Singing is neither good nor bad, but thinking makes it so
Have we got the promotion of singing back to front? One often hears people say, in one form or other, ‘Singing is good for you!’. This is like being told green veg, exercise or sleep is good for you. It doesn’t necessarily mean you will do any of these things any more than you would have done otherwise. What I hope to do here is show how singing, particularly with others, is completely embedded in human culture, and also show what it is for, whether that is good for us or not. (Although, despite the above warning, I will share some of its benefits…).
If one looks at singing traditions from around the world, ranging from those of local indigenous communities to international religious traditions, two phenomena seem to be associated with almost all them. Firstly, the experience of feeling sameness with a group of people, even if some of those people are outsiders to the group, and, secondly, that the singing was in some way doing ‘work’ (in either a mental, physical, and/or spiritual sense).
With any collective singing individuals are part of a larger whole, and therefore any contributions they make have to merge and synchronise with the contributions of others. By coordinating their actions to be ‘in time’ with the actions of others in the group, individuals can experience an embodied resonance and familiarity with those other people. Communal singing can also direct the rise and fall of emotional response in a body of people, coordinating what the majority of people in a group feel at any one time.
This relates to most forms of worship in which there is some form of surrendering of one’s individuality to dwell within something larger than oneself, this being anything from a worshipping community to an ultimate transcendent unity. In the case of some forest-based communities, group singing is employed to communicate with their immediate natural environment, the spiritworld, and the cosmos—sometimes in a polyphonic way to mirror the multiple voices of the forest, for example—or to make appeals to spirits in other dimensions to heal sickness, feed the hungry, and even to ensure survival. In my own experience of walking and singing in Britain (with the British Pilgrimage Trust), I have also discovered that by singing traditional songs in the actual place with which they are associated, songs make more sense – i.e. songs have a physical ‘home’.
After an extensive review of many scientific studies on the effects of choral singing, one group of researchers summarized their conclusions as follows:
· Choral singing engenders happiness and raised spirits, which counteract feelings of sadness and depression.
· Singing involves focused concentration, which reduces worrying.
· Singing involves deep controlled breathing, which counteracts anxiety.
· Choral singing offers a sense of social support and friendship, which ameliorate feelings of isolation and loneliness.
· Choral singing involves education and learning, which keeps the mind active and counteracts decline of cognitive functions. [i]
An individual can also sing or chant specifically to bring health and psychological benefits to themselves as individuals—both through practice on their own, and with others. As well as a positive sense of belonging to a community and transcendence, the individual benefits can be also physically healing, resulting from the sustained vibration of vocal sound through the body that happens when we extend the vowels of speech, which is basically what singing is.
The benefits can also be intimately personal- Darwin once remarked that “love is still the commonest theme of our songs” [ii]. Nothing changes, from Schubert song cycles to modern Top 40 chart hits. He also studied the role of ‘singing’ in animal sexual selection, the idea being that individuals can attract sexual partners through excellent singing. Indeed, a recent study showed that when adolescent females were added to an audience that boy choristers were performing to, the boys actually changed their individual sound quality to impress the girls, but at the cost of a good choral blend [iii]. How naughty!
Singing and chanting can also make people aware of the ineffable—in particular, when archaic, non-vernacular, and nonsense languages are being sung or chanted. Indeed, some traditions believe that the power of song cannot be separated from the words, even if they cannot be understood. The effects of the text of a song might come from a combination of participants gaining teachings from what the text means and the fact that communities can restate their collective beliefs, creeds, identities, and traditions through ritual texts. More generally it is likely that listeners respond subjectively both to the text and the experience, and may even feel a connection with all those that have chanted in this way before them, sometimes over hundreds, if not thousands, of years. And in group chanting, because individuals have to coordinate their movements and sounds with each other means that on some level they are also always taken beyond their own subjective experience.
But not all group singing is good! Singing can sometimes be used for aggressive and defensive purposes. It would seem that singing has power to unify a group, thus increasing a group’s violent or defensive potential against other groups of people, or even animals (e.g. football chants, the Maori Haka, or the chanting at Hitler’s Nuremberg rallies). Therefore, singing is not an inherently good or bad practice—what makes it one or the other is the intention of those performing, or listening to, the singing.
In conclusion, singing has power. For me, this is what is most compelling about it. Not the fact it is good for us, although it clearly can be, but the fact it transcends being good or bad, because it is simply a very powerful tool. May we use it well.
Practical Suggestion: Sit down, close your eyes, and sing the vowel ‘Ah’ on any note you like, holding the note for as long as you can, and listen to it. Repeat three times. And then listen to the silence.
References:
[i] Clift , S., Hancox, G., Marrison, I., Hess, B.,Kreutz, G., and Stewart, d. (2010) Choral singing and psychological wellbeing: quantitative and qualitative findings from English choirs in a cross-national survey. Journal of Applied Arts and Health 1, 19-34.
[ii] Darwin, C. (1885) The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (2nd ed). Murray, London, p. 571.
[iii] https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01559/full