A personal note
Ewan MacColl ran a weekly singers workshop for those who wished to improve their singing for nearly ten year - he didn't 'teach', but set up a situation where a singer sang in front of the group, their singing was discussed analytically in 'strengths/weaknesses' terms and the listeners would throw in suggestions as to how the singing could be improved - a couple of the suggestions were then chosen and worked on for around an hour
MacColl acted as chairman, but in preparation, he had devised basic voice and relaxation exercises to assist he singers in "exploring" their own voice in order to learn to control and extend it.
The argument was that the human voice was yur own personal musical instrument and in order to make a good job of a song you learned how to use it as you would a fiddle or a violin
THe work fell into two parts - technical voice work and song analysis in order to make the songs your own
For the first, MacColl had drawn on Laben's theory of movement and efforts, which he had been adapted for his Theatre Workshop days in order to teach actors to learn to move on stage
For the second part, he drew on Stanislavski's 'application of the idea of "If" and "emotion memory"
It all may sound complicated and 'high falutin' but it was remarkably easily understandable and incredibly effective - and very quick and easy to apply once you grasped the basics - it still works for my singing (especially for adding new songs or refreshing old ones for my repertoire) after nearly half-a-century
A group like MacColl's can work with as few as three or four people and cn be a one-off or a regular event
Beats being "taught" by singing from a handed-out song-sheet any day
"but might not be great art"
All art lied in the eye or ear of the beholder
Traditional singing can be as high or even higher than the best of classical singing - go listen to Bert Lloyd's ' Folk Music Virtuoso' for proof of this
I've yet to hear a classical singer break their voice into two parts as could the Mongolian 'Throat Singers' or a classical choir produce a sound as magic as the Genoese longshoremen's Tralalere groups
Traditional ballad singing and composition - the high-watermark of our singing traditions are examples of high art in both composition and performance and they require as much thought and attention as any Verdi opera
THey are "the art of the people" - something to be proud of
Jim Carroll