ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that barbershop represents what Eric Hobsbawm has termed an 'invented tradition'. It discusses barbershop's problematic public image, considerations of performance style and for questions of music and self-identity. The chapter examines how British barbershop has succeeded in building such a potent sense of tradition in the absence of a 'suitable historic past' with which to connect it. It provides a rich and interlocking set of rituals that prove deeply satisfying to participants. The chapter argues that success is due in part both to its continuing institutional reliance on Quartet Singing in America and its attempts to build mythic discourses of its own on similar models to those in the United States of America. Repertoire overlap between the United Kingdom and America is particularly significant in the form of polecats, since they have been issued with the explicit purpose of providing a common repertoire that will allow people who have never met before to sing together.
