Keira WitherKay wrote:
a huge secret in the music biz......... is that NOT everyone CAN sing ....... and if you LIKE ME and know singing is not your strong point ...shut the f...k up , it does no justice and only drags the standard down of everything else you have to offer musically ........cos nothing can ruin a band like a bad singer ........... or even a mediocre one.........
sorry to be the killjoy but it's a fact .....
I'm not so sure. I don't think everybody is Maria Callas, but most people should be able to sing and to harmonise.
I work at a hospital. From time to time the nurses there get out in the garden and sing (for various reasons). Now when you apply for a job as a nurse they don't ask "can you sing?" but they can. Strong voices, good pitch, harmonies... I think there is something in modern, dare I say "western" society that has resulted in most of us not singing. It's a learned skill, sure, but people used to learn it quite a natural way. They'd have singsongs at home, or round a camp fire (Boy Scouts perhaps). I've made the point before about Eliza Carthy who is a fab singer and clearly has a bit extra in the "natural talent" department but who also comes from a family of singers. Her mother is Norma Waterson of the famous singing (acapella) Watersons family. Only three of the Watersons originally got up on stage (joined first by a cousin whose surname inconveniently was Harrison, then later by Martin Carthy) and most of the kids didn't go into the family business at first. But in recent years Waterson off-spring have popped up seemingly out of nowhere for various tribute and reunion shows (Norma is now the last of the original Watersons left) and they are all excellent singers. Because that's what their family does - they sing. Even the ones who decided to not pursue a musical career. And they all sang (and were sung to) from a very early age.
Joe Boyd has talked about this, saying that so many singers he hears these days are sort of manufactured but there are some (he named Kate McGarrigle's kids) who have always sung, since they were toddlers, and they sing in a different way.
So ja, I think it's a little bit of a loss that we have all sustained. We don't sing any more, and because we don't sing we can't sing.
