Singing as...

An ode to humanity's first instrument

Singing as therapy

Sometime between 2017 and 2020, I was particularly anxious. Of course, I was often anxious during that time, but on this particular day my husband noticed that I was agitated.

“Why don’t you go sing?” he suggested.

Singing as memory

The first time I sang onstage, I was a child in the chorus of Carmen. That experience is so deep in my body that when I tried to recall the name of the opera, I started singing and found it. During my awkward teen years I only sang while locked in my room, but I rediscovered the joy of singing when a college friend and I started writing dark and weird songs in our dorm rooms. I took lessons in bel canto singing and learned about that deep mysterious instrument we call the diaphragm. When I talk, my voice is tense and can get hoarse. But bel canto taught me to sing for days.

Singing as body

Singing—whether alone in the shower, with a small group, or up on stage—is a full-body experience. We sing with visible parts of our body: our faces, our mouths, our tongues, our shoulders, arms, and hands. Even our lower body is engaged—it’s almost impossible to sing standing stock still. We also sing with our inner body. The diaphragm gives us the strength to project into a room or to sing so quietly we’re nearly inaudible. Our lungs take in air and then let it go in rhythm. When we sing, our blood is engaged, our skin, our toes.

When I really lose myself to singing, I can’t think of anything. Quite literally. If I start to think, my voice goes throaty again, I fumble the words, my pitch goes off. Singing taps into the unconscious mind. Athletes and writers call it The Zone. Singing accesses the deep mind, free of language even if we’re expressing language in our singing.

Singing as meditation

I can’t meditate. When I try to sit calmly and think of nothing, the words come hard and fast. I feel their sting like cold raindrops on bare skin. I hear them as an insistent, calm nagging. My inner voice is my voice but it’s also a voice I never use. It’s the voice that wakes me at 4 a.m. and says, “Now would be a great time to figure out how to save the world.”

But singing turns off that voice. Singing requires regular breathing and no conscious thought. When I told meditation expert Nicole Tetreault that I can’t meditate but I sing and swim, she said, “ Swimming is a meditation. Walking is a meditation. Music is a meditation. Meditation really is coming into presence, into the present moment.”

Singing as community

I am happiest when I am singing with others. I love singing with musicians, but even more, I crave making harmony. It’s not a mistake that we use the word “harmony” both for euphonious voices melding together and people getting along. When two singers match their overtones, it’s glorious in a pure way. When a group of people chorus their voices, they create a unique instrument, different each time a new voice enters or leaves.

For a few years as a young adult, I sang with the Peninsula Women’s Chorus, a group of 60 singers now led by this month’s Babblery guest, Anne Hege. My life was complicated then, but I didn’t regret giving up my Monday evenings.

Singing as learning

When I had my children, it was hard at first to keep making music with others. I thought of making music, aside from singing lullabies or holiday songs, as something I did with adults. Then I discovered Music Together, which offered classes for adults with children. Although children were the ones being entertained, adults were the ones being educated. We who were musicians learned to make imperfect music, music for togetherness rather than for performance. We who weren’t musicians learned to stop saying that non-musician refrain that makes me cringe, “Oh, I hate my voice.”

Singing as church

Recently a friend told me that she was starting a new Sunday Assembly in town. She called it “church, but without the religion.” Explaining that my Sundays were already engaged, I responded, “I go to jazz church.” I discovered jazz as a listener in my twenties, but not as a singer until I was coming back to adult music after raising my children. Earlier in my life I wanted to create something new, never heard before. But coming off the exhaustion of parenting, I just wanted to take part in a deep tradition of making music with our bodies.

Sing!

I dread hearing non-singers say that they hate their voice because the voice is humanity’s essential instrument. It was our first instrument, both melody and percussion. It is the only instrument made purely of our body. Hating our own voice is like hating our soul. Don’t do it. Frankly, I don’t like how my voice sounds either, but still, I sing. And I hope you do, too.

Sing when you’re happy
Sing when you’re sad
Sing angry songs
Sing hopeful songs
Sing with your body
Sing to forget
Sing to cement your memories
Sing badly Sing well
But no matter how
Just sing