Seeking better harmony KRISTIN M. HALL
Barbershop society to include women after 80 years
After 80 years of being a male-only organization, the Barbershop Harmony Society has announced that women will be allowed to join the group as full members.
The organization for a cappella (unaccompanied) singing, founded in Tulsa, Okla., in 1938 and since 2007 based in Nashville, Tenn., said Wednesday on its website that membership to the society is open to everyone, effective immediately.
But it also says its local chapters will get to decide how to, or whether to integrate their chapters, such as keeping male-only groups, or having female-only groups or mixed groups.
Legally and historically named the Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barber Shop Quartet Singing in America, Inc. (SPEBSQSA), the organization has nearly 25,000 members in the U.S. and Canada, allied with similar affiliated organizations around the world.
A chapter might typically have a large group choir in four parts, as well as smaller individual quartets.
Conflict over membership has been controversial before, and a parallel women’s singing organization, Sweet Adelines International (SAI), was founded in 1945. A second women’s barbershop harmony organization, Harmony, Inc., broke from SAI in 1959 over an issue of racial exclusion, with Sweet Adelines (like SPEBSQSA and many other organizations) being white-only at that time. SPEBSQSA officially lifted that requirement in 1963. Since 2009, women have been allowed to participate in the organization as associates, but couldn’t join chapters or quartets.
Society CEO Skipp Kropp said Wednesday that preserving male singing groups and welcoming women into the organization are “compatible ideas.”
“Everyone means EVERYONE — people of every age, of every background, every gender identity, every race, every sexual orientation, every political opinion or spiritual belief,” Kropp said. “Every person who loves to harmonize has a place in our family.”
The singing style has evolved over the years, gaining more recognition in recent years due to the Pitch Perfect films, the TV series Glee and the new-found popularity of school glee clubs, which have adapted current music to the older singing style. Singers have conventions and international competitions with singers coming from all over the world.