If You Wanna Sing Out, Sing Out
Don't let anyone silence your voice — sing if you have a song.
Picture this scene: The blue sky shimmers above through the open sun roof as my family cruises down the road toward our summer vacation destination. One of my favorite mix CDs blasts away on our minivan’s sound system. Our pre-teen kids — Ian and Shayla — sing along with gusto, happy to be on an adventure.
“Ian, don’t quit your day job!” my husband (now ex) jokes. “You’re tone deaf. You couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket.”
I glare at him. “Dont be a jerk,” I say. Then I turn, smiling, to look at Ian. “Let ‘er rip!”
But Ian isn’t smiling. He’s looking out the side window with a defeated expression on his once-happy face. I know that look.
My son has given himself a new self-defeating label: tone deaf.
Tone deafness, or the inability to match a musical pitch, is a real neurological disorder called “amusia.” And although I’m certain many people believe the lie that they can’t sing, only an estimated 4% of people have amusia.
I belong to a huge choir — 100 singers strong. It’s a community chorus, and there are no auditions to join. Any adult with a love of communal singing is welcomed.
I’m a singer songwriter, and I’ve been a soloist in many of the choir seasons I’ve participated in. I’m fortunate — I match pitch easily and naturally and I have a decent chest voice. But a number of my singing friends have expressed doubts about their own musical abilities, saying things like:
“I’m not a real singer like you; I just enjoy the choir community.”
“I’m tone deaf, so I don’t sing out much.”
“My middle school music teacher told me I should just mouth the words.”
“I sing in the shower, but nobody wants to hear me sing in choir.”
I’ve heard the same familiar chorus (pun entirely intended) from dozens of people. And yet, based on simple math, if amusia affects 4% of the population, only four people in our 100-voice choir are likely to have it.
Why do so many people believe the lie that they can’t sing?
Singing in front of others can leave you feeling vulnerable and exposed. I know. I used to be terrified of singing publicly and I still struggle to sing in front of my family.
Perhaps that’s why I bristle when someone jokes, “Don’t quit your day job!” to anyone who has pushed past that vulnerability to sing when others are listening. Even when the jab is playful, I’ve seen the light leave people’s eyes as their spirit deflates. Someone has admonished them, advising them not to sing.
But I know every voice has worth.
A choir is a group of people that function as a single body, breathing and feeling the music as one. When we bring singers of all different ability levels together, no individual stands out — it’s all about the collective sound.
I’m not a choir director. I’m not an accomplished or particularly notable musician. I play instruments primarily by ear, and I sing for the love of it, not because I have special training.
I embrace music because it’s a beautiful experience, and we all need more beauty in our lives. And I want to encourage others to do that, too.
I love my choir community so much that I’ve organized singing sessions during the off-season. Each summer, many of us gather in various choir members’ backyards to sing classic rock and folk songs. We make a glorious noise with guitars, ukuleles, tambourines, maracas, a cajon (box drum), djembes, a melodica (mine), and voices galore.
The goal of our sessions, called Summer Jams, isn’t to sing and play perfectly or to emulate the artists whose melodies make up our repertoire. Our mission is pure and simple — to make music together and have fun.
Over the years, I’ve watched my friends blossom as they participate in Summer Jams. Those who, early on, wouldn’t have considered themselves singers worthy of being heard now throw in occasional impromptu vocal riffs or experiment with singing harmonies.
For six years, I’ve had the joy of looking out across a collection of faces, singing with joy and humor in the summer twilight once a week.
When in doubt, fade to awkward.
Many songs from the 60s and 70s, which form the majority of our song book, fade at the end. Fading out is a challenging feat for a group of acoustic instrumentalists and singers. We usually end up repeating a refrain and getting softer and softer until things get weird.
My good friend Josh, Summer Jams’ official Guitar Guy, coined a term for it: Fade to awkward.
“Fade to awkward” has officially become a musical direction on our lyric sheets. That is, except in the case of Hey Jude and its epic na-na outro, where the directive is: “Repeat until dead.” (It’s a roughly four-minute fade-out, but I don’t think we’ve ever lasted quite as long as the Beatles did.)
We’ve embraced awkwardness so much that we now have “Fade to awkward …” emblazoned across the backs of Summer Jams t-shirts.
In our group, no one worries about how they sound. Even so, our music has been known to draw smiling neighbors who stop on the sidewalk or peer over the fence to listen and applaud.
As for Ian, the little boy whose dad told him he was tone deaf is now 30 years old.
He doesn’t sing with the same abandon he once had when he joined the family chorus from the back of our minivan, and thinking about it fills me with longing for the days when his spirit was unencumbered by criticism.
Still, he sings.
He’s been known to rock some karaoke with his friends. Bring on the Proclaimers and I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles) or some Tubthumping by Chumbawamba and his millennial ass is totally on board.
But one story of Ian’s bravery stands out. Memories of this evening fill my heart with love and admiration each time I remember it.
It’s Ian’s senior year, and he has invited me to the school-wide talent show, saying that he has a surprise. His younger sister is also performing a dance routine. So, of course, I’m excited to go.
I sit in the audience, watching performances that range from impressive to intentionally cringey. Then, a student emcee announces that Ian is up next, and he’ll be singing a Cat Stevens song.
Tears spring to my eyes and I swipe them away as my son takes the stage. Cat Stevens has always featured in the soundtrack of our roadtrip adventures along with Simon & Garfunkel, Paul Simon, Crosby, Stills & Nash, James Taylor, and Fleetwood Mac.
Ian takes the mic. “I’m not a singer,” he says, “So … I don’t know how this is gonna go. But it’s senior year, and I want to sing this song to thank my mom for all her support. So …”
He draws a piece of crinkled paper from his jeans pocket and unfolds it, standing there on stage in the unforgiving glare of a spot light. Even a dozen or so rows back from the stage, I see his hands trembling as he holds the lyric sheet.
Then he begins to sing:
Well, if you want to sing out, sing out And if you want to be free, be free’ Cause there’s a million things to be You know that there are
This story was originally published on my Medium.com channel. I gave myself permission to reprint it here. I’m cool like that.