National Barbershop Quartet Day is observed annually on April 11. Barbershop quartets have a way of making the heart flutter. Very often they transport us back to a simpler time or at the least make it stand still.
Barbershop quartets are a style of a cappella or unaccompanied vocal music. Their music features songs with understandable lyrics and easily sing-along melodies.
- 1600s – The Barbershop Quartet is by no means an American invention; the popularity of barbershops in England amongst men during the time of Shakespeare extended as far as in-house entertainment. British barbers kept a cittern (a stringed instrument similar to a lute) handy for their customers to strum while awaiting their shave and haircut.
- 19th Century – barbershop music originated in 19th-century American barbershops, a place where men, usually African-American, came to socialize. While waiting for their turn with the barber, these men sang, harmonized improvised songs and created a genre of music that is now known as barbershop music.
- 1882 – A New York Age writer noted the growth of home-grown singing alongside Black exclusion from theaters and concert halls.
- 1900 – Between 1900 and 1919 barbershop music found its popularity.
- 1910 – The song, ‘Play That Barbershop Chord’ is recorded and released to the public as a primary source of barbershop harmony.
- 1920s – it began to fade into obscurity. However, the barbershop quartet saw a revival when the Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barber Shop Quartet Singing in America was founded.
- 1938 – On April 11, 1938, the Barbershop Harmony Society (S.P.E.B.S.Q.S.A.)was founded in Tulsa, Oklahoma, marking the official celebration of Barbershop Quartet Day. The image of four men wearing pinstripes and straw hats singing together with complex harmonies could be considered a cultural cornerstone of the 1940s.
- 1945 – Sweet Adelines International, an all-women’s singing organization, is founded.
- This tongue twister of a men’s organization grew quickly as did other similar organizations promoting barbershop music as an art form.
- Today, just under 25,000 men in the United States and Canada are members of the SPEBSQSA.
- A barbershop quartet is a group of 4 men, each with their own unique voices – second tenor, first tenor, bass, and baritone – singing songs in the barbershop style.
- Barbershop quartets have a signature dressing style that includes bright striped jackets, straw hats, and big mustaches.
- How did the oversized mustaches, striped jackets and straw hats become synonymous with the genre? It started with Vaudeville. Barbershop quartets were often used in front of the curtain to entertain while other acts were set up. In order to be seen by those in the “cheap seats” they donned distinctive costumes.
- The early American barber’s music was probably strummed in the less stodgy and “proper” South.
- Tomb paintings of barbers cutting hair and relics of razors found throughout ancient Egypt show that barbering is an age-old profession.
- The barber pole signifies when barbers were surgeons and used to hang bloodied bandages from bloodletting out on a pole to dry.
- During the Middle Ages, barbers treated wounds, performed surgeries, did dental work, and various other duties in addition to cutting hair.
Sources:
YouTube.com/Barbershop Harmony Society
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