Manly Boy Choir

Thursday night I had to attend the American Boy Choir/ St. Olaf Choir concert for my child and adolescent voice class. I know everyone in the world besides me adores boy choirs but I happen to hate them. I couldn't really but my finger on why before but now I think I know. I always said somehting like "the sound is creepy" "it reminds me of some really sappy but horrible movie". I associated boy choirs with very young boys (under 12) representing "little angels" wearing robes, scooping all of their notes and singing "Christmas Time is Here" from Charlie Brown. Barf. Seriously. But this concert was so drasticly different from anything I could have expected.
While the chapel was still full of that preconcert chatter, one 8th grade boy entered from the back of the chapel and started singing. EVERYONE shut up within a matter of seconds. He didn't think twice that no one was listening- he just expected that everyone would shut up- and everyone did. The rest of the choir filed in on both sides- they were all wearing tuxes- not robes- tuxes. Their voices filled the chapel though there were less then 30 of them and they were little. The sopranos had the most sublime, clean and pure sound- but it was so MANLY. These were human boys- not unisex "little angels" that sing happy songs about flying through the air on silver ponies- they sang chant and songs about rejoicing about God hard core.
The St. Olaf Choir can only beat them in size and volume. They seriously sounded dirty compared to these boys.
At the end of the boy choir portion of the concert, they sang a set of African songs that had more energy and class than I've ever seen in in a choir. This wasn't some "multicultural" experience- this was boys having a blast singing African songs. A few of them played instruments and boy, do I have to hand it to the drummer, he was awesome. They did these crazy actions of digging and chopping while they were singing and not one of them resisted- they were all in it. At one point the conductor left them and stood off to the side, then he threw a 12 ft. stuffed snake in the middle of the choir and they all waved their hands and screamed. Then they ran up and down the chapel aisles- ran. Like boys. Everytime they bowed I wanted to cry- they were all so honorable. They were boys growing into men throgh channeling their energy into creating beauty. This was a school by the way. I mean the Am. Boy Choir is a boarding school in NJ and they all live together, eat together, wake up at 6:45 and go to sleep by 9:30. Yea, order. Oh yes- manly boy choir.