Fællessang som samklingende eufori eller social dissonans

Abstract

Group Singing as Harmonic Euphoria or Social Dissonance Group singing is in general tributed for its ability to promote wellbeing, different aspects of health, feelings of cohesion, and educative potentials. Now and then this perspective seems to overrule the fact that every group singing event is unique and dependent on who and in what way people takes part in it. This article explores how group singing varies depending on social interaction. Based on a multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork, which among other places was carried out at a Danish bording school and with a gospel choir, different kinds of social interaction in group singing events are analyzed. The article finds that the interaction is sometimes dominated by divergence in behavior, participation and attitude, and sometimes by simultaneousness, harmony and euphoria. Moreover, the article illustrates how the interplay can be seen as inhibited by embarrassment, which might occur as a leak of different sets of values: the value of group singing as boring and old-fashioned and the value of group singing as funny and successful. By extension it illustrates how different strategies are used to avoid embarrassment in the interplay. The article contributes with a notion of group singing as a complex and ambiguous social phenomenon which depends on the people present and the context in which it occurs.