The “Subject” is Singing: Singing as Social Practice

Victoria Moon Joyce

Toronto, Ontario

Copyright © Victoria Moon Joyce

My recent research on adult singing indicates that those who do not sing also do not see singing as something ordinary, or as something they have access to as a normalized practice of everyday living.  Instead, singing is seen as an extraordinary activity, something in which only those with talent, training or some inordinate god-given gift should participate. As Michele George points out, in the context of Western, affluent societies not singing is the norm. She states: “to not sing is entirely socially acceptable … It’s not like a social stigma” (George, in Joyce, 2003: 165). As a result, conditions are established which effectively prohibit large numbers of people from having access to music making and barring entry into practices that could possibly lead to a lifelong relationship with learning music. In George’s view, there should be a social stigma that warns us when people cannot sing that something is wrong or amiss.

This presentation addresses how people, as social subjects, come to hold beliefs about their own musicality (or more to the point, a lack of it) and where we might, as educators, work to shift discourses that can make the notion of music and lifelong learning an intelligible and attainable goal. My approach to this topic is sociological and informed by critical pedagogy and postmodern theories of subject formation. In terms of music and lifelong learning, I focus on singing practices since singing is the most immediate and accessible way to create music, being as it is centred in the body. It is assumed that instrumental and other musical practices can be seen as extensions of this.

The main question that propels my curiosity about singing as a practice of lifelong learning is this: why do so many adults in contemporary Canadian society feel that they cannot sing. Over the past 20 years, since I began taking serious notice, I have met scores of adults of relative privilege from the dominant culture who, upon hearing me introduce myself as “a singer,” proceed to launch into telling me that they don’t sing and give reasons to explain why they cannot or do not sing. Most have very strong opinions that a binary exists between those who can sing and those who can’t, or shouldn’t. This binary is problematic and a tenacious attitudinal barrier to establishing an attitude of lifelong learning through musical practice.

Concepts of singer and non-singer are socially constituted. People learn to identify themselves as singers or non-singers in their relations with others and in relation to social contexts. The formation of singing subjects is a relational process, dependent upon the formation of non-singing subjects. This interdependent production of the singer/non-singer binary is accomplished through the creation and defense of boundaries around culturally specific practices. Starting from a binary not only reproduces it, but limits from the beginning what can be asked. Staying in a binary IS the central problem for adults who believe they cannot sing. Being labeled or self-identifying as “non-singer” does little to move adults closer to transformation of their musical experiences and self-understanding as musical beings.

While those who believe strongly in the idea that they or others are “non-singers,” who cannot sing and are so-called “tone deaf,” those who hold some general notion that everyone can sing tend to come from backgrounds in which singing was normalized and a common occurrence, such as families that sang and made music, those rare schools where music making was a daily occurrence, church choirs, or in general, communities where the cultural practices and knowledge systems are primarily and traditionally oral/aural and where music practices are a necessary part of one’s identification with a group. I think of some of the immigrant and refugee groups in Toronto who have thriving communal music practices outside any mainstream institutions. 

I argue that adults who identify as “non-singers” are in the majority in mainstream North American society and I attribute this to a number of factors: the excluding effects of many music education practices, cultural beliefs around talent and giftedness, the cultural expectation of performance as the primary goal of music making, a lack of recreational singing spaces, the erosion of publicly funded music education, the feminization of singing as a devaluation, the industrialization of entertainment and the subsequent saturation of recorded music and technology which makes music a spectator event rather than a participatory activity. To complicate this, making music in a context of late capitalism means that anybody’s cultural practices are up for grabs and exploitable as commodities. Thus, with practices intended to draw people into music making as a normalized lifelong practice, such as multicultural music, there is the danger of inappropriate uses of music of ‘Others’ – the music and practices of those whose culture and subjectivity is otherwise subordinated and devalued (Joyce, 2003).

