[ —Karen Myers — ]

I spent yesterday at the Bloomsburg Fair, the largest agricultural fair in Pennsylvania. There, before an estimated attendance of circa 30K people (some slice of which were actually in our venue), our barbershop quartet performed as part of a group of barbershop entertainers, seeking to make our chords ring out better than anyone else’s.

I’ve always been a singer (a tenor) in a variety of genres, but it’s been quite a while since I last spent a lot of time performing in public in a small one-voice-on-a-part ensemble (not since I did Renaissance Street Singing in NYC (suitably dressed) in the 80s). I’m so much older now that the whole social dynamic of such a group has become much more obvious to me, where once I was oblivious.

It’s a lot like the core team of characters careening through my books (and maybe yours, too). There are both technical similarities and social ones.

Lots of songs tell stories (the ones that aren’t purely lyrical observations or prayers/praise), and use familiar techniques from the dramatic arts in the process, including conventional stock characters. In the Men’s Barbershop genre, the parts are (bottom up) Bass, Baritone, Lead, Tenor. The Lead is the protagonist, the narrator. The Bass is the motor — the heart of the story. He supports the underlying emotional impact and crisis points of the story that the Lead presents. The Baritone supports both the Lead and the Bass, sympathizing with the one or the other, depending. The Tenor adds sparkle and commentary, like a sarcastic sidekick (you can see why I like it… 🙂 ). A typical arrangement will feature duets between any two adjacent voices, in passing, or dialogue passed back and forth between them. The bulk of the original stories come from the 1860s to the 1900s, with a dollop of black spirituals and a very heavy modern dose of doo-wop.

I think of the parts as my story team in any piece of fiction. The lead is sometimes the authorial narrator, and sometimes the protagonist. His team urges him on or restrains him, each in his own way. Some of them comment on the story or on the lead’s point of view to the audience, as sub-narrators, in the manner of a Greek chorus.

The team embodies the notion of leaders vs supporters. It uses contrasts of fear vs confidence, strength vs weakness, suspicion vs acceptance. A welter of emotional reactions is typical, whether the song tells a full (if brief) story or just dwells on a momentary event or a sudden insecurity. Or, to put it another way, there’s a hero, a sidekick, a reliable friend, a discussion and their concerns are sudden emotions, acceptance of changes, determination, bravery, chagrin, humor, recognition of the human condition, all presented in an intimate way. How is this different from any storytelling?

And, remember, this is a genre known for its “barbershop chords”, the crunchy 7ths and 9ths and diminished chords that are the most obvious musical signature of the form. They operate as emotional highpoints, as if we catch the protagonist weeping, or celebrating, or committing, and they are always milked for their full impact, both musically and dramatically, with the musical (and emotional) ebb and flow of dissonance and resolution.

…and the actual performers? Much the same. 🙂 All the human stories of pride, hesitation, competence, frustration, helpfulness, competition, determination, delight, and despair, with a healthy dollop of “lookitthat — they liked our performance!” The echo within the group about the emotions of the songs is a meta-commentary that is a constant amusement to me.

I see reflections of “storytelling” everywhere these days, and now that I do it professionally, I realize I’ve been noticing it ever since I started reading fairy tales and listening to traditional ballads as a pre-teen. Does it work that way for you?