Do You Ever Sing with Others?

You don't have to be a trained musician - just human

Music is a beautiful human expression. Human beings singing together is a powerful social and spiritual bonding agent. Listen to the Red Sox fans sing, “Sweet Caroline.” They have sung it every game since 1997. The fans are not a trained choir by any means, but their passion to sing is strong. Where do you sing with others?

Are you familiar with Pub Choir founded by Astrid Jorgensen of Brisbane, Australia? At each event Jorgensen arranges a popular song, teaches it to the audience and then films and posts on social media the performance. Listen to 6,500 voices sing “I Want to Break Free” (Queen). Jorgensen no doubt came up with this great idea having listened to groups in pubs breaking out into song extemporaneously. There’s something about singing together. Do you ever sing with others?

So much of our music is performance-based, accessible online to a degree never known in the days of a turntable or when we used to huddle around an AM radio at the mercy of a local disc jockey. Today, more and more of us listen to music rarely gathering in groups to sing songs together. Are you singing less in groups than you did some years ago?

Karen Loew’s “How Communal Singing Disappeared from American Life,” published in The Atlantic, March 28, 2012, writes, “Today, the problem is not just that we don't know the songs—we don't know which ones we want to know…In these divided times as much as ever, we need to do some singing and feeling together, united as both citizens and amateurs.” Actually, now in 2025, communal singing might be making a comeback.

Have you ever joined a Sing-along Messiah? Have you ever heard of shape note singing - you know, Sacred Harp singing? Have you ever heard a flash mob sing?

The church is one group that sings together. Recently I visited a church, El Divino Redentor in San Cristobal de las Casas in Chiapas, Mexico. The opening song was “How Great Thou Art,” written by Carl Boberg in 1885 in Sweden, translated into English and embellished by Stuart Hine in 1949. The Billy Graham Crusades spread it around the world as George Beverly Shea sang it, teaching it to thousands. In 2025 it is still sung globally in many languages including Maori in New Zealand. My wife and I found ourselves in the lush mountains of communistic Chiapas, controlled by the cartel, singing “How Great Thou Art” in Spanish.

Listen to the young girls of the church on their violins accompanying this worship song sung all over the world and offered so beautifully by this congregation: