Barbershop singing is a distinctive and under-documented facet of Britain's musical landscape. Imported from the USA in the 1960s, it has developed into an active and highly organized musical community characterized by strong social support structures and a proselytizing passion for its particular style. This style is defined, within the community, in largely music-theoretical terms and is both highly prescriptive and continually contested, but there is also a host of performance traditions that articulate barbershop's identity as a distinct and specific genre. Liz Garnett documents and analyses the social and musical practices of this specialized community of music-makers, and extends this analysis to theorize the relationship between music and self-identity. The book engages with a range of sociological and musicological theoretical frameworks in order to explore the role of harmony, ritual, sexual politics, performance styles and 'tag-singing' in barbershop. This analysis shows how musical style and cultural discourses can be seen to interact in the formation of identity. Garnett provides the first in-depth scholarly insight into the British barbershop community, and contributes to ongoing debates in the semiotics and the sociology of music.

Newsroom, political platform, local hot spot, confession box, preacher-pulpit and football stadium. For generations, African men have gathered in barber shops to discuss the world. These are places where the banter can be barbed and the truth is always telling. Barber Shop Chronicles, which was partly inspired by verbatim recordings, is a heart-warming, hilarious and insightful play that leaps from a barber shop in Peckham to Johannesburg, Harare, Kampala, Lagos and Accra over the course of a single day. It was first produced by the National Theatre, Fuel and Leeds Playhouse in 2017 and is here publishedas a Methuen Drama Student Edition with commentary and notes by Oladipo Agboluaje.

In SoYou Want to Sing Barbershop, veteran barbershoppers Billy J. Biffle of the Barbershop Harmony Society and Diane M. Clark of Sweet Adelines International provide a practical handbook for singers at all levels who want to learn about the American art form known as barbershop singing. Clark and Biffle explore the history of the style, survey the international organizational structure of the twenty-first century barbershop world, and outline techniques to develop the necessary vocal skills for the style. Guest authors Scott McCoy and Wendy LeBorgne provide valuable information on vocal anatomy and vocal health. The So You Want to Sing seriesis produced in partnership with the National Association of Teachers of Singing. Like all books in the series, So You Want to Sing Barbershop features online supplemental material on the NATS website. Please visit www.nats.org to access style-specific exercises, audio and video files, and additional resources.

It is a truism in teaching choral conducting that the director should look like s/he wishes the choir to sound. The conductor's physical demeanour has a direct effect on how the choir sings, at a level that is largely unconscious and involuntary. It is also a matter of simple observation that different choral traditions exhibit not only different styles of vocal production and delivery, but also different gestural vocabularies which are shared not only between conductors within that tradition, but also with the singers. It is as possible to distinguish a gospel choir from a barbershop chorus or a cathedral choir by visual cues alone as it is simply by listening. But how can these forms of physical communication be explained? Do they belong to a pre-cultural realm of primate social bonding, or do they rely on the context and conventions of a particular choral culture? Is body language an inherent part of musical performance styles, or does it come afterwards, in response to music? At a practical level, to what extent can a practitioner from one tradition mandate an approach as 'good practice', and to what extent can another refuse it on the grounds that 'we don't do it that way'? This book explores these questions at both theoretical and practical levels. It examines textual and ethnographic sources, and draws on theories from critical musicology and nonverbal communication studies to analyse them. By comparing a variety of choral traditions, it investigates the extent to which the connections between conductor demeanour and choral sound operate at a general level, and in what ways they are constructed within a specific idiom. Its findings will be of interest both to those engaged in the study of music as a cultural practice, and to practitioners involved in a choral conducting context that increasingly demands fluency in a variety of styles.

Investigates the role that vernacular, barbershop-style close harmony has played in American musical history, in American life, and in the American imagination. It critiques the myths that have surrounded the barbershop revival, but also celebrates the participatory spirit of the harmony.

International music studies.

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Coretta Scott King Award winner A young girl’s beloved uncle is a talented barber without a shop who never gives up on his dream in this richly illustrated, stirring picture book. Everyone has a favorite relative. For Sarah Jean, it’s her Uncle Jed. Living in the segregated South of the 1920s, where most people are sharecroppers, Uncle Jed is the only black barber in the county and has to travel all over the county to cut his customers’ hair. He lives for the day when he could open his very own barbershop. But there are a lot of setbacks along the way. Will Uncle Jed ever be able to open a shiny new shop?

Of report -- National 'umbrella' organisations and interest groups: -- Music and folk dance -- Drama -- Organisations of craftspeople -- Visual artists and film societies -- Young Farmers' Clubs, Women's Institutes and Townswomen's Guilds -- The public sector and the amateur arts -- Professional/amateur collaboration: -- ...music -- ...drama -- ...The Royal National Eisteddfod of Wales -- Creative writing -- Area studies: -- Aberdeen -- Exeter -- London Borough of Lewisham -- Powys -- Stoke-on-Trent and Newcastle-under-Lyme -- Teignbridge -- Telford New Town -- Appendices: -- A Selected 'umbrella' organisations: membership by English region and county, 1990 -- B The National Federation of Music Societies (NFMS) -- C Youth theatres in the UK -- D Local art clubs and societies -- E The role of the volunteer.