The Hum

Some people embark on terrifying cliff-climbing expeditions, which require them to stick their hands into cracks in rock faces and employ these unfortunate limbs as hoisting tools. Ouch! I’m not naming names, now.

Others face classrooms jammed with inquisitive or indifferent lumps of studentia with the task of molding them into educated beings. Still others find themselves in foreign airports past midnight chatting with cleaning staff about the likelihood of finding fitting flight desks and timely transportation.

My own brand of risky business is, as Gilbert said, “singing choruses in public.”

On a steamboat, to be precise.

Yesterday evening I went on a “Hum” on the Mystic River from the docks at Mystic Seaport.  To those who may not find this word particularly descriptive, not conveying, as it were, a clear idea of any particular activity beyond making a sort of buzzing sound in the throat, it is a floating choral festivity.

That’s a lot clearer, right?

Once a year, a gathering of male singers – no credentials necessary – gathers at Mystic Seaport’s dock for a sunset cruise on the Sabino, the oldest or last operating wooden, coal-powered steamboat in the US. Yesterday evening, in the wind (with occasional gusts of rain) and with temperatures in the 40s, about 55 men boarded the Sabino. Each received a sheaf of songs, words only, six sheets stapled andprinted on both sides. As we got underway, someone with a pitchpipe gave a note for song #1 and various brave souls began with “The old songs, the old songs, those good old songs for me . . .”

Not many of us appeared to know this tune, oddly enough, though many were repeat participants from last year when the same song occupied the top spot on the playlist. And so it went. Songs such as “Let me call you sweetheart” and “the Battle Hymn of the Republic” were familiar, while numbers such as “I care not for the stars that shine,” and “Pull your shades down, Mary Ann” seemed to leave most sailors in a thorough fog.

Sequence on the song sheets was broken as we passed the raised bridge of U.S. Rte 1 breaking into “God bless America,”  and again as we passed the railroad bridge which had swung open for us (what else but “I’ve been working on the railroad”?).

As the ship reached the far end of its excursion and swung around to return upriver, the spot where I had been standing was suddenly directly exposed to the wind and rain. No stoic I, I discovered that the coal engine had an exhaust stack which rose through the ship’s midsection. It provided a welcome warmth to help me through the return trip.

Once on shore, we walked over to the restaurant – currently called Latitude 41 – where, after some further singing, this time music with words from the Yale Song Book, we enjoyed a buffet and were entertained by members of the Manchester chapter of the Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barber Shop Quartet Singing in America, Inc. (SPEBSQSA). That was pretty much the evening.

Bob Hall, who is chief organizer of each year’s event, told me he will send a summary he prepared of the History of the Hum, and when I get it I will share it on the blog.

At the moment, though, a pertinent observation: not counting the barbershop quartet contingent, the men on the Hum were almost all in their 50s, 60s and 70s. The same age characteristic may be observed in choirs, choral groups and similar organizations. Younger people, male or female, do not give voice in the same ways. This means that within a decade or two at the most these organizations and all their traditions will be no more. Since we won’t be here either, I guess that’s not much skin off our noses, but it is sad to reach the end of traditions of this kind, a cultural sadness.

Thinking about said musical decline, as I’ve done fairly often, I realize how many members of my family, immediate and extended, have enjoyed singing in groups. Proof of madness, I suppose, as William Gilbert would have it, but a marvelous madness.

Will anyone miss us when we’re gone?