I was on holiday in Portugal recently when I heard a group of young people coming towards me singing. It seemed like it was some kind of street protest and made me feel a little uncomfortable.
Then there was the guy on the train next to me singing quite loudly to himself, which was quite irritating. It made me wonder: are there only certain situations when it’s OK to sing in public?
In many non-Western societies people sing a lot. If one person starts singing, they will soon be joined by others. There is seldom a separation between performers and audience.
In contrast, in most Western countries it’s not OK to sing any time and any where you please.
Once after a choir concert we went for a drink in Wetherspoons (please don’t judge!). Inevitably we started singing at some point. A staff member came over and told us we weren’t allowed to sing on the premises.
Contrast that with pubs in the old days when anyone and everyone burst into song and the rest of the pub joined in.
A large group of football fans who’d had a few drinks were walking through town singing (or, rather, “shouting in tune”) or it could have been on a train home one Saturday evening. It was unwanted and felt intimidating.
Contrast that with a so-called “flash mob” in a shopping centre where singers gradually step out from the crowd and join in a carefully rehearsed, tuneful rendition of a well-known song.
On the tube in London a group of men get into our carriage. Some of them have instruments. They start singing and playing then pass a hat around. It feels like I’ve been imposed upon. I am being sung AT rather than TO and have no choice but to listen. There is no escape.
Contrast that with a group of buskers on the street. You can stop and listen, show your appreciation, ignore them, or stop a while then move on.
We were in a market in Portugal and there was a small group of singers being interviewed and filmed by the local TV station. They performed what sounded like some regional folk music which was much appreciated by the crowd, and by us.
We were in a market in Corsica when three market traders on adjacent stalls burst into amazing Corsican polyphony. They weren’t doing it for an audience, just for the love of it. Some people stopped to listen, others just carried on with their shopping.
I attended a week-long residential workshop once with a Polish theatre company. They taught us lots of great songs. One evening we were having supper in the venue’s restaurant and began to sing some of the songs we’d learnt. It turned out that there was a couple also in the restaurant who’d come out of a quiet romantic evening. They soon left as they hadn’t bargained for our singing and didn’t feel included.
In our culture, there is a separation between audience and performer. As an audience member we enter into a contract with the performers. We implicitly agree that we will listen to their singing with respect and not make too much noise. In return, the singers will only sing to us when we’ve agreed to be an audience.
It’s maybe a sad state of affairs that we can’t burst into song in public whenever and wherever we want, but that’s the society we live in. Perhaps it wasn’t always like that, but it’s what we’ve become.
Chris Rowbury
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