With the separation of singing from everyday life, it is singers who become positioned as “abnormal” since the practice of singing is perceived as an extraordinary skill or event in which only a select percent of the population can (or should) participate. Susan Hale is a white woman from the Southwestern U.S. who considers herself a singer, but grew up noticing that most of the people in her world did not sing.  She notes:

Even though I sang all the time, I was aware that I couldn’t burst out in song whenever I wanted to. I noticed that most people didn’t sing. On trips when I sang in the car I would notice the radio would get turned on automatically ... I learned that most of the world was a “no singing zone.” The only time I heard people sing to each other in public was either in bars or singing “Happy Birthday,” usually with some degree of embarrassment.  (Hale, 1995: 22-23)

Hale noticed that there is a strong tendency in mainstream society to see public singing by individuals as something abnormal and even slightly “crazy.” She offers this story to illustrate:

After I graduated and worked as a music therapist, I began to notice a sneering attitude which many people had towards singing. When I led singing sessions in a psychiatric unit, the patients and doctors in the addictions unit laughed at us. I began to notice a social embarrassment around singing. The attitudes were stifling. In the same hospital, I presented my observations at a case conference for a woman I’d worked with in music therapy. She had written a beautiful song of self-affirmation. She was near discharge and said that when she left the hospital she wanted to sing this song as she walked out of the hospital doors into the outside world for the first time in three months. I saw this as an empowering ritual. But as I told the story, one of the doctors snickered and said, “Then we'll know she's really crazy.”  This was received by this “professional” staff with a chorus of laughter. What is it about singing that makes people so nervous? What is it about singing that is “crazy”? (Hale, 1995: 23-24)

Perhaps one of the reasons why so many adults feel they cannot sing is because they measure themselves in individualistic terms in a cultural climate where singing is so deeply inscribed by discourses about individualized talent, giftedness and performance. Afraid to appear inadequate, incompetent, uncultured, unhip, or otherwise inappropriate and not good enough, they decline and withdraw. While there are many inhibiting forces that are institutionalized and overt, it is often in the everyday and mundane that we find practices of silencing taking place. A favorite example is from a recent ad campaign by the Snapple fruit drink company which uses a stereotype of the “bad singer” as a mild threat to those who would allow such social abominations to occur.  The caption reads: “Drink Snapple or Jim keeps singing” (Figure 1).

Figure 1.  “Drink Snapple”

Each subject brings their own narratives about their relationship to music and singing in the context of any singing practice. These narratives are subjective and formed over time and through the influences of discourses and practices about what singing is and what constitutes taken-for-granted beliefs about musicality.

These taken for granted narratives in the West are largely the result of certain discourses and practices which dominate our musical and social lives. With the exercising of power through institutional and cultural systems, these discourses are mobilized, resulting in the production of naturalized, taken-for-granted notions about what constitutes good singing and proper music pedagogy. Dominant discourses and practices that are mobilized through schooling, the music industry, cultural institutions and other systems effectively subordinate those discourses and practices that do not fit within the constructed notions about music and singing. People who fail somehow to meet the expectations of dominant beliefs about singing and musicality, or who do not fit in spaces where such practices exert overt and covert influence are extremely vulnerable to having their own musicality silenced or their own particular practices erased or de-legitimized. Joanna Kadi speaks with anger of how her working class white Southern culture is constantly made the butt of humour whenever northern middle class people belittle and mimic Country and Western music with its stylistic twang (Kadi, 1996).

In Canadian “White” culture, the singing possibilities that are available to most people are often determined by their social location and the dominant mainstream culture, which is so heavily influenced by notions of bourgeois propriety. This drastically reduces the number and kind of spaces and inhibits informal singing in many profound ways. My use of the term “White” here comes from Sherene Razack’s theory of “Whiteness” and “White” space that uses “White” as a symbolic “colour of domination” (Razack, 1998a: 11-16).[1] In its symbolic sense, Whiteness is not solely based on race, but is also equally about class, sexuality, gender, age and so on. Whiteness represents an organizing term signifying an interlocked system of hierarchies and relations of power among categories of people, concepts, sets of beliefs and practices. Each hierarchy requires the participation of all the other hierarchies to prop it up. For instance, sexism (gender hierarchy) could not continue without homophobia (sexuality hierarchy) to police gender relations, and racism (racial hierarchy) and class inequities are mutually dependent systems of subordination. However, it is in this interdependence of hierarchies that their weakness and vulnerability are exposed. There lie strategic opportunities for organized resistance and transformation.

