ABSTRACT
There are hundreds of millions—perhaps billions—of people around the world who sing, whether in groups or alone, to pray or to sell, to console or to politicize, and for myriad other reasons. Of these many, many people, millions sing in the type of ensemble we call a choir or chorus. Indeed, the International Federation for Choral Music estimates that more people around the world participate in choral singing than in any other single form of musical participation. Obstacles included the dress, repertoire, modes of engagement, and performative paradigms embedded in Western ways of knowing and understanding. Individual portraits are woven together with repertoire and performance details to illustrate a choral sound-world that expands traditional boundaries and transforms a once-Western phenomenon into a global genre. Ethnomusicologists may be especially interested in these choral processes insofar as they profile the indigenization of Western traditions and the Westernization of indigenous traditions.
