i believe that singing is one of the most intimate and personl things a person can do and as a result it requires great courage to sing in public.

It says a lot about who you are as a person and reveals things about you that you might not want to share otherwise.

The interesting thing about a song though is that when it connects with the person who sings it, it comes alive and reveals the truth about that person.
When we hear a singer we want to know who the singer is.

I've noticed that those who censure singing in others are usually feeling that they can't sing themselves and don't want others to.

i think this is a very important thread because it goes to the heart of what folk music is. Without a song sung there can be no folk music even if instrumentals are being played, we respond to the singing of those instruments. A musician whether they have a good voice or not is required to sing in order to express the music. Ear training is predicated on singing. It's the speaking of the musical language.

The reasons for a communal inhibition against singing is that it is often besides being too revealing about a person's emotion, a discrediting of emotional expression by an increasingly growing impersonal society. It also is a by-product of spectator sports. We don't see sandlot baseball being played much these days. People would rather sit in front of American Idol or a football game on TV then be out there practicing it themselves.

Society (ours in America in particular) needs to give permission and encouragement to people who like to sing. This is why Pete Seeger is such an important figure in the folk revival. He elicits the voices in his audience and magically has them take part in his music.

I believe we need to become more accepting of all different kinds of voices and not allow prejudices to interfere with the varied vocal qualities. We need to be able to be receptive to the stridency of the outdoor voices of traditional folk music as well as the acceptable voice that has been somewhat trained.
Even opera is an acquired taste.

In the African-American community, singing is a communal experience which may explain the rise of many vocalists in pop music coming from black people.
They don't shy away from emotionalism and communication outside of their religious environments. Rap and Do-wop started here on street corners.

In European, African and Asian societies, there doesn't seem to be the same constraints that we find here in America. Maybe it's because there is a connection between a definable musical culture and the people that is often obscured in America.

In the Irish, Welsh and other Celtic cultures and , singing is revered as an expression of nationalism as well as personal. So in America, we squelch communal singing by offering our national anthem which is a convoluted English drinking song, Anachreon in Heaven, which was to become the Star Spangled Banner that defies the vocal range of almost everyone. Thank goodness for American the Beautiful and This Land Is Your Land. Even God Bless America (although it has a stigma that I believe is underserved since Irving Berlin is one of our very best songwriters).

We must encourage people to sing whether they have trained voices or not.
In order to do this, we have to allow people to express their deeply felt personal emotions without censoring them.

Frank