The principle of Whiteness as a set of interlocking systems of domination is mirrored reflexively by the principle of the “Other” in a set of interlocking systems of oppression. Marginality is socially constituted over and over and systems of oppression remain interlocked as subordinated groups jockey for respect or a “toehold on respectability,” seeking legitimization of their subject positions and recognition of their subjectivities in an interlocked system of subordination. In this sense, subordinated people who attempt to gain respectability (a touch of Whiteness) might say:  “I may be poor, but I’m not a hooker. I may be Black but I’m not Queer” and so on. Thereby perpetuating systems of domination and subordination by reiterating hierarchical practices.

So much of formal music education in the West is steeped in notions of respectability and bourgeois sensibility. This is not surprising since music education is so marginalized in our culture, leaving educators to continually bear the burden of justification for the existence of their programs in schooling and in society (Charlene Morton, 1996) and thus cling to their own toeholds on respectability within their spheres of influence.

Music literacy is one of the main discourses that dominates music education and music practices in the West. This is not to say that being musically literate is a bad thing. To the contrary, it offers enormous benefits and advantages. However, there is a serious downside to the privileging of music literacy and we must acknowledge what is lost when aurality and learning by rote are subordinated and positioned as inferior means of learning and teaching. When we (of the dominant culture) look at whose music is primarily transmitted orally, we quickly see race, class, and cultural divisions. Why is it so important to assume that “we” want “them” to learn like “us?”

In the context of subject formation, the notion of lifelong learning is a strategic one and pushes us to continually reflect on questions such as: learning music for what purpose, and for whom? Studies that account for subject formation require that we also account for power in social relations; both the use of it and the production of it. “We” (formal music educators) speak about community music – and let’s look around the room here at who “we” are[2] – but which communities are we talking about? Because if we take a really good look around, around the globe, we know that community music is going on all the time and with a lot more regularity and spirit of communality than among folks from the dominant culture of this society. There are individuals and groups making music all around us in this city, of all ages, but they may never set foot in a faculty of music or have a music lesson. The more I study this phenomenon of anxious singers or so-called non-singers, the more I am convinced that it’s really a product of White bourgeois respectability and a quest for perfection – unattainable cultural expectations that keep everyone nervous, self policing, and anxious about fitting in. If you’re wondering what White space looks like, look around - because we’re in it.[3]  We may be shaping it, defending it, or resisting it, but this IS it.

While there is some research into how singers are formed[4] (socially and otherwise), there is very little research into how people are prevented from developing singing practices for themselves. Michele George is a voice teacher who uses a therapeutic Jungian approach in her teaching with adults who have been silenced around singing. She believes that people who don't sing are indeed in need of help. Addressing the cultural norm that not-singing is socially acceptable, she counters by saying “‘You don’t sing? [Then] you’re in deep trouble’ ... that's what SHOULD be being said” (George, in Joyce, 2003: 165). Michele’s stance is highlighted when viewed in contrast to studies by ethnomusicologists who have observed singing practices in contexts where singing and music making is a normalized part of everyday life in society. To not sing in a context where singing is an expectation of routine social interaction, or what it means to be a member of a particular community, is most likely to be interpreted as anti-social, rude, or possibly even a sign of illness. She goes on to note that for her, the silencing of people from singing is not only a great individual loss, but ultimately a loss to the health of community as well. 

Not singing is very often about exclusion, not just of the so-called bad voices, but of the social subjects themselves. Every social space has its manner of regulating and policing behaviour. However, in White bourgeois space, a particular kind of policing is necessary in order to know who belongs (and who does not), and what practices are legitimate or worthwhile. Singing can, and often is, used to maintain the boundaries of White bourgeois space so as to keep the Other outside, disenfranchised, and fixed in degenerate space. This marginalization and subordination of the Other is accomplished by denying people a subject position or subjectivity. Rather than connecting to Others as subjects complete with subjectivities, histories, and fully developed cultures, White bourgeois mainstream culture maintains practices of separation that position others as stereotypes and social objects. 

