Your say / Singing
‘Choirs, like puppies, are not just for Christmas!’
Nothing quite says Christmas like carol singing, and the spaces all around us are filled with festive voices, whether it’s recorded music in your local cafe or choirs singing lustily in shopping centres, often raising much-needed funds for charity.
If you’re not singing yourself in a concert in the coming weeks, you probably have friends who are.
I’m CEO of St George’s Bristol, and more importantly, I’m a singer! I’ve sung since I was a boy, in various guises – as a soloist, in various choirs, even as a singing waiter.
Since I arrived in Bristol over four years ago, I’ve been told many times that there are more choirs per head of population here than anywhere else in the UK.
While it’s difficult to prove, I have been sufficiently intrigued to start an annual Festival of Voice at St George’s, celebrating the human voice in all its glorious variety.
Each year we plan a massed singing event as part of the festival. Previously, we organised a massed version of Handel’s Zadok the Priest for Bristol’s 650th anniversary, which saw over 650 singers packed into Bristol Cathedral to sing the famous Coronation Anthem just a week before Charles III was crowned king.
This has been sung at every coronation since Handel wrote it for George II in 1727 and King Charles had it too. We recorded it and sent it with our civic best wishes to His Majesty and had a lovely letter back.
Our current project is Sing for Happiness, which combines communal singing with important research into the positive impact of singing on mental health.
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We started the project last year and we are now in the middle of the fourth iteration. More than 1000 singers have now taken part, a third of whom say they have not sung since childhood if at all.
The research is conducted by Kat Branch, head of music at UWE and a St George’s trustee.
The full findings will be published next year but already both anecdotal evidence and qualitative research from the project shows that singing does indeed enhance your mood.
As a ‘Singing City’, we should celebrate this, and in fact there are wider studies that demonstrate the many benefits of singing – from supporting cognitive development in children and aiding memory in older adults, to improving lung function, regulating hormones and fostering a strong sense of community.
I have given a TEDx talk on why singing is good for you, but the headlines are:
- Singing is good for the brain – it aids crucial speech development and language skills in young children, right through to stemming memory loss in older adults with dementia – this is proven through many expert studies.
- Singing is good for other parts of the body too – it’s good for posture, for the lungs and aids your breathing functions, it is known to help people with asthma, those with long Covid and those with chronic lung conditions.
- Singing is great for your hormones, it helps to stimulate the production of endorphins, serotonin and dopamine, which make us feel happy and relaxed. Singing in groups is particularly effective at stimulating oxytocin – produced when we feel a real sense of connection and bonding, such as a mother singing to their baby. Singing can help reduce levels of cortisol, which is an essential hormone but is high when we are stressed
- Moving on from the body to the heart and soul, singing is great for creative self-expression. It helps us deal with complex emotions, such as grief, and gives us self-confidence. It has definitely helped me for decades in terms of public speaking and holding a room
- Finally, singing brings us all together – whether it be hymn-singing in church or football chants on the terraces, singing is a communal activity which has encouraged social cohesion ever since we as humans could talk
The benefits of singing can vary from person to person, and everyone can experience and enjoy singing in their own unique way.
Singing is such a fundamental part of our collective human experience, and at the heart of the rich cultural scene here in Bristol, with groups to suit all abilities and tastes.
As Icelandic singer Bjork has said: “Singing is like a celebration of oxygen.”
I hope you will be inspired to enjoy the seasonal music even more this year, and perhaps even want to join a local musical group as one of your new year’s resolutions!
This is an opinion piece by Samir Savant, the chief executive of St George’s
The Christmas Sing for Happiness performance takes place on Saturday at St George’s. For more information and tickets, visit www.stgeorgesbristol.co.uk/sing-for-happiness-christmas
Main photo: St George’s
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