.gif)
I spent this morning making a long overdue trip through the murky marshes of my email inbox. When I sat down to the computer this morning I saw that I had 1185 unread emails… Fantastic. Yes, I believe a little email maintenance was definitely in order. Now, thankfully, my inbox contains no unread messages (and no, I didn’t just sort them all by unread and mark them as read). In the process of weeding through this mess, I found an email from my Mom from February (yeah, February. Sorry about that Mom!). Anyway, she had forwarded me an mp3 of an arrangement of “Smoke Get’s In Your Eyes” for barbershop quartet. As I listened to it this morning, I remembered the thousands of hours I spent as a kid going from place to place, listening to barbershop shows and rehearsals.
Both of my parents sang in the San Antonio barbershop choruses — one for women, one for men — and both spent time singing in barbershop quartets. I can’t say for sure exactly what impact all of those rehearsals and shows had on me. But if nothing else, they helped instill the intrinsic value and power of making music. Barbershop events are showcases for musical enthusiasm: people never stop singing, cheering for other’s singing, or discussing what they are going to sing next. It is like a perpetual motion machine of musical enjoyment. Parties go on into all of hours of the night with the soul focus being the enjoyment of another song, or even part of a song (yes, they spend countless hours singing the last few bars of different songs called “tags”. Groups constantly form and disband, the membership changing over who knows one part or another to a tag for a song that almost no one has ever heard of.)
It is probably somewhere in this obscure world of music making that I began learning about the power of making music, and the impact it can have on its listeners. Below is a link to the mp3 clip I listened to this morning. This arrangement was done by Brian Beck of the “Dealer’s Choice”. You probably don’t know what that means, but if you grew up in my house, you would know that the words “Dealer’s Choice” were always followed by a bit of silence, then hushed murmurs of reminiscence… after all, they were international champions. Don’t know what that means? Spend a few thousand hours as a kid driving toy cars around church assembly halls, minor local theaters, and high school cafeterias and you will know. You will also know about a world where people care deeply about music. It may not be music you care for, but it is music that they care for, and that, in the end, is what it’s all about.
Go. Make music. Enjoy it. That is what barbershop taught me.
Smoke Gets In Your Eyes — arranged by Brian Beck
Craig,
What a great post. All of us, and I do mean ALL, could learn a lot from listening to the care put into that recording. Fantastic ensemble – phrasing, breathing. Intonation to die for – man, what ears those guys have (had?). Everyone is important in a group like that (or any other group) and they all know it and rely on each other to get the job done. Notice how the group builds from the bottom up, too. This is not a top-heavy sound, but very well balanced, with prominent internal lines as well.
My students are going to hear this…
J