Transcript of “What Can We Call a Session of Singing Together for Enjoyment’s Sake?”
Hello, welcome to A Way with Words.
Hi there, this is Jane Lowy calling over here from Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
Hello, Jane from Cape Cod. What’s going on?
I run a community, women’s community choir, and I’ve been doing it for over 20 years.
And we gather weekly until the pandemic, of course.
And we have a different purpose than a traditional choir, which is, you know, you kind of rehearse so many nights and then you wind up with a concert.
But what we do is meet to sort of develop community and joy and resilience and for our own good fun.
And sometimes we have concerts, sometimes we don’t.
And certainly during these last couple of years, the emphasis hasn’t been on performing.
So I really dislike the word rehearsal for what we do.
And I’m looking around for something that speaks to our gathering, but has a musical emphasis to it.
It’s not quite a rehearsal. It’s just a regular gathering.
Yes. And we’re not trying to do something else, if you know what I mean.
I want what we do is complete in and of itself each time we get together.
So it’s a real thing. It’s not a rehearsal.
Right. And if you do shows for the public, those are just a byproduct.
Correct.
Oh, what a wonderful question.
So you’re really talking about not just the artistic process of getting better at whatever you’re singing, but also that joy and community and sharing and common everything, right?
I mean, there’s so many health benefits I have read from singing together, right?
Yes.
And funny, you should use the word common because we call ourselves common voices.
Oh, that’s nice.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, but there’s all kinds of research that your hearts kind of start beating together, and it gets almost addictive, doesn’t it, to make music with somebody else?
Yes, it really does.
And it’s not only addictive, but it’s really life-supporting and life-affirming.
It becomes people’s, like, a necessary part of life, yes.
Right.
You want a word besides rehearsal then, just sort of slogging along and building this song that you’re going to perform for people.
It’s about the experience itself.
Boy, I love this concept.
And, of course, I’m reaching back to Greek and Latin, but I feel like the words that would come from the Greek and Latin are already taking.
I mean, I’m thinking of symphony, which comes from Greek words that mean voices together.
But that word is kind of taken, and then there are all these other great words from Latin cantare, meaning to sing, you know, like enchantment goes back to Latin cantare.
And also the word accent goes back to a Latin word that means to sing.
An accent is literally song added to speech.
That doesn’t help you, does it, though?
Well, no, only because it wouldn’t be familiar to a common voice, so to speak.
You know, people wouldn’t automatically relate to it and know why they were going.
Right.
I guess I’ll have to throw out this Sardinian phrase I was thinking of.
Throw out your Sardinian phrase, Grant.
Well, the phrase is, which means a night voice song.
But they use it to, you know, in their multi-part singing traditions, Higinia, to refer to singing for pleasure, spending time together.
Ooh, what’s the phrase again?
It’s a conto a boge note, literally night voice song.
Or it translates maybe to I sing at night or nightly song.
But it’s about the habitual action of singing, maybe emphasizing the content of the text.
But again, it’s not an everyday phrase.
But I just, I really think the notion of it is what you’re going for here.
Yeah.
Years ago I read Anthony Bourdain’s books and he’s got a lot of restaurant sling and then we watched the tv show The Bear recently and there’s something called the family meal and this is food cooked in a restaurant for the staff who they sit down either before open or after closed to eat together and a family concert doesn’t quite work but I think the sentiment is there this idea that we’re all spending time together for our own purposes basically serving ourselves our own product more or less or singing for ourselves so clothes show or home show or something like that maybe you’re a little too bland but something along those lines maybe it’s just what is it about this focusing your attention inward to the group the word that stuck out to me the most that’s passed our lips today is enchantment and martha said that so something about enchanting or you know, that’s kind of the closest that sort of rang a bell for me.
Huh. Interesting.
I could see that as being a beautiful springboard to a lot of possibilities.
Look that up in a couple of thesauruses and see if anything clicks for you.
Or look up its etymology and break it down into its word origins and its component roots.
And just see if something kind of comes at you from an angle and your eyes open wide.
And you have that moment with the hair standing up on the back of your neck.
Okay, I’ll be looking for that.
Yeah, we always are.
Well, Jane, the great thing is that we have lots of listeners who I am sure want to weigh in on this, people who have had that same kind of experience that you have every time that you sing with your fellow singers.
And maybe we can crowdsource this and somebody will come up with an even better one.
So stay tuned, okay?
I sure will.
And thank you very much.
I appreciate the exploration.
Take care now.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye now.
Martha and I are open to your recommendations, your questions, your thoughts, your ideas.
Email words@waywordradio.org.
