontcover

[David Olson]

> Oxford Handbook of Community Music

800 pages, I'm curious to buy (paperback $55), LA Public Library does not have, but they do have 

• Oxford handbook of children's musical cultures

• (paged!)

When I say "technical term" , I mean when searching on GoogleScholar, useful results are returned. 

"group singing" gives better results than "social singing" 

Note that "poor pitch singing" is an established term. 

<https://cse.buffalo.edu/~rapaport/575/F07/Pfordresher&Brown_inpress_MP.pdf>

Pfordresher, Peter Q., and Steven Brown. "Poor-pitch singing in the absence of" tone deafness"." Music Perception 25, no. 2 (2007): 95-115.

According to the Alabama Model, Sacred Harp hospitality extends to everyone, including those who sing off-key. 

That works in a room of 50+ singers, 95% of them experienced singers. 

But in a small group of maybe only five, three of whom are struggling, a sixth who shows up and sings off-key -- applying the Alabama Model will result in a group of three, i.e. two capable and one off-pitch, which further reduces to only the group organizer and the off-key singer. And why should the off-key singer come back, when there is no polyphony as the organizer must sing unison with the sole learner? 

The Alabama Model or Sacred Harp Received Wisdom does not work in small groups. 

I need a different source of guidance, hence constantly searching GoogleScholar. 

Since "social singing" is NOT a term of the art, that means it's a term of publicity and perhaps also of fantasy. 

If "social singing" is instinctively understood -- does that mean it has a cognitive referent -- i.e. the experience of large group singings? 

Then, in a small group, people are fantasizing that they are singing in a large group at a traditional all-day singing. 

From this cognitive referent, follows that visitors to small groups are not authentic social singers until they've attended a large group singing. 

Indeed, that's often how singers in Los Angeles treat newbies. 

Once upon a time there was a strong bass devoted to his garden on the weekends, so he never attended day-long singings, which are always held on the weekends. 

After three years of interrogation "Why didn't you come to the Regional/All-Cal?"

he stopped attending our small group singing entirely. 

LA Regional in May. Is that an important month for gardeners?

"social singing" without "social intelligence"? 

OR merely without "botanical intelligence"?

社交的合唱 -- if literal translation 

合唱的社交 -- is this the outcome that we want? 

group-singing-denominated sociability 

To improve on word-for-word translation, one step would be to investigate which of the 56 minorities in PRC have in-tact group singing, and discover the term-of-the-art used by Chinese ethnographers to describe this. (壮族 Zhuang folk have strophic 山歌 : Marxist packaged performances on YouTube and Chinese social media can be found using those two character compounds as search arguments. Apparently no Maoist counterparts of Alan Lomax. Performance style seems to have been modeled on Bulgarian choral packaging.) Unusual kanji usage grounded in deep time cultural values possibly advantageous for Tim's publicity in Japan.  SPECULATION:  If there was archaic group singing in Japan, it would have been completely hijacked during Kamakura Era proselytizing by Pure Land and Lotus Sutra Proper Noun Chanting ("Name of Amida Buddha", "Name of Marvelous Dharma Lotus Sutra"). And maybe that's why those teachings spread like wildfire, because Elitist Shinto had marginalized village group singing to the verge of extinction, plus the traditional content of the songs had no tourist value. It would be interesting to know, of the Proper Noun Intonation groups active today, the conditions under which synchronized chanting occurs, and the conditions when there is no synchrony. 

> Oxford Handbook of Community Music

Apparently editors never heard of shape notes, but handbook does have this to say. 

page 358

While the DIAMOND SHAPE of the community music practitioners is slanted to the north of the map, the SHAPE of the officials represents a RECTANGLE, SLANTED TOWARDS THE SOUTH. NOTE that the SHAPES do not indicate absolute limits,... 

page 410

Geography is the central concept against which all music is SHAPED. 

From east to west his sov'reign orders spread... 

David Olson,

Los Angeles, CA

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