How Can We Keep From Singing?

I had a wonderful cajun lunch with composer Ken Berg yesterday. He's our Alabama ACDA president and we discussed societal trends towards consumerism and isolation. It's not something we planned on talking about, it just happened.

I talked about how very few people actually "produced" anything . . . people just want to consume. Ken talked about how the movie "The Matrix" may have been prophetic, especially in today's youth and their fascination with "texting" in isolation instead of actually experiencing face to face conversation with someone.

Choral music is, by its very nature, opposed to both of those ideas. We have to be in the same room to make the music. When we sing, we create. It's something new and it's something unique.

David Griggs-Janower speaks to part of that when he points us to a new book How Can We Keep from Singing: Music and the Passionate Life, by Joan Oliver Goldsmith.

He supplies a few quotes in his blog post, and this one spoke to me in light of the conversation with Ken:

"We're everywhere--the passionate, committed, talented, frequently unpaid or underpaid workers who make possible the great things of life. We're the utility infielder, the middle manager, the small-enterprise entrepreneur . . . We work with craftsmanship and artistry. We create excellence . . . We do not become CEOs of Fortune 500 companies . . . Yet collectively, we are indispensable and sometimes magnificent."

Carry on, choir directors. We are important to society.

Read David's whole post here.