Women performing: creating a bond through harmony

Abstract

In taking up the challenge of writing this report I brought to the process field work research done in 1999 for Soci 602. This research involved a women's performance group made up of a chorus of ninety plus women and several quartets. The Christchurch City Chorus of Sweet Adelines International are a cappella singers who harmonize in the barbershop style. They are part of a wider New Zealand organisation and at the same time are also part of the international organisation which has its headquarters in the United States of America. My objectives in continuing with this research have been to deepen my appreciation of the theoretical background to my fieldwork and to further my understanding of barbershoppers as performers. I was particularly interested in familarising myself with other studies which had been done in this area such as Robert A Stebbins' book The Barbershop Singer: inside the musical world of a musical hobby. I also needed to explore the concept of ""serious leisure"" as it has been developed by Stebbins with a particular view to understanding how the concept has been applied to this art form. Another further objective was to explore the concept of ""mateship"" as it has been used in New Zealand. In my original paper for Soci 602 I proposed that this concept may make sense of the exclusivity of the social aspects of the women's organisation. The Summer Scholarship gave me an opportunity to follow-up this conjecture.