Youth culture’s code of silence

Dec 19 2007 by Laura Davis, Liverpool Daily Post

Although boys secretly want to sing, many of them are too embarrassed to. Laura Davis reports why choir membership is falling

FORGET Cliff Richard’s Mistletoe and Wine, or the many X-Factor offerings that have topped the festive charts in recent years, for many people the official soundtrack for Christmas features the sweet voices of choirboys.

With faces like angels and vocal chords straight from a heavenly choir, they sing like seraphim while managing to resist the urge to fidget with their polyester ruffs.

Were it not for their modern haircuts, dressed in their gowns these boys would be indistinguishable from the generations before them.

They are the latest in a long heritage, dubbed “England’s oldest youth movement” by Sir Sydney Nicholson, founder of the School of English Church Music. Yet, while youth culture thrives, churches and cathedrals across the country are struggling to fill their choir stalls.

This is not because boys do not want to sing, claims Dr Martin Ashley, reader in education at Edge Hill University. Quite the contrary – they want to, but feel too intimidated by their peers in what Dr Ashley describes as “homophobic bullying”.

“Actually, boys do like singing but it’s not cool for them to like it,” he insists. “The sadness is that there are boys who would secretly like to do it but don’t because they can’t stand up to the ‘not cool’ culture.

“This is a very gendered issue because if I went into a primary school and said ‘I’m starting a choir’ I’d get a hundred little girls that want to be in it and very few boys.

“It’s up to adults to stand up against homophobic bullying because that’s basically what it comes down to.”

Dr Ashley has coined the term “melancholic boys” for the large numbers of eight to 14-year-olds who have become silenced from the joys of singing. His research forms the basis for one of the most comprehensive reviews into boys’ involvement in singing ever undertaken and involved interviews with pupils at schools across the country, including the North West, as well as choirboys from five cathedrals.

One of the main obstacles preventing boys from joining choirs is the rise of celebrity culture, he claims.

“Culture has become much more individualised and what we’ve seen over the last 30 years is the decline of singing as a social activity that’s worth doing in itself and replaced with singing as something that will make you a celebrity,” he explains.

“The effect celebrity culture has had on boys particularly is making them think they can’t do it because they don’t have the celebrity qualities to go on X- Factor and be a star..”

A contributing factor to singing’s non-macho image is the way in which boys and young men are marketed by the record industry. As mums and elderly women are the ones with the spending power, it is to them that music moguls try to appeal.

One example is X-Factor runner-up, Liverpool’s Ray Quinn, who released his album earlier this year just in time for Mother’s Day.

Dr Ashley believes boys who have been approached by a record company are torn between making the most of the opportunity, along with the financial benefits that are likely to follow, and holding their head up high among their peers.

“When you look at boys who work for labels like Sony, they are marketed to appeal to at women in their late 40s and 50s. I’ve got a lovely quote from one of those I spoke to who said ‘that kind of stuff is for mums who want to trade in their teenage sons’,” he says.

“If you are a 13-year-old boy, there is no way you want to be marketed as somebody who’s cute and appeals to grannies.”

Dr Ashley decided to begin his research into this issue after witnessing depleting numbers of singers in a choir he was a member of in Bristol for 10 years, before moving to work at Edge Hill earlier this year.

He helps run Bristol Voices, a choral outreach project that attempts to encourage boys to take part in local choirs, and is looking into launching a similar scheme in Merseyside.

He also says falling choir numbers are symptomatic of a wider problem of young people not being interested in other activities and subjects at school.

“On the one hand, you’ve got singing boys being portrayed as uncool and girly; on the other hand, most of them are very happy, very confident, very articulate, doing well at school and they will go on and achieve in their lives.

“It’s not just singing, there are also other things boys would secretly like to do but they can’t stand up to the not cool culture. That’s why a lot of boys now are drifting aimlessly.

“We’ve got a crisis with young men not wanting to go into science and engineering because it’s no longer cool to say you’re interested in science – you’re immediately a nerd.

“I interviewed lots of boys in cathedral choirs and the way they get round it is the singing that they do is serious and it’s a different part of their life. They know that old people listen to it and it’s okay because of that. They say to themselves ‘well kids of our age aren’t going to listen to us but we do have an audience’.”

Bristol Voices supports music teachers in schools in a number of ways, including providing free support from a music advisor and a term-long placement for a music leader to work in class on a weekly basis. The organisation has also produced an educational DVD.

However, Dr Ashley believes its most significant contribution is in improving the image of singing among teenage boys.

“What I say is you’ve got to stand up for these boys who want to sing, who want to be engineers. They need better understanding by adults but it’s not easy,” he explains.

“The Government has got a simple idea that if there were more men teachers, the adults would then stand up for the boys and everything would be fine, but actually that’s not what happens.

“A lot of the research that’s been done on this finds that the young male teachers try to get in with the boys and think it’s stuffy and old fashioned to stand up against the bullying of boys who sing or want to do science and actually some of the best people to stand up against it are female teachers.”

One way that Bristol Voices tackles the problem is by taking choir boys into schools.

“The issue is that how do you show nine-year-old boys that 14 and 15-year-old boys sing and enjoy doing it. We get round it by showing boys as ordinary kids – that singing is just one thing they do, they play football, they do Tae Kwan Do, they get detention, and they do singing.”

lauradavis