European Singing

I'm an Irish girl so I was going to make this post about Irish music but then realised how utterly boring that would be so instead I am going to do Croatian singing.
The most famous style of Croatian singing is the traditional a capella Klapa singing. 'Klapa' originally meant 'a group of people' and has its roots in church singing. This style of singing is usually unaccompanied and is found along the Dalmatian coast. This music is occasionally accompanied by a guitar and mandolin but they play very softly. Kapa music is usually made up of all male voices; two tenors, a bass and a baritone.
Although klapa is an ancient stlye of singing, there are still new songs being composed every day and there are klapa festivals all over Croatia, the most famous being the Omis festival.

Video Courtesy of Youtube

Ocenanian Singing

The first country I am going to talk about is Australia. Signing is a vital form of communication in most cultures around the world and the Australian Aborigines are no exception. The Aborigines were not able to write and so they wrote songs and told stories instead. These songs helped to preserve the Aborigine culture and keep traditions alive throughout the generations. Aborigine songs are all mnemonic, they serve an educational purpose and are usually quite simple and monotonous.
A famous Aborigine singer is Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu, a member of the Gutmatj clan of the Yolngu. He is blind and acutely shy but he is quite famous in Australia and has recently shot to fame in Europe after taking part in a live performance at the Queen's Diamond Jubilee in London. He was one of the artists featured on the song 'Sing', produced by Gary Barlow. This was a song compiled by Barlow to represent the different countries of the Commonwealth and featured traditional music from Australia, Kenya and many other countries from the Commonwealth.
This song represented the different cultures contained within the Commonwealth and it showed off the traditional singing of many different countries. Follow the link below to watch 'Sing' featuring Aborigine singer Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu.
http://www.contactmusic.com/video/gary-barlow-sing-featuring-the-commonwealth-band-military-wives-video

Singing's Effects on History

Before I begin on continental singing, I am going to talk about the effects singing has had on what we know about the past. Some of the most famous songs are based around historical events and teach us about those periods in time. The reason for this is because these songs are written by people who are experiencing these events first-hand.
One of the most prolific songs in Irish society is 'The Fields of Athenry'. This is about a man who is living in Ireland during the 'Great Famine 1845'.

He sings about being deported for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his starving family. Singing makes history more accessible as we can learn more about a period in time through the medium of music instead of dusty old books. Now, I'm not saying that these songs are always 100% accurate, nor am I belittling books as a source of accurate information, the point I am trying to make is that singing can make heavy facts easier to digest.

http://vimeo.com/23553644
'The Fields of Athenry' by the County Kings (Courtesy of vimeo.com)

Contents

There are so many things I could say about singing. I could give you the history, the science or the statistics. But that doesn't interest me and I don't think that would interest any of you guys either.
I'm not going to go too much into the heavy stuff because learning to sing takes years and years of practise and it takes weeks and weeks to explain. I'm going to talk about the Geography of Classical Singing and The first continent I will be profiling will be Oceania, then Europe, then Africa, then North America, then South America, then Asia and then I will be exploring the unknown area of Antarctic singing.
The way my vocal coach teaches me is through imagery and I think that works the best.
There are three things you need to be able to sing; perseverance, patience and A LOT of determination.
As William Vennard once said;
"Learning to sing is a slow and patient undertaking, in which a good ear is the prerequisite, the imagery is an aid supplied by the teacher, and the experience is gradually accumulated until it is so powerful that merely calling up the memory will reproduce it"
So in modern language, what saying is if you work hard at it, eventually it will just come naturally to you. Now, I'm not saying I have all the answers, nor am I saying I am an expert on the topic, after all I have only had two years of vocal training myself and so I am nowhere near the standard that I am aiming for. All I want is for you, my blog reader, to learn about singing and the different historical and cultural meanings it has for different people and for singing to feel more accessible to you.
So bear with me and keep reading!

Overture

So, this is my (Victoria's) brand new blog about the Geography of Singing. What I will be aiming to do in my blog is to talk about the origins of singing and how it is interpreted in different civilisations. I am going to be profiling traditional singing from each of the seven continents of the world and I will be trying to keep singing puns to a minimum.

I have been classically trained for two years now and will be doing my Grade IV Voice Exam in May. I sing in three choirs and am currently taking part in my school's production of Les Miserables so I am a very keen singer.

Now, some of you bloggers out there must be conjuring up images of fat ladies in corsets singing arias but that really isn't the case. I'm going to be aiming to cast those images out of your mind and replace them with much more interesting and modern images of singers.

So BASSically (sorry!) this blog is going to be me trying to get more people interested in singing and trying to make singing more accessible to everyone so please keep reading!!!