As a way to illustrate, I refer to Tomson Highway’s novel entitled Kiss of the Fur Queen.  In this somewhat autobiographical work, Highway portrays characters that, in the broadest sense, resemble himself and his brother René: both gay men, First Nations’ Cree from Northern Manitoba, and schooled/raised in residential schools. The story tracks in richly nuanced ways how the two brothers became artists: Gabriel as a dancer, and Jeremiah as a classical concert pianist. The protagonist in the story (the pianist) illustrates poignantly and painfully the tension between dominant cultural practices on those from subordinated social groups: in his case, marginalized by race, class, culture, language and sexuality. Gabriel, the dancer, has no illusions about how he is positioned as degenerate while the pianist struggles against being positioned that way and attempts to negotiate his way through the worlds of his own culture and that of the dominant culture that denies him his own subjectivity and positions him as the exceptional Other (but still always Other nonetheless).

This story depicts as only fiction can the heavy cost that subordinated people bear who enter into White spaces as Others–spaces in which they are never meant to truly belong as whole subjects. It is painful to watch the protagonist follow his passion for classical music and achieve accolades in the dominant society while losing his community. He no longer fits there and will never fit into the world of classical music except as an exotic or quaint exception. One scene in particular haunts me.  In it, Jeremiah has just won a major music competition. At the reception, he feels gawked at and groped as a kind of brown boy wonder and flees to a local bar in North Winnipeg, a poorer part of the city with a higher Native population. As he sits there nursing a beer with his tuxedo on and trophy on the table, he is visited by three morphic female characters, each woman/goddess a living ghost who personifies the various kinds of violence that have historically been inflicted on so many native women. The last character, the “Madonna of North Main” spots Jeremiah.  

“Hey Luce!” she cackled to someone way across the room. “You ass-fuck devil, you!  Come on, take a pitcha!” Then, with a sigh as vast as the north, she heaved the trophy to her milk-heavy breasts and grabbed Jeremiah. “You make me so fuckin’ proud to be an Indian, you know that?” (Highway, 1998: 216)

Even here in this place that is ostensibly home turf, he is held apart and positioned as the exceptional Other. He becomes representative of Indians. On his home turf, his acquired toehold on respectability marks him as a kind of role model for the subordinated group. With this positioning he also becomes vulnerable as a target (of praise, envy, and so on). 

The character Jeremiah eloquently portrays the how the marginalized subject who enters White space always risks loss of community, loss of connections to home and identity, and the basic and daily need for a sense of belonging becomes fraught with tension.

Musical practices are never neutral. One of the main challenges I believe we face as educators attempting to make music a lifelong learning practice is to uncover the various ways that musical practices reproduce and reinforce hierarchies of gender, class, race, sexuality, and so on. And then work to dismantle the practices that keep them interlocked and in place.

Social locations matter: I am fascinated to see how we use aspects of our locations in our teaching and musical practices. My location shapes how I put my body into my practice. It shapes how I respond to musical choices, make decisions about repertoire, how I physically (as well as emotionally and intellectually) respond to the people with whom I come in contact when I teach and lead in each unique social space. My social location also shapes how I enter into discourses, how I respond to them, resist them or endorse them. In some ways my social location positions me to have access to some discourses and practices and not others. Being a woman and a lesbian allows me access into discourses about the performance of gender and sexuality that I might not have if I did not inhabit those locations. And while my subject formation is shaped by my location, it is not determined by it. This is a hopeful entry point for the possibilities for agency, resistance, and transformation within discourses. In describing the nature of agency as a part of subject formation, Bronwyn Davies writes:

Agency is never freedom from discursive constitution of self but the capacity to recognize that constitution and to resist, subvert, and change the discourses themselves through which one is being constituted. It is the freedom to recognize multiple readings such that no discursive practice, or positioning within it by powerful others, can capture and control one’s identity. And agency is never autonomy in the sense of being an individual standing outside social structure and process. Autonomy becomes instead the recognition that power and force presume subcultural counter-power and counter-force and that such subcultures can create new life forms, which disrupt the hegemonic forms, even potentially replacing them. (Davies, 2000: 67)

