Giving boys a voice

Thanks for this article go to Ford Motor Company. I was watching their commercial on television - you know, the one where the group of blokes is yarning in falsetto voices and then their bass-baritone mate Johnno rolls up in his new Ford Courier and they all mew, “Oh, nice!” The first couple of times I saw it I had quite a laugh. Then I asked myself why.

It didn’t take much brainpower to see that the commercial says something about how our culture views the voice as an expression of sexuality, gender and status. And so, as a music teacher with a special interest in vocal development, I heard the bugle call to arms.

We need to sing. It is learned psycho-motor behaviour, as Kenneth Phillips says, and is feasible for nearly all people. We should do so. Musical activity regenerates the individual, cements crumbling societies and bridges cultures. Vocal music is especially potent, emanating from deep within the human body itself rather than an external object. Being unmediated, singing is a peculiarly intense expression and exploration of the inner self. At the same time, however, opening up the inner self makes the singer highly vulnerable, and for this reason becoming a singer at any level is fraught with risks. Hence many people avoid it as much as possible.

Our culture discourages males in particular from singing. Women in general will sing at a party more readily than the men. Mothers will sing with their children far more often than fathers do. In most community choirs it is extremely difficult to recruit enough tenors and basses. The taboo against male singing is apparent even among primary school children.

Once, hoping to inspire some primary-school kids with no experience of excellent singing by unchanged voices, I played a CD recording of one of my former boy-treble choristers. I presented the performance without revealing anything about the singer, and they seemed impressed. But when I mentioned the singer’s name, many boys snickered. “You mean that’s a boy?” they sneered. “He sounds like a girl!”

Like other singing teachers I’ve encountered this reaction often. Many, perhaps most, boys are afraid of sounding like girls, even if they secretly love to sing. They may therefore sing half-heartedly at best, or only in an artificially low pitch which is unhealthy for the vocal cords. Quite a few refuse to sing at all.

Many of those boys who do sing well and with enjoyment in childhood stop completely when they come to the difficult age of the voice-change. While girls may find a small vocal change in adolescence it is not anything like the challenge facing boys.

A healthier, happier and more meaningful Australia would be the result if we were to set about growing a singing culture. While living and working in China I admired the readiness of its people to sing in public. Inching my way through shoulder-to-shoulder crowds I would often hear a person nearby - usually a male - singing softly but clearly. In the town-streets men would pass on their bicycles or electric scooters, singing folk-songs or pop with gusto. And they were always pleasantly in tune. The harder part of encouraging this vocal confidence and spontaneity in Australia would be to win the males over. For some it may be too late, but certainly not for the young ones. So what can we do?

Start from birth, or even earlier. Parents should sing to their infants as often as possible. Mother and baby have a similar vocal pitch, so the child learns to tune in from her more easily. At the same time it’s important that fathers sing too, especially as a model for the boy. The activity can revive the souls of parents: the family sing-along is a fountain of youth.

Boys on average have more difficulty in listening than the average girl, so some extra pains may be necessary to increase their attention. Sing in an environment with minimal distraction, perhaps, and with the boy close to the adult. Eye-contact at the same time can make the experience even more powerful for both.

If the child is singing don’t expect or demand perfection. Different children develop at different rates, so one five-year-old may sing in tune while another does not. Unlike instrumental music, singing involves both language and musical aspects. Some children may get the words right but take longer to master the rhythm and melody, and for others the reverse may be the case. In the very early years enjoyable participation should be the central aim.

Before puberty boys and girls both have treble voices, but there are real differences in the sound. We must help children to recognise this. There is a difference in the strength of the sound, for a start, and the two contrast in timbre (or tone-colour). The boy-voice is sometimes described as haunting and transparent, also as ethereal, cold, pure, piercing, and guileless. Recognising such qualities, makers of films have often deliberately used boys’ voices in their sound- tracks. The Australian television advertisement for a bank in Western Australia a few years ago was very successful mainly because it featured the haunting singing of a local boy-treble. We must help boys accept their treble voices while taking pride in their unique attributes.

Anxious to distinguish themselves from girls, boys will often try to push down their voices in both speech and song to an unnatural pitch. Not only does it sound unpleasant and usually out of tune, but it can cause the development of nodules on the vocal cords. Unfortunately many pop and rock singers provide bad examples in this respect. Children, and especially boys, should be taught the essentials of vocal health.

We need many more opportunities for boys to sing in community events. Perhaps we should all be speaking to our local governments, many of which these days employ a Community Arts Co-ordinator, though perhaps under another title. Some creative thought could surely result in new concerts to celebrate popular or worthy causes, occasions and ideas.

After many years directing choirs in co-educational schools and finding very few boys among my recruits, I accepted an appointment to a boys-only school and found two-thirds of the students at my door wanting an audition! Many of my fellow choir-directors have recounted similar tales: when girls are not involved, boys are much more eager to sing.

These days I advocate promotion of boy-choirs in co-ed schools. The dearth of them for many decades has meant that most people have not heard the special sound of the traditional male-voice choir, and that makes it harder for people like me to promote it. The aim is simply to provide the best context for helping boys to develop their vocal skills and understanding of music. Boys and girls should also sing together, of course, and that can easily be done by merging choirs as desired.

Boys who have trained and strengthened their voices as trebles are much more able to continue after puberty. Waiting until after the voice-change to begin serious singing only makes it much more difficult for the boy to make the transition. And that is how we should treat it: as a transition. Let’s abandon the notion that a boy’s voice “breaks”, because it presents this time as a breakdown, a disaster. Call it the change of voice and celebrate the event. Publicly acknowledge it in a rite of passage.

Then we must keep the boy singing, adjusting progressively to the series of changes in pitch and timbre. The old idea that he should “rest” his voice during adolescence has been proved wrong. It only creates an unnecessary obstacle to development. He can keep singing with careful adult guidance, using repertoire suitable for the transitional voice. With patience and continual encouragement he will emerge as a confident and able adult singer.

We need many more teachers, both in schools and elsewhere, with the expertise to help boys make the most of their own voices and to be proud of it. And even those of us who have some experience and knowledge in the area would welcome more research into male vocal development and techniques for facilitating it.

Support for teaching boys to sing should be a significant part of the national thrust to improve education for boys and to deal with male issues. Performing arts are recognised as a powerful means of enhancing affective, cognitive and social development, and of all these arts singing is arguably the most transformative.

So what are we to make of the Ford-driving Johnno and his squeaky mates? I think I was laughing at that advertisement because it seemed almost a satire of itself. I hope it was. The idea that boys’ unchanged voices are feminine, and therefore powerless and inferior, deserves to be ridiculed because it has such a damaging grip on our society. Anyway, I sing in a bass voice at least as big as Johnno’s - and prefer to pedal a two-wheeler.