CHORAL COMMUNISM

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 835, 2 December 1929, Page 8

CHORAL COMMUNISM

Open-Air Community s*uping r* t n hr introduced in Auckland lining the vier evenings, says a news item. rh*Auckland Comm unit \j Singiig Ccmmr,. has for sonic time been considerin', this question, and haring note secured tf,„ arrangements for tiro erperimcntJi “Sings ’ at Point Chcniiirr nnd.tn Mb*,Park. It is hoped to hold these t»t latter part of January. T DON’T want to appear as a wet * blanket or anything, but 1 cant help thinking that this is going to lead to trouble. It’s bound to.

Open air community singing is. on the face of it, a good idea. To start with, the singers can’t lift the roof At least, such an occurrence i, extremely improbable. . They can attempt it, of course, and more power io ‘em, but the top notes of "John Peel” frying to butt the sky will iia Ve a very different job to that of straining the lignum vitae of a common or garden roof truss. Similarly the low notes of ‘ Down Among the Dead Men" or Sailors Beware” will just thud heavily on the ground instead of denting the floor hoards of the Community Singing Hall. The crowd can make the welkin ring, of course, but as the welkin Is under City Council jurisdiction and moreover, is probably insured. great harm should come of it. But rhe great danger of outdoor community singing at more than one place is more subtle, more insrfiforts, than any of these. Suppose is spreads! The crowd in Albert Park, lot «s say. starts to ken John Poe!. Tory well. It bares its back teeth, vibrates the old uvula and the mighty roar of a thousand strong men kenning simultaneously sweeps the Park. It spreads. Old ladies in Princes Street take up the refrain, the Police Station starts vibrating with "View Halloo’s,” Queen Street catches it. old men mumble it. babies bawl it. Ponsonby picks up the chorus and soon the thing is roaring all over the city and spreading like wildfire.

At the same time, the Point Chevalier party has started, perhap', “Pack Up Your Troubles.” That, in its turn. Is caught up by hundreds, — thousands of throats and a screaming torrent of sound sweeps irresistibly toward the city. It's a mathematical certainty that somewhere these two storms of noise, travelling at something like 1,118 lent a second, are going to meet in a headon collision. And what’s going to happen then? Frankly, I haven't the least idea, but speaking for myself. L shall not spend the latter part of January hanging about Surrey Crescent. If two singing trials must he held, let one party be stationed at North Cape, and the other one at Bluff. The mighty sound clash would occur somewhere near Wellington then, and no great harm would ensue. Wellington would probably think it was an earthquake and take no notice. But there is another danger from this open-air singing. What about the risk of a hot sun melting the stopping in one’s back teeth and scorching one’s tonsils? The only way to prevent a badly sunburnt interior would be to swallow large drops of coconut oil. And one’s troubles wouldn’t stay down in the old kit-bag very long under such circumstances. The only other method would be to prepare for weeks beforehand, by spending short periods of, say. ten minutes each day, singing at the sun, in order to develop a good, hard, brown leathery epiglottis capable of producing fog-horn noises in all weathers. Of course, if the sun was very strong one could hum instead of singing. Many might prefer this, especially if their mouths should be full of ice-cream or peanuts In event of a rainy day, singers would have to stand on their heads at intervals in order to let the rain-water run out, or else confine their vocal activities to realistic interpretations of the Frothblowers’ Chorus or “I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles.”

The worst danger of the whole lot I have purposely kept until the la»t and it is an idea which no thinking man will be able to contemplate without blanching. Suppose.—just suP' pose— the thing spread into Community Dancing