Of all the discourses that surround singing, there are certain discourses that I have chosen to assert and that consequently shape my practices. In turn my practices shape discourses about musicality. For instance, I have developed a deep-seated conviction that singing, as a recreational activity is a “good thing” for people to do: there are many benefits to be derived from singing, alone and with others. Among the benefits of singing alone is the notion of singing as a holistic, health-enhancing activity (Joyce, 1993) that has the potential to be therapeutic for individuals. Because of its holistic properties, singing has the ability to affect us emotionally, cognitively, physically, intuitively, spiritually, and socially. As such it can enable personal transformation and transformation of social space, altering the conditions within which we find ourselves, and shifting our attitudes and beliefs. The words of Bernice Johnson Reagon are apt when she states, “you cannot sing a song and not change your condition” (Reagon, n.d.). But even better, singing, in the context of collective action can transform social practices. Given the many traditions of singing in social movements for change, the benefits of singing are particularly relevant for those who are disenfranchised and marginalized in society (Joyce 1993). In the context of lifelong learning, singing and other forms of music making often act as, what I refer to as, learning enablers. For example, I find this to be particularly true with adult literacy learners, some of the most marginalized people in our society. Being able to sing together helps most individual learners feel better about themselves as learners generally: it contributes to creating a more relaxed learning environment; and it raises energy and give people focus while enhancing their ability to be more fully present and able to concentrate.

I agree with the discourse that frames singing as a developmental phenomenon, as something that anyone can learn, and, except in extremely rare cases, singing is a common capability with which all people have some facility and all have the potential to develop. This idea counters the tenacious Western discourse of talent, giftedness and innate ability, which promotes the idea that some people “have it” and some do not.

The belief that singing and music making are serious endeavors that require hard work and discipline has both positive and negative implications in the context of making music accessible. Yes, musical excellence requires those things, but when music making stays within discourses of professionalism and commodification for exchange value (to use Jacques Attali’s (1989) concept), and within discourses of formal education that privilege musical literacy and performance over communal participation and inclusion, or to enforce boundaries of respectability, then practices become separated out from everyday life and the goal of normalizing music making is seriously jeopardized. One only needs to listen to the many stories of those who have achieved high levels of musical training but who, after having passed their exams, rarely, if ever, make music again.[5] Countering these discourses and practices are alternative, but not unknown, discursive practices that privilege communality over individualism, and participation over competition or exclusive performance.

Interestingly, there is evidence that community music-making spaces are ubiquitous and in some cases, on the rise in North America and elsewhere (Veblen & Olsson, 2002).[6]  In Toronto for instance, all the community, non-audition choirs that I know of have waiting lists for people wanting to join. This suggests that the rise of community choirs in particular (which are predominantly a middle class phenomenon) is occurring at a time when we, the affluent in the west are experiencing hunger for community more acutely than before.  Many less privileged people and groups have created their own musical practices because they know that it fulfills an important need. Labour group choirs such as the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Local 75 union choir (membership is mostly Black women from the Caribbean), church groups in working poor neighbourhoods, Karaoke, pub singing, and affinity choirs such as Gay and Lesbian choruses are all examples of community music making which fills a need for connection and expression and welcomes voices in a spirit of abundance rather than scarcity.

In addition to these, I recommend two strategies. The first is the procurement of open facilities wherein anyone is free to use the space for music or other artistic, expressive activity. As an example of this, I am reminded of El Puente, the publicly owned complex of buildings I visited in 1989 which serves as a cultural centre in the city of San Cristobal de las Casas in Chiapas, Mexico. The site features rooms of various sizes for people to use at no cost, for visual arts, dance, writing, music and so on. In the theatre and nearby practice rooms, people are free to sit in and watch or collaborate with local residents (many of them teenagers) as they make music and jam. In this comfortable space I saw some basic instruments (piano, large percussion instruments), amplifiers and microphones and no locked doors during open hours of the centre. People signed up for the times they wished to use the facilities, or if not in use, could ask permission at the door and proceed. In conversation with a staff person at the centre, I was informed that there is virtually no vandalism there. Rather a sense of stewardship prevails and people respect the space as it provides a valuable central social space for all.

