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Essentials in
Schools
HARMO-ssourian Friday August 1 2003
Friday Bulletin -- Harmony College / Directors College 2003
Updated: 8/1/2003 12:29:00 PM
Harmony College heritage lives in the Temple of TagsNEWSFLASH: Barbershoppers like to sing in stairwells. Dr. Jim Richards could no doubt provide a detailed explanation of why this is better than anywhere else, and probably mathematically model the “perfect” stairwell for tag singing.
Not necessary: we already have one. Under the commonest criteria -- acoustics, convenience and company – we already have the perfect stairwell. For the other 51 weeks of the year, it’s just a dim, dingy passageway between the student union and the MC Building. But, much like Brigadoon, one week every year, it is magically transformed; and for the past 28 years, it has become the Temple of Tags at Harmony College.
Like any place of worship, the Temple of Tags demands of its guests obeisance to its rituals. First, the holy icons assume their place in the sanctuary: a tastefully simple plaque comes from storage, and lovingly buffed to a glossy sheen, hangs against the cinderblocks, blessing the chords to follow.
This stairwell is hereby designated
the Temple of Tags during the week of Harmony College.
Dedicated to producing the finest sounds, friends and memories.
This third day of August 1992,
and yearly thereafter forever.
Strict tag-singing etiquette regarding fifth wheels yields to sharing the really ripe ones with any who enter. Dog-eared tags books appear, and eager huddles form to read out the Hoy Writ as set down by prophets of old: Moon and Perry and Busby and Szabo and Waesche. Look at David Krause’s tag book. Alongside Bill Busby’s “Good-Bye Forever, It’s Over I Know,” is David’s handwritten comment: “Wife died. Never wrote song.” Gulp. Now sing the tag.
But the best part of the Temple of Tags is surely the way its regulars eagerly welcome the novitiates. Quartets form, grow into septets, splinter, and the novitiates keep singing. A crowd of the younger singers forms in the adjacent hallway, and the screamers go up another third, and ring just that much more.
No tag session is complete until someone tosses in an off-handed remark or lyric change that sets everyone to laughing, ideally to the point that they can’t hit that first chord without cracking up again.
The week isn’t complete without “The Bounce.” Everyone troops out to the place where Earl Moon would stand to teach tags… and rips a big one. A big, big, big one – and then stops dead silent, to hear the chord race across the campus, bounce off the dorms, and sail back home to its daddies. A romantic might hope that the chord continues to sail across the darkling prairie, soothing all in the slumbering night.
Quite a place, that Temple of Tags.
Director profile
Tony Vink, Southern Part of Africa Tonsorial Singers
A World Harmony Council education grant brought Tony Vink from Johannesburg, South Africa to Directors College 2003.
“Our group has only have five guys meeting regularly right now,” says Tony, “and coming to Directors College is filling me with ways to build our presence. We get pretty comfortable singing around the piano in someone’s home; now we want to get out in front of more people.”
Born in The Netherlands, the 37-year-old Vink has lived in South Africa for 22 years, and has long experience in different choral styles. “I had actually heard about barbershop about eight years ago, and never really thought much about it. Then, in 1999, I found myself between choruses, and thought it would be interesting to try a barbershop quartet.”
A newspaper ad yielded no results, so Tony turned to the Internet and found… www.spebsqsa.org. A few emails later, global Barbershopper Jeremy Reynolds had directed him to another singer just 10 kilometers away.
The Southern Part of Africa Tonsorial Singers (SPATS) has 40-75 members in three chapters. “We owe a lot to Jack Bird, a longtime barbershop force down here. Although health problems keep him from being active now, he’s the one who taught us to sing the style interpretively, instead of by the bar lines.” SPATS has used education grants in the past to bring top coaches to South Africa; this time, it sent Tony to America. “This barbershop world is welcoming,” said Tony. “Lani put me in touch with folks around the Kansas City area, and 50-year-member Tom Miller offered to lodge me for a few nights when I arrived. I went out for supper with Tom, Burt Szabo and Jim Bagby, then went back to their house for tag singing. It wasn’t till I got here that I realized how lucky I’d been to be with the absolute cream of the crop.”
