The Fun of Singing

This is an extract from an article by writer and broadcaster Libby Purves:

Singing is natural to human beings, it connects with something deep inside us. You can do it softly, a lullaby to your fretful inward self or you can belt it out like a sea-shanty.

You might choose to do it in public at a karaoke night, or keep it as a private matter between you and your plastic duck and loofah. You may accompany yourself on the air-guitar, or just put a swing in your step (or your ironing). Or you may stand quite still, in a respectable congregation, and let your voice do all the work as you roar out a request to the Almighty to Forgive our foolish ways.

Singing raises the spirits. It's been proved by experts. It's been in the British Journal of Medical Psychology: singing increases the heart rate, reduces tension and raises energy levels. Singing is natural to human beings, it connects with something deep inside us, regulates our breathing to a happier level, stretches our tense, cross necks and cleans out all the bad tempered rubbish of daily life.

Embarrassment, Britishness, the stiff upper lip, all conspire against us doing what comes naturally. But we should. Even a sad song can cheer you up. It all began at primary school Then it was big school and assembly. If you were lucky you got plainsong as well as chapel. Singing plainsong (even the Dies lrae) makes you feel really good. Then there were the concerts and even a school opera. There was nothing to beat being in a chorus line of more or less unmusical girls in drapey sheets having a real go at Dido and Aeneas.

But you leave school and it fades away. Unless you really can sing well, and join a choir and thus find the secret of true happiness, you come to assume that nobody wants to hear you. On boats, singing comes naturally: there's nothing like being alone at the wheel, in the night, and crooning to your little ship.

Unless it is having a baby to sing to - babies are fantastically appreciative, and don't know when you hit a wrong note. The ideal audience. The important thing is to keep on singing, whether alone or in chorus, through the mundane duties of daily life. It's better than Prozac by far.

Shy types can sing along to records, creative ones can make up new words, those with a Bryn Terfel complex can walk up mountains and let loose a wild, thundering baritone. If you are a Christian, hymns are tremendous mood-raisers.

Well, maybe that's not to your taste. But there are always the great numbers from the musicals, or a blast of early Beatles, or the Hallelujah Chorus. Ah, go on. Go for it! Yodel, chant, intone, yowl, croon, emote, give it some welly.  Let the people sing!

This edited version is reproduced by kind permission of Saga Magazine.