Piano World Home Page Forums General Discussions Musicians Welcome! INTRODUCTION TO MY SINGALONG BOOKLETS

INTRODUCTION TO MY SINGALONG BOOKLETS
AND SING ALONGS

I'm sure the traditional, once fashionable, sing along, will surface again. I wrote the following summary of my Baha'i and non-Baha'i experience of sing alongs recently. I include this summary below. I wrote this little piece and revised it several times for some internet sites and it has come to serve several purposes. I trust whoever comes upon this brief essay/posting/comment and reads a good part of it will find my words resonate with/in their life somewhat. If these few words(not few enough I hear some add!) don't resonate by, say, the end of the first paragraph, just stop reading and go somewhere else. Sing alongs may not be your cup of tea....I knew a man once who had 3 bags to make his cup of tea. Can you imagine!!
____________________
The first booklets of music in my life, at least those I remember, go back to the early 50s. But the first booklet of music that I put together myself in order to run sing alongs was in the late 1960s at the end of the counter-culture period in North America as some define
that period of time. From about 1953 to 2005, a period of more than 50 years, from the age of about 9 to 60, I was involved in sing alongs in one form or another. In the last ten years, 1997 to 2007, though, sing alongs using booklets of songs I or others whom I knew-or did not know- became rarer and rarer--and eventually non-existent occasions.

In some ways it was fitting that the last three years of sing alongs in my life, 2002-2005, involved very senior citizens. I thought at the time that William Faulkner's spirit may have been present in those sing alongs. I thought, as I led these old folks in song, that the spirit he had when he wrote his now famous book "As I Lay Dieing" may just be at the back of the leisure-social-room where we had our sing alongs. For all these people all lay, sat up or palely loitered about dieing slowly. Each month that I went back to this old folks home during the three years of these sing alongs someone else had died or was on the edge. The term ‘old folks home’ was what we used to call these places for the old and dieing when I was a kid.

For these last sing alongs in my life, at least to this point in time, the year 2007, I used published songbooks whose content was mainly for a generation born in the first quarter of the twentieth century the earliest years of Baha’i activity in Australia, the religion I have been associated with more than 50 years ago. There was material in my one remaining sing along booklet for all age groups, but I never used it, well, only very rarely for the sing alongs here with very senior citizens in George Town. We used publishing company booklets with glossy covers for the sing alongs. Incidentally, George Town is the oldest town in Australia and so it is fitting again that what very well may be the last ray of light on the mountain top of sing alongs in my life has taken place in this town at may also very well be the g-spot of this island comunity I now call home. And it may be, too, a g-spot that few if any ever find and I can enjoy the pleasures of musical silence.

There is no material in my sing along booklets that originated from about 1977 to 2007. The group of humans born in the years after 1970 I have never tried to cater to with songs that came on board in those years. Their musical experience was, for the most part, not mine. My ears, it seemed, had moved on or out or over--or perhaps "back" is the most accurate word. I had moved back to jazz, classical, the top-40 from 1945 to 1975. The only radio-station here in this old town and whose sound I receive on my very old radio with a clarity denied to all other sources plays only top-40 from that period. Period piece music for a period piece person I sometimes think. I did not listen to the music of the generation that was 5 years old in 1975 and 37 this year, at least not much. I did not listed to their music enough to be familiar with their songs and their lyrics and certainly not well enough to sing them in groups informally in the Baha’i community and/or in any other communities of which I was a part of as a teacher in primary, secondary and tertiary educational institutions--or, indeed, any kind of institution or non-institution.

But the resources in my personally prepared, tenderly fostered, oft-repeated and used to the point of utterness are here in my files, my collections now kept tightly held together with a big rubber-band for a future time when, and if, sing alongs ever return to my life and to the groups I am involved with as I head into the middle years of late adulthood and, finally, old age. Old age begins, say some human development psychologists, at the age of 80. I've come to like that model since the 1990s sometime for it gives me, now in 2007, another 18 years before I'm actually, officially, or shall I say psychologically, old.

I have multiple copies of what I have come to call ‘secular song booklets’ for those not familiar with the Baha’i musical experience, for the students in classrooms I once had when I used to teach and for other groups who were notin classrooms with whom I used to sing . I have many editions, too, of song books in multiple copy form that I made for Baha’i groups, as I say, as far back as the late 1960s. I’m sure that these musical experiences called sing alongs will one day return and, when they do, I will be ready with my little bag of tricks. Who knows when and who knows where!

My wife and son became a little tired of hearing the same old stuff back in the 1980s and 1990s. For I need my song sheets; they have been my bible, my crutch, my only hope of ever generating a sing along: everyone with the same pages, the same words, the same everything---well--as samey as one can get, as one needs to get and, indeed, must get, if the folks in the group are ever to sing at all. As my wife and son moved around Australia with me, again and again they would hear--in halls, in homes, in a strange assortment of places-- the same old stuff. Can you blame them for their musical fatigue?

