Women
The first thing I noticed is how many women are at this contest. Most of the people manning the ticket booths and sales floor in the merchandising area are women. While this isn't an astounding observation, it means that the men aren't trying to put on the show while preparing to perform.
- While there are men at the SAI competitions, it is mostly the women working to pull the show together as well as keep their heads in the competitive game so they can blast onto the stage. Wouldn't it be nice if the men spent the SAI week doing many of the jobs so that the women could concentrate on the competition itself?
This is a family oriented contest. There is a BarberTots area where people can take their kids and still listen to the show. There are picnics planned. There is a women's breakfast and hospitality suite to make sure that women know they are welcome. There are tons of kids here already. There is a concerted effort to make this a family environment. Women are encouraged to be Associate members so that they can support the BHS and get discounted tickets to contest. (Wish I'd know about that aspect before I paid for my KC tickets though!)
- In contrast, the SAI competition seems to be a women's week away. Not only do I not find it particularly inviting to the male members of my household, the schedules made it hard to find any time to spend with them. I do understand that in the past, if a woman travelled with her husband or her kids, she never stopped being the wife and mother and so couldn't concentrate on the chorus/quartet experience. That's probably still true to some extent today but if we want SAI to continue, we need to figure out ways to encourage it to be supported by the whole family. If contests aren't family friendly, Sweet Adelines becomes the way the woman spends money and time away from home. As long as the family isn't encouraged to support this hobby, we risk our members having to treat it as a "special" thing rather than a lifetime hobby.
There were 21 young quartets last night who did an astounding job. Yes, many of them were nervous but they all did a great job. There were two or three quartets that presented themselves as comedy quartets which I personally think is great. Music and laughter are both great healers of the soul, and it takes rare skill to combine them well.
The collegiate contest is free and was well advertised on local TV and radio. Daniel and I met some people coming to see the Collegiate show who had never heard of barbershop but were coming because it was free. I think they YWIH show in Seattle was free as well, but I honestly don't remember. This is a great way to get barbershop out into the community.
I think the thing that struck me the most about the Collegiate contest is how well prepared the quartets seemed to be. Yes, some quartets were better than others but only two out of the 21 had me cringing with bad chords. There was only one quartet that had my heart up on stage with them in that Tinkerbell-need of "You can do it! I believe in you!" I contrast that to the YWIH in Seattle where I had Tinkerbell-needs for easily a third of the quartets and some of them had me exhausted because of the work I had to do to find a chord as they sang.
- I attribute some of this to the fact that the collegiate quartets appeared to be fostered and sponsored by the Harmony Foundation which appears to give them $1500 to help cover costs as well as give them access to past Collegiate winners as coaches. Somehow these collegiate quartets are getting access to productive coaching. Most of the YWIH quartets had clearly been coached very well but at least one of them went looking for some sort of local support 4 weeks before the Seattle contest. From first impressions, the guys are doing a better job of fostering the college kids so that their competition is a success for all involved.
- That said, the YWIH contest included a lot of high school quartets so the women are being exposed earlier. I think local choruses and quartets need to find these girls earlier to give them the coaching and support they need so that their experience is a success. SAI also includes a weekend before competition where local girls are formed into a chorus, taught excellent choreo, and then perform on the international stage during one of the contests. This seems to me to be another great way to encourage the young people to choose barbershop as a way to spend some of their time.
- It's a good thing the Collegiate contestants brought their own cheering sections. The crowd was pretty dead and there weren't that many people in the audience. I'm not sure the YWIH was much different. If we want young people to choose to spend their time and energy in barbershop, we need to be in the audience for them. If the prospect of free entertainment isn't enough to bring in the crowds, we have a major problem.
I know it takes a lot of time and energy to be a judge, and I sincerely appreciate all the effort it takes to be a judge in either organization. I do wish SAI could figure out a way to speed up the judging process somehow so that our competitions would be more show-like in tempo but I haven't got a clue how to do it. I wish I knew what the men were doing that allows their judging to be so quick so that I would have a better understanding of what the trade-off is.
Random comments
- Can I please be jealous of how well-developed many of the male basses are? As young as they are, they have some great rumble and presence!
- It's time for the men to realize that they are on stage and need to wear stage makeup. Yes, I am aware that I am anti-makeup in just about every other situation, but after watching guys who look ghostly-pale or green under that stage lights, even I recognize that stage makeup is appropriate. At a minimum, many of the collegiate quartets had clearly been up way-too-late the night before and had eye bags half-way down their cheeks. As a mom, I wanted to tuck them into bed and drug them into sleeping for a week. As an audience member, I was cringing looking at the bags on the huge TV screens.
- The camera people have this fascination with the two center people in a quartet, showing three of the four people (often excluding the person currently singing the melody), or showing the four people so that they look like tiny people on a large stage. Could they please occasionally pan the quartet so I could see all 4 faces? Focus on the two wing people sometimes? One quartet had one guy essentially singing a solo with the other three pips singing behind him. Where was the camera focused? On the pips. For the whole 30 seconds of this guy's solo.
- The judging was fast but the crowd didn't think it was fast enough. As soon as the MC came out, they'd start that lovely rhythmic clapping to indicate they wanted the next quartet. I think the MC did a great job staying calm in the face of such offensive rudeness. As an audience member, I apologize to the judges and to the MC for the childish behavior of some of my audience members.
- Twenty-one quartets singing two songs each often means that I hear only 30 or so different songs in SAI. Not here. I think only two songs were repeated at the Collegiate contest. Not only that, but there was a nice variety of old standards and newer songs. There's a lot to be said about singing the old, square barbershop songs as a way of cementing one's sound. Those older arrangements may be "boring" but they offer the quartets an easy way of rocking great chords. As a great woman once told me, "Don't show off what you can't do. Show me what you can do really well." It's a challenge to choose music that your quartet can really ring and that isn't so boring you tire of working it.
- There's an auction to earn the privilege of being a guest judge. This fundraiser for the Harmony Foundation lets people bid for being a trial scorer at a single event during this contest. Top bidder gets to sit in the judges pit with score sheets and then gets to hang out in the green room with the judges to talk about the experience. What a great fundraiser! What a great way of making judging appear to be a coveted and valued job, too.
- There is advertising by Harmony Inc but none by SAI in the program. How sad that the only barbershop being advertised to the women attending this convention is available primarily in the NE of the United States. A great opportunity to recruit new members has been missed here which is especially bothersome given the January 2012 SAI open houses planned and current membership push.
- Harmony Marketplace is primarily just stuff by BHS augmented by a few choruses and quartets selling their CDs. I kind of miss the variety of stuff offered at SAI conventions and think the BHS are missing a golden opportunity.
- Another fundraiser being offered here is encouraging the purchase of a teddy bear. Proceeds from the bear purchase go to the Harmony Foundation but you are then encouraged to donate the bear to a local hospital. What a great win-win for all involved! This is yet another way of getting the word out into the community about barbershop.
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