I marvel still at the memory of El Puente and what it offers in a city, region, and country that is impoverished by western G8 standards. Seeing this facility function causes me to ask: if citizens of this small Mexican city could create and maintain such a space, why can we not do this in our affluent northern cities? It would be useful to explore how such spaces as the one in San Cristobal de las Casas came to be and how it is administered. It would also be useful to find out if such spaces exist here in Canada, and investigate how decisions are made to determine how these spaces are used.

Secondly, we as educators and cultural workers should not expect marginalized communities to come to “us” and “our” facilities (e.g. faculties of music, schools, etc.). We must build relationships with communities in community. And like all effective leaders we must be willing and able to take our lead from the people.

In conclusion, to normalize singing and music-making as a life-long learning practice, and life-enhancing practice, I believe two things must happen. Firstly, we must resist the reinscription of dominant discourses and practices which rely upon separation and exclusion. Through practices of critical reflection, we need to expose the pernicious effects that some music education practices and discourses have on silencing and excluding learners in whatever spaces we work in and create. As educators we need to continually ask what we think we are doing when we teach music and lead music making activities: for whose benefit are we doing this? We need to expose White space and White practices. At the same time, we need to mess up White space[7] by creating different spaces and practices which focus on participation, communal experience, and a deliberate effort to teach critical reflection skills which can foster a deeper understanding, appreciation, and commitment to social equanimity and societal well-being. The construction of David Meyers notion of a “music learning society” (Meyers, 1992) means the reconstruction of society itself, for they are mutually dependent. Making music must mean something and be recognizable as contributing to the greater good of one's own life and one’s community in order to transform singing practices and music making into something that is normalized and accessible. To see one’s lifelong learning as an integral part of something greater than yourself and know that it is a tool of connection and a sustaining force for self and community is at the heart of what music is meant to do. We can start by refusing to “swallow” the kinds of attitudes that the Snapple ad suggests. 

References

Attali, J. (1989). Noise: The political economy of music. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Crafts, S. D., Cavicchi, D., & Keil, C. (1993). My music: And the music in daily life project.  Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press.

Davies, B. (2000). The concept of agency. In A body of writing: 1990-1999. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press. pp. 55-68. 

Hale, S. E. (1995). Song and silence: Voicing the soul. Albuquerque, NM: La Alameda Press.

Highway, T. (1998). Kiss of the fur queen. Toronto, ON:  Doubleday.

Joyce, V. M. (1993).  Singing for our lives: Women creating home through singing. M.A. Thesis. Faculty of Education. Toronto: OISE/University of Toronto.

___________. (2003). Bodies that sing: The formation of singing subjects.  Ph.D. thesis. Faculty of Education. Toronto: OISE/University of Toronto.

Kadi, J. (1996). “Still Listenin’ to that sentimental twang” and “Moving from cultural appropriation toward ethical cultural connections.” In Thinking class: Sketches from a cultural worker.  Boston: South End Press.  pp. 93-107, 115-127.

Morton, C. A. (1996). The "status problem": The feminization of school music and the burden of justification. Ed.D. Thesis. Graduate Department of Education, University of Toronto. Toronto,ON.

Myers, D. E. (1992). Teaching learners of all ages.  Music Educators Journal. 79: (4) Dec. pp. 23-26.

Razack, S. H. (1998a). Looking white people in the eye: Gender, race, and culture in courtrooms and classrooms. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press.

Reagon, B. J. (n.d.). "The songs are free" with Bill Moyers. Bernice Johnson Reagon interviewed by Bill Moyers. A PBS Video Production. Distributed by Mystic Fire Video. P.O. Box 9323 S. Burlington VT. 05407-9323.

Roberts, B. A. (1993). I, musician:  Towards a model of identity construction and maintenance by music education students as musicians. St. John's, NF: Memorial University of Newfoundland.

_______. (1998). Being a singer: A sociological analysis of the role identity of university voice majors. In The phenomenon of singing. Brian A. Roberts (Ed.). St. John’s, NF: Faculty of Music, Memorial University of Newfoundland. pp. 193-200.

Slobin, M. (1993). Subcultural sounds: Micromusics of the West. Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press.

Veblen, K. and Olsson, B. (2002). Community music: Toward an international overview. In The new handbook of research on music teaching and learning. R. Colwell and C. Richards (Eds.). NY: Oxford.  pp. 730-753.