Why Voice #4 - Singing builds community?

"Do you hear the people sing, singing a song of angry men, it is the music of a people who will not be slaves again....." Les Miserable.

Actually no, I don't hear the people sing, I don't hear collective voices raised in unity to change something - or even to keep something.

These days most of the community building of singing consists of watching and listening to other people sing on TV in some talent show like X-factor or American Idol, but singing used to be for everyone regardless of whether you had star quality or not - something I for one wish was still the case.

I grew up in a singing culture, in a family full of good singers none of whom where professionals, but where the term "every bird sings with its own beak" (granted the translation is not that great) was an accepted fact. Singing was/is not about being "good at it", but about being apart of something, about participating - not watching from the sidelines. You learn to sing from a young age to stimulate you learning to speak the difficult phonetic language that Danish is, and to stimulate creative structure and social behavior. In my school from the age of six every morning the whole school gathered to sing a song for community building and to keep traditional culture and history alive. These days people can only get into the spirit of this when they are drunk and sing along to some tune in a bar (which granted is also fun!) The culture of; singing because its good for you, stimulates you and and gives you the feeling of belonging to and participating in something, is long gone. It is all about being good at singing - and I am all for good singers, but really that is not what singing is about at all, if you ask me.

There has been many a study on the benefits of music on our general health and singing in particular, and all experts agree that it's good for you. It increases blood circulation, increase endorphins, increase oxygen in the blood, reduces stress, helps depression, exercises the brain in creative ways and generally spreads joy inside and out.
I love when I get students in my classroom saying they can't sing - "so what", I say, "lets change that!" It's not some permanent state, maybe you are not going to be the next superstar, but by God you should not be robed of the satisfaction and empowerment that knowing how to use your voice is. I had a singing teacher who said; we come into this world singing and we should just never stop. I agree with him. Life is too short to not be able to have the joy of singing in our lives. Bring singing back as a community sport and forget about X-factor....forget about being "good" at it - participate, and just - sing!