Singing in groups seemed to become passe, perhaps even slightly declasse, in the wider society in those same 1980s and 1990s. But I’m sure such singing will return before my demise, my passing from this mortal coil. Anyway, we shall see. If I live to be old, that is to be 80, good-god the sky is the limit. This limit I may never see but then such is life.

Ron Price
George Town
Tasmania
____________
P.S. Had a two song sing along last weekend with 40 people. There is still hope.

SINGALONGS AND MY TWO-2 RING BINDERS: 1952 TO 2012

Part 1:

This 2200 word, 5 page font 14, essay explores the story of the gradual evolution of the singalong booklets in my life: 1952 to 2012. The first booklets of music in my life, at least those I remember, go back to the late 40s and early 50s, 1948 to 1952, when I was four to eight years old. The first booklet of music, though, that I put together myself in order to run singalongs was in the late 1960s or early 70s, when I was in my mid-20s.

From, say, 1952 to 1972, then, I ran along on the singalong booklets of others: my parents’, my friends’ and, of course by the decade 1962 to 1972, the occasional purchased songbook. By the 1960s I had no TV and it was not until about 1977 that I had a TV in my home. I mention this because, by the late 50s and early 60s, TV was a useful source of singing material. During a period of some 60 years, from 1952 to 2012 I have been involved in singalongs in one form or another.

In the last ten years though, 2002 to 2012, singalongs using booklets of songs I created took place for the most part at an aged care facility, an Australian government-funded aged care home, called the Ainslie House. This collection of buildings is located beside the Tamar River, an estuary, that runs beside George Town and Low Head in Tasmania. The residents of this home in this the oldest town in Australia, live in a modern and attractive facility about one kilometre from the Bass Strait, an extension of the Great Southern Ocean at the other end of the world from where I was born and grew to maturity in Canada.

I have been in at least two dozen aged care buildings in my life. These places where home means living with many new people under one roof, getting used to other people doing some of the everyday things a person might have previously done for themselves and by themselves as well as working out new balances between one’s need for privacy and the inevitable community nature of such a life--these places are now an increasingly burgeoning presence across our civilization as war-babies like myself and baby-boomers all come into their late adulthood(60 to 80) incrementally year after year. Any child born in the first year of WW2 in 1939 will be seventy-three in 2012.

Part 2:

As a lecturer in aged care studies, programs in which I finished my teaching career in an Australian technical and further education college dealing with students studying aged care and other specialist training programs in various human services certificate and diploma courses, I became as I had so often before become “an instant expert.” I am now an expert in more and more subjects and know less and less about more and more, or so it seems, as the years go on in our information society.

A range of different levels of care as well as specialist services are available here in these buildings by the sea under one management and organizational structure: high and low level care, short and long term care, independent units and shared accommodation, transition as well as particular and multi-service care are all available under one roof. Care and services such as: respite care, care for particular cultural needs and health conditions, care for end-of-life clients, for war veterans, for the socially and financially disadvantaged, for the mentally ill and for people living in rural or remote areas. The flotsam and jetsam of society are all here on their last legs in they had the money to get in--that is.

To a lesser extent I also led singalongs in the decade 1992 to 2002 in the Baha’i community, a group I had, by then, been associated with for four decades by 1992. My final singalongs in classrooms took place as my teaching in FT, PT and volunteer roles wound down in that same decade. These singalongs became rare events in my last years in Perth Western Australia in large Baha’i communities and the smaller ones in northern Tasmania where I lived after 1999 and in the several classrooms where I taught.

In the dozen years or more that I lived in Tasmania, 1999 to 2012, guitar-playing and singalongs slipped to the periphery of my life with one exception of one main bastion of activity—with the old and dying. In some ways it was fitting that the last few years of the singalongs in my life, 2002-2012, involved mostly senior citizens, the aged, old people, those in the decades of late adulthood(60 to 80) and old age(80++)--here in George Town. I used large-print songbooks published in the UK with a small singing group, choir was not quite the right word, until 2005. I say “fitting” because the content of these booklets was mainly for the two generations born during and before WW2--in the first five decades of the twentieth century—the earliest years in Canada and Australia of the activity of the Baha’i community, the religious community I have been associated with since the 1950s.

From 2008 to 2012, though, the material in my two volumes, my two 2-ring binders, that I used for singalongs was for all age groups. It must be said though that there are very few songs that originated in the period, the two generations that were born in the years from 1972 to 2012, circa.

Part 3:

The group born in the years after about 1972 will find few songs that were popular from their years of listening experience in these two binders. I did not listen to the music of those two generations. For the music of some two generations(1972 to 1992 and 1992 to 2012), of a great mass of popular music; for example, the songs of groups like Abba, among a host of others, I never bought the sheet music nor did I learn how to play the songs in some personally inventive way by figuring out the chords. So it was that by 2008 I did not know the songs of those under forty well enough to sing them in groups informally in the Baha’i community or in any other communities of which I was a part as a teacher in primary, secondary and tertiary educational institutions, as an adult educator, as a quasi-entertainer or one of a number of other roles I have had during those years.