Tony’s first priorities on his return: “Ask ourselves, every week, ‘How much singing are we really doing?’ compared with side chatting, etc. Also, we need to get a serious membership effort started, and I’m bringing back copies of the Singing Is Life video.”
“Although there is a lot of singing in South Africa, we see a challenge in trying to interest singers in an American folk music. I want to try to approach it as expressive close harmony singing. I’m hoping Burt Szabo will help me with some barbershop arrangements of familiar South African songs.”
Totally buffed out:
The Next Gen Guide to must-have tech for HCDC
A serious nickname
A few nicknames you probably haven’t seen on Barbershopper name badges this week: SexyFro007, Mucus44502, pureplayaz. Troll the computer lab, and you’ll find our hard-core coterie of our teens and twenty-somethings clattering away on the keys, lining up doomed 30-second love affairs. “You gotta like a girl who likes to bullride,” howls one, as they all roll round the screen to see an entrant on AmIHotOrNot.com. ”No way she’s not a model, man.” (They sure didn’t make ‘em like that when I was young….)
Serious tag-grabbers
Cassette tape? History. If you’re going to get ‘em all, you’ll want a digital recorder or mini-disc that gives quick random access to your favorites on demands. Lapel clip stereo microphone is a must.
Wheels
Chandler Gates of Tinker AFB, Oklahoma, moves fast round the campus on his Razor scooter, occasionally grabbing some air for grins.
Phones, man
You can’t sit at the computer chatting for hours without serious tunes. And there’s no reason your best stuff can’t be right where you are, thanks to broadband and web radio.
Phones, man
No dull voice-only cell phones for these guys. Better have Nextel direct connects, big phone books, speakerphones.
Friends
Envy the Next Generation: they are at 12 and 19 and 23 already making the barbershop friends they’ll have for twenty and thirty and fifty years to come.
Opportunities winners!
Ticket |
Item |
Mark Wilson |
Song Arrangement by Ed Waesche |
264050 |
Pitch Pipe |
264080 |
Coaching Session |
264250 |
1 VIP Registration for 2004 International Convention |
265445 |
When The World Was Young CD The Easternaires |
265482 |
Swingin’ On A Star CD The Ritz` |
265500 |
Pitch Pipe Holder ((Black) |
359945 |
$45 Marketplace Certificate |
359980 |
Wee Small Hours CD Alexandria Harmonizers |
360119 |
1991 Top 20 Barbershop Quartets |
360135 |
Let The Rest Of The World Go Buy! CD Yesteryear |
360165 |
So, What’s New CD Uptown Sound |
360426 |
New Zealand Horizons Book |
361053 |
Ceramic Barbershop Mug |
361163 |
Glass Harmony College Candy Jar |
361245 |
Live On Stage CD Alexandria Harmonizers |
361433 |
Chasing A Dream CD Joker’s Wild |
361446 |
$15 Marketplace Certificate |
361483 |
Ceramic Barbershop Mug |
361530 |
Keyboard Salt & Pepper Shakers |
361570 |
Tuition for 2004 HC/DC |
361709 |
2003 Norton Software Package |
361721 |
Down on the Corner CD |
361751 |
Coaching Session (w/airfare!) – Cindy Hansen |
361889 |
$45 Marketplace Certificate |
362297 |
$15 Marketplace Certificate |
362338 |
$30 Marketplace Certificate |
362822 |
Song Arrangement by Burt Szabo |
363165 |
Tot Stapler |
363173 |
Barbershop necessity case (Nylon travel case w/supplies) |
363190 |
Yearbook Signed by 2003 faculty |
365609 |
Pitch Pipe Holder (Brown) |
409091 |
Strictly Barbershop Doo Wop |
412130 |
3 Hours Of Coaching With Diane Clark |
We’ll say it again: get on the bus
Sign up so we can get you there Sunday. Get outta here by 10 am. See you next year.
Tag that bag
The color-coded luggage tags will help get your goods to the right terminal. Need more? Get them from the HCDC office.
Correction:
One more regular guy located on campus
As regular as they come. He’s hardly ever done anything except teach everyone on the planet how to form vowels, share the joy of music, be a man of integrity and faith, be a loving father… and the finest quartet bass going down the road. Just like the rest of us. Shake hands with Regular Guy Bill Myers.
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