Smells Like Teen Spirit

Abstract

My parents are very active in their church and have an intense love of music and singing. These two areas are married in their long-term involvement in their church choir. My mother is a soprano and my father sings as a tenor. Their choir is a small handful of dutiful parishioners that lead the congregation through the hymns. I do not know if this is common among church choirs in the Midwest, but this little choir always seemed to be lacking male participants. The altos and sopranos outnumbered the male voices almost two to one during the years that I grew up. Compounded on top of this disparity, the number of men singing bass was always fewer than those that sung tenor. As a result of these mismatches, my older brother was drafted to sing as soon as his voiced changed. His singing voice ended up being a tad lower than my father’s voice. Really a baritone in voice, he was close enough to augment the meager amount of basses present.