There are several TV interviews where new Indian film singers use the term ‘harmony’ very loosely. Unfortunately, harmony singing is very misunderstood. Before we jump into the technical aspects of Western harmony, let’s take a look at this flashmob youtube video, where the crowd sings a Christmas choir, uninitiated in a food court during a routine December afternoon… In Western music, while all these abilities are very important, pitching is given a lot more importance and within a single piece of music, pitching is arranged differently for different singers and this is best understood only when someone understands musical site reading.Ĭhoirs in the western world have always been associated with the church. In Indian music, as long as the person has good ability to sing, understand the swaras, most of the other aspects are taught by the conductor on the job. While ability to sing is important, in Western group singing ability to site read music is equally important. While these are equally important in Western group singing, there are several technical elements that went along with Western group singing. In Indian group singing, we consider singing with the right shruthi and bhavam as very important traits. An example would be Whitney Houston, the American pop singer who passed away recently, had her early training with vocals as a choir singer in the church. Like bhajans in an Indian setting, choirs have a rich religious setting originating from the church. Stage presentations of stories such as opera have a rich chorus culture. Most of the dance musicals have had a chorus component always. In western musical tradition, the art of group singing has existed for several hundred years. The thivaiyaru homage to Thyagaraja is a good example. Even in South Indian Carnatic tradition, the guru vandhana done for the creators of this music form is sang in chorus. For example, the South Indian folk music form, Kummi is a chorus tradition. Even several Indian folk songs are sang in groups. As mentioned before, Indian music has a rich chorus tradition.