Caro Field Author

I love to sing! Don’t you? It lifts my spirits, fills my heart, nourishes my soul. Whether it is singing in a choir or singing alone in the shower, it cannot fail to energise, enthuse and yes, surprise.

There is that soaring sense of achievement when you hit that top ‘A’. A sense of shared accomplishment when a harmony is perfect. A triumph gained from distinguishing the individual notes of a broken chord or arpeggio. The magic of turning mere speech into lyrics by the imposition of rhythm, of tonality. Accompanied or a capella, a song is a sheer expression of creativity and joy.

Recently, with hip hop music, we have seen the evolution of the voice being used as a kind of vocal percussion, aka beatboxing. In Turkish and many African and middle-Eastern countries, singers employ elaborate untexted vocal improvisation within their musical tradition. Such music existed long…