Jasper County Democrat, Volume 20, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 May 1917 — SINGING CALLED LOST ART [ARTICLE]

SINGING CALLED LOST ART

It Is Now Confined Chiefly to Professionals, Drunkards and Phonographs, Says Writer. Singing, as far as most people are concerned, is a lost art. . Thousands attend operas, recitals and musical comedies, tens of thousands wind up phonographs; but as for singing themselves Infcumjally aythelr work or play they have how. In times past people of all ranks sang together as a matter of course. Sailors sang at their work, peasants, shepherds, cowboys—all had their favorite and appropriate songs. The songs of children at games, the lullabies of mothers are in the Collected ballads and folklore of many peoples, says the Indianapolis News. “The pastimes and the labors of the husbandman and the shepherd,” says Andrew Lang, “were long ago a kind of natural opera. Each task had Its own song; plowing, seeding, harvest, burial —>11 had their appropriate ballads or dirges. The whole soul of the peasant class breathes in their burdens as the great sea resounds in the shell cast up on the shore.” Nowadays the whirl of machinery makes all the noise. The workers in mills might find it unsatisfying to sing at their work, but it is doubtful if they would sing even if their voices could be heard; while.singing in an office or store would pretty surely be stopped by the “boss” or the police. Thousands congregate every might in the silence of moving picture theaters, and even In the churches where singing by the congregation used to be customary tne attendants now usually listen in silence to a paid singer. Singing in this age is largely confined to the professional performer, drunken meii and gramophones.,

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