Reckon We’re Not The Only Ones

While I was strolling the halls at GMA Week, I came upon a booth with lots of quartet CDs. While I couldn't persuade the man at the booth to give me any CDs to listen to, I did get a magazine called The Harmonier. It's the offical publication of the Barbershop Harmony Society. As I was scanning the magazine, I happened upon an article by the President of the Society, Draylon Justus. The title of his article is what caught my eye, because changing one word , the title and article could have been seen at anytime on SoGospelNews.com.
The title. "Working Toward Meaningful Change: If Barbershop It Ain't Broke, Don't Fix It", brought back memories of many vigorous discussion on our message boards about this very subject, except about Southern Gospel Music. Though we are both very small genres, we seem to have several of the same problems.

Mr. Justus talks about two areas of Barbershop Quartets. The first area he calls "trappings and tactics", which he describes as how they organize, dress, and present themselves on stage. Their marketing studies have shown that in these areas there are somethings broken and need fixing. Does this sound familiar? The Barbershoppers call the people who want to hang on to all of the past with no changes, "traditionalists and preservationalists", so those terms should sound familiar to SGM. Some of the "traditionalists" want to keep he Barbershoppers in those loud tuxedos and funny hats, just because that's the way they have always done it. Sound familiar? Suits and ties, suits and ties, matching suits and ties. Yep, different words, but same principle, stick with what we were doing 50 years ago.

The other thing that Mr. Justus addressed is the music style and art form itself. This is where the rest of his title comes into play. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." His article addresses the issue that all music must change to stay alive, but that change should come slowly. That's what the Barbershoppers are doing, and low and behold that's what we are doing also. It appears to me that the Barbershop Quartet Society is facing the same nay sayers that we face, that some of the "traditionalists and presevationalists" want NO changing at all. Mr. Justus goes on to say that they are facing other musical forms "influencing" their music. Again, does this sound familiar? It should, after all that's been the argument for nearly 40 years in our genre. The Country sound started influencing Southern Gospel back in the late 60s, and it is still balked at, so I believe that we can say that change happens very slowly in SGM.

At any rate, I just found it very interesting that Southern Gospel Music is not alone in these very same battles. Maybe these battles are what is keeping us both very small genres. So, I reckon we're not the only ones.