ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a snapshot of the barbershop style at the turn of the twenty-first century and explores its relationship with the mores upheld by the barbershop organizations. The ways in which the values of the barbershop community permeate their discourse clearly demonstrate the operation of an ideological framework. The importance of inclusive participation is manifest in the organization of the main event of the barbershop year, the annual convention. The stated aim of both Quartet Singing in America and the British associations to preserve the barbershop style 'as defined' makes a discussion of its pertinent features unusually easy, as the style has been exhaustively detailed with an explicitness unparalleled in almost any other musical idiom. The egalitarian ideal is less prominent in the definition of the barbershop style than the concept of harmony. A good barbershop lyric tells a down-to-earth story, a very human message in simple terms.
