The San Francisco Girls Chorus
empowerment and transformation through choral music
Photo: Ben La
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In genres ranging from literature to opera to classical Hollywood film, the female voice is repeatedly staged as an excessive but powerless vocality that is controlled by authorial male voices....However, critical attention to vocal practice and performance and the power of sound can challenge well-worn narratives of gendered power and voice. |
The San Francisco Girls Chorus challenges the narrative that women's voices -- indeed "girl's" voices -- must be controlled by the authorial male voice. This doesn't mean that there aren't male voices in the management of the choir or that some of the pieces they compose aren't by men. Still, it is the female voice that shines through with their work, vibrant and excellent, and the voice both elicits and communicates many forms of spirituality, relative to the music being performed and the sounds of the voices. Here are the thirty seven qualities of heart and mind that we call "spirituality" in Open Horizons, taken from Spirituality and Practice. The girls themselves experience many of them quite directly: transformation, imagination, wonder, and you (or self-affirmation and empowerment). They also partake of a form of spirituality in learning from their teachers: T is for Teachers. The music they perform then communicates many of the other forms.
attention - beauty - being present - compassion - connections - devotion - enthusiasm - faith
forgiveness - grace - gratitude - hope - hospitality - imagination - joy - justice - kindness - listening
love - meaning - nurturing - openness - peace - play - questing - reverence - shadow - silence
teachers - transformation - unity - vision - wonder - x, the mystery - yearning - you - zeal
But the very word "spirituality" can get in the way of what's really happening in their performances, if it suggests an isolated compartment of life or an ascent into an ethereal plane which leaves this world behind. What we experience in their music is connection with the world itself in emotional, sonic, and cognitive forms. We hear a "hearing" of what the world could be like and would be like if women's voices were heard fully and equally in a world ever so patriarchal. J is for Justice.
attention - beauty - being present - compassion - connections - devotion - enthusiasm - faith
forgiveness - grace - gratitude - hope - hospitality - imagination - joy - justice - kindness - listening
love - meaning - nurturing - openness - peace - play - questing - reverence - shadow - silence
teachers - transformation - unity - vision - wonder - x, the mystery - yearning - you - zeal
But the very word "spirituality" can get in the way of what's really happening in their performances, if it suggests an isolated compartment of life or an ascent into an ethereal plane which leaves this world behind. What we experience in their music is connection with the world itself in emotional, sonic, and cognitive forms. We hear a "hearing" of what the world could be like and would be like if women's voices were heard fully and equally in a world ever so patriarchal. J is for Justice.
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