Giving boys a voice

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.