These resources here in these booklets, these files, this collection, are here for singalongs in the groups I am involved with as I head through the middle years, 65 to 75, of late adulthood(60 to 80), and the last years of that stage(75 to 80) and finally, old age(80++), if I last that long. I have multiple copies of what I have come to call the music of other interest groups--for those not familiar with the Baha’i musical experience, booklets of songs I put together for students in classrooms where I used to teach as well as other groups.

I have many editions of song books in multiple copy form that I made for Baha’i groups, as I say, as far back as the late 1980s. Songbooks from the previous two decades, the years 1972 to 1992, and the two decades before that, 1952 to 1972, have all been lost, thrown away or disappeared into the sands of time, the time that has been my life, as it has slipped irretrievably from my grasp.

These musical experiences called singalongs have returned to my life now here in George Town in the four years 2008 to 2012. In July 2008 I put together a package/booklet of 75 songs as requested by the local aged care centre. Who knows when and who knows where and how these singalongs will develop in these years of late adulthood. My wife and son became a little tired of hearing the same old stuff back in the 1980s and 1990s for I am not a particularly talented guitarist and it is understandable that they have got tired of hearing all these old songs, this repertoire of mine. Singing in groups seemed to become passé, perhaps even to become seen as déclassé or lower in social status/standing in the wider society or at least many sectors of the wider society that I came to live and have my being in by the 1990s and 2000s.

Part 4:

This form of self-entertainment and group entertainment that does not rely on the electronic media, though, is far from dead, and I feel it will be part of my life in these years before my demise, my passing from this mortal coil. In some ways it has been fitting that most of the singalongs I have been part of in the last few years, 2008 to 2012, have involved residents of a home for those in aged care, for people on their last legs.

I often thought that American writer William Faulkner's spirit may have been present in those sing alongs. I often thought, too, as I led these old folks in song that the spirit Faulkner had when he wrote his now famous book "As I Lay Dying" may just be at the back of the leisure-social-room where we had our singalongs; perhaps this great writer, this winner of a Nobel prize in literature, hangs around the ceiling or occupied another place in these rooms and outside which the poet-historian Arnold Toynbee says peopled our lives, these unseen, unknown, unobserved souls, millions upon billions of souls at just one remove, one step, beyond our senses in a land of lights never to return to this earth, its beauties and its ugliness’s, its bitter-sweetness’s and its joys.

These people who now singalong once each month all lay, sat up or palely loitered about, dying slowly. Each month that I went back to this old folks home during these latter years of these singalongs someone else had died, sometimes two or three had died or had moved to the very edge of their final hour. There were, as well, new residents, some as young as 60 or even their late 50s. Some sat in some state of increased decrepitude to that state I had observed in my previous visit and some looked brighter and more alert. Sometimes I was brighter and more alert. The term ‘old folks home’ was what we used to call these places for the old and dying when I was a kid. And of course it was just that, a home, their last. It was their home, their last home on this earthly plane.

Slowly I got to know many of the names of these souls, got to know their life stories, their particular ailments in great detail—as old people are want to tell you to the nth degree of finitude. I also got to know a little of their philosophies and their religious proclivities.

Part 5:

The resources in my personally prepared, tenderly fostered, oft-used-and-repeated booklets of singing material that are here in my files, my collections are getting a new lease on life. They had often been kept, in this last decade, tightly sealed with a big rubber-band around them, in keeping for a future time when singalongs would once again return to my life and to the groups I was involved with in these years of my late adulthood and what would become, finally, old age. Now the rubber bands are off the its action-stations for singalongs once again. It must be said, though, that by 2010, the resources for aged-care facilities were far from adequate and, as I write this latest edition of this statement on the last day of October 2012, I have not actually led a sing-along in this aged-care facility for the last 18 months.

Old age begins, say some human development psychologists, at the age of 80. I've come to like that model since the 1990s when I was a teacher of a course on human development. This model gives me now as it has given me in the last decade many more years before the onset of old age. As things stand now in 2015, I have another 10 years before I'm actually, officially, or shall I say psychologically, in theory at least, de facto, old. And I have plenty of years left for singalongs. Perhaps they may still be in my life in the 2040s, the decade when I become a centenarian. We shall see what those mysterious dispensations of a Watchful Providence provide in this the evening of my life as nightfall gradually approaches and “I go into a hole for those who speak no more,” as the Báb, the John the Baptist of the Baha’i Faith, once wrote it graphically and literally in His voluminous writings back in the 1840s.

As I write this update in March 2015 I now use my sing-alongh booklets only when my son and his daughter come for a visit. I'll come back to this thread as I move through my 70s and 80s, if I last that long.-ron
Ron Price
31 October 2012
2000 Words
--------------------------