Decoding “No Experience Required”

Dear First Universalist community,

I hope you had a wonderful summer. Mine was filled with plenty of rest, relaxation, and reflection, coming out of which I have SO MANY amazing First Universalist Choir-related things to share, including a winter service and concert with Caritas Vocal Ensemble, collaborations with Children, Youth, and Family ministries, a soon-to-be-announced Music Reading crash course offering, and a new endeavor I’m calling The Oral Songbook Project. Please feel free to ask me about any and all if you see me in the wild!

What I wanted to focus on here, though, is a subject of much summer reflection: the often-used and rarely-true phrase “No Experience Required.” In my time in music, I’ve seen countless choirs that claimed “No Experience Required” without really meaning it. True, these groups were often not auditioned, and didn’t require some kind of documented prerequisite. But while they lacked these explicit barriers to participation, ohhhh boy did they have implicit ones. Don’t know your voice part? That’s going to be awkward. Can’t read music? You’re going to be totally lost. Can’t afford or don’t feel comfortable in the prescribed concert attire? Get ready for some uncomfortable conversations. And those are just some of the choir-specific barriers – I haven’t even gotten into implicit gender conformity, cultural and/or racialized beauty norms, and so much more.

So what does it mean when I claim “There is no experience required to sing in the First Universalist Choir?” First and foremost, it means shifting the responsibility for accessibility from singer to conductor: it’s not the singer’s responsibility to struggle against and overcome barriers, it’s my responsibility to remove them. I want to know about these unseen or overlooked barriers, so I can adjust and eliminate (or at least mitigate) them! 

In practice, “No Experience Required” means that our rehearsals are jargon-free, and I always introduce necessary new vocabulary. It means we learn music both from notated and non-notated sources, and do our best to honor a wide range of cultural musical practices. And it means that the process of learning music is experiential, experimental, and playful: what does it feel like to make big, embodied sound? What are some silly ways to practice listening and grooving together? How does improvising over a chord progression work?

Crucially, “No Experience Required” does NOT mean dumbed down, simplistic, or stagnant. It does NOT mean we only sing music for total novices, or that we don’t grow or learn. 

We grow and learn tremendously, but with the understanding that growth is not uni-directional. Every singer comes in with a unique portfolio of strengths and weaknesses, seasoned at some things and green at others. So growth is constantly happening, it just looks a little different for everyone!

Because ultimately, “No Experience Required” is and will always be, on some level, a lie. The First Universalist Choir does require experience, it’s just that the experience needed has nothing to do with educational or musical background. Instead, we are founded on more universal human experiences: joy in making music together and belief in each person’s capacity to contribute to something beautiful.

So if you share any of that experience, and have even the slightest curiosity for music and singing, I hope you’ll drop by and give choir a shot. The First Universalist Choir rehearses Wednesday evenings from 7:00-8:45pm. We’d love to have you!

With love,

Paolo Debuque