That contradiction in terms, women's barbershop, is breathing new life into traditional barbershop style - and bringing lots of glamour too, say Irish women 'barbers'. Arminta Wallace reports.
On a sunny Sunday morning, the town of Abbeyleix, Co Laois, is a quiet place, with geraniums and petunias nodding sleepily in their hanging baskets all the way along the main street. But in the foyer of the Abbeyleix Manor hotel, a group of singers is about to launch into a wake-up call.
"Right," says chorus director Cherry Hartshorn, as she manoeuvres Ireland Unlimited into position. "Basses in the middle. Baritones spattered around. And we do need a tenor . . ." A . . . tenor? A tall girl puts her hand up. Hartshorn nods, a pitch-pipe sounds a single note, and they're off. "It's raining men, Hallelujah . . ." The song is a rapidly-changing kaleidoscope of close harmonies and swaying hips - although in fact, the only man in sight is an innocent bystander who has chosen this moment to collect his room-key from the hotel reception. Mesmerised by the wave of sound, he stares in disbelief for a couple of seconds, then - as the choir's front line proceeds to outline the shape of the ideal male in the air with mischievous hand gestures - flees.
It's startling confirmation that this is, to say the least, an unusual choir. Ireland Unlimited is an all-female barbershop chorus, its three dozen-odd members converging on Abbeyleix once a month from places as far apart as Skerries and Ballinasloe.
They rehearse from 11 a.m. until about 4 p.m., which means they're on their feet for five hours, concentrating on their breathing, working hard to maintain the apparently effortless intimacy which is the essence of barbershop. But isn't barbershop a boy thing? Since when have women been doing it?
"Anything men can do, women can do better," comes the prompt reply from Hartshorn. "And women have been singing barbershop since 1935, when the Sweet Adelines group was formed in the US. We have to look carefully at the arrangements, because women don't have as wide a vocal range as men, but most of the music can be adapted by singing it a perfect fourth higher."
Barbershop singing looks, feels and sounds very different to the traditional four-part choral set-up of soprano, alto, tenor and bass - and while we're all familiar with the traditional barbershop quartet, a group of some 30 people singing those skin-tight harmonies packs a surprisingly powerful punch. Since the bass line carries the tune, the sound is more gutsy than ethereal, and the words, while sung clearly, are not given the studied over-emphasis of classical choral music. There's just one tenor, or descant, line in any given song; "for the tinkle", somebody says, with a chuckle. Tinkle, indeed: Pavarotti would be rolling in his pasta. But then it's hard to imagine an operatic chorus - let alone a traditional choral society - boogieing when the time signature changes. As members of the chorus explain, they love the combination of serious singing and sheer fun which barbershop offers.
"All the components of good singing are in barbershop," explains Colette Flynn. "But there's also a feel-good emotional factor - the tune is supported by a lot of voices and for the audience, the movement, close harmonies and frequent changes of key are easy to respond to."
The element of performance is also crucial; which is why, on stage, Ireland Unlimited wear slinky, full-length black velvet dresses with loose-knit jackets - a combination created by Liz Quinlan from Cork - which is both flattering and fluid.
"Ah, this is nothing - you should see us when we're all dressed up for conventions," says Olive Costello, removing her jacket and giving the velvet dress a twirl. "Glitz to the eyeballs."
"Barbershop is all to do with how you present yourself," says Marie Power. "What you wear, how you move, what you do with your hands - and your face."
"Yes," adds Costello, "and you have to have the same face as everybody else. There's no use you presenting the perfect picture of happiness if the song - or even the particular line of the song that you're singing - is supposed to be a sad one."
Along with a friend, Joan Kelly, Costello started the barbershop group Beating Time in Bray, Co Wicklow. "I'll tell you how I got involved with barbershop," she says.
"I was singing with a choral society and we won a prize at a choral festival - and on the way home we went into a pub to celebrate. And we were telling everybody about this great prize; so, of course, they said, 'Well, sing us the winning song, then.' It was a religious piece, Peter Had A Garden. So we sang that, and OK, it wasn't too bad. But then we sang the Hallelujah Chorus and we got lost in the middle of it because we had no music - and let's face it, it's not exactly the right tone for the local hostelry. So I said then and there, 'I want to learn something I can sing in a pub'."
Over the past decade or so the barbershop word has begun to spread in Ireland. Eithne Mooney and Rosanne Meenan formed a quartet, Black Lace, in Drumree, Co Meath, in 1991; in Athlone, Marie Power and Colette Flynn's Sweet Auburn was named after the village which Oliver Goldsmith mentions several times in his narrative poem The Deserted Village; Champagne Cork bubbled up in, well, Cork. In 1999, the Bray and Athlone groups got together to sing as Ireland Unlimited - and after just three years of existence, the chorus now has international ambitions.
Last May, the group was invited to sing at the annual convention of British barbershop singers in Glasgow, and it has invitations to both the Netherlands and Ohio for next year. Funding, however, is a problem. "It's just too much to expect people to give up their holiday time for these trips, and fork out lots of money to pay for them as well," says Costello, who is hoping to attract sponsorship to help with trips abroad.
For Irish barbershop singers, who number just 200 - 100 men and 100 women - the wider world is a dizzying prospect. In the US and Canada, the Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barber Shop Quartet Singing in America, Inc ("Please do not try to pronounce SPEBSQSA as a word; use individual letters or 'The Society' instead," warns the website sternly) has 32,000 registered members, and boasts affiliated organisations in Australia, New Zealand, Sweden and South Africa. There are also barbershop singers in Denmark, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Uganda, China, Hungary, Spain, Brazil, Argentina, Iceland and the Russian Federation.
The society defines barbershop as "melodies in the vocal and skill range of the average singer, with lyrical emphasis on simple, heartfelt emotions: love, friendship, mother, moon and June and the girl next door".
The barbershop women of Ireland, needless to say, have a rather different take on the latter. "Women have brought a breath of fresh air into barbershop because we're chasing new arrangements," says Marie Power.
"In competitions," adds Colette Flynn, "you have to present certain 'accepted' songs many of which seem rather hackneyed to us. The old vaudeville style of songs - you know the sort of thing." Ireland Unlimited's refusal to settle for the obvious means a repertoire which stretches from The Wind Beneath My Wings through Bridge Over Troubled Water to the Malotte arrangement of The Lord's Prayer - but, according to Olive Costello, the group is close in more than just matters of harmony.
"We've had babies at the breast coming to rehearsals - three at the last count, and there's another on the way now. We've had traumas galore.And believe me, this is an extraordinary bunch of women. You'll never get better support than you'll get from barbershop colleagues.
• For further information or to join Ireland Unlimited, contact Cherry Hartshorn at 061-409770 or e-mail on cherry.hiddenhearing@ireland.com
