Get ready for a ride, folks, this is a wild one with some very high stakes. Simply put the world of Barbershop Music has been exploding over the past year...on a number of different fronts. I’ll need to start with a quick run-down of the Barbershop world, because it will all be relevant:
What is Barbershop?
When most people who aren’t “Barbershoppers” hear the term “barbershop quartet,” they typically either think of a place you get your hair cut, or they think of a totally dated artform with pinstripe suits, straw hats, and old timey music. And to be fair, that’s basically what it was when it started in the late 1800’s. But the barbershop music subculture is still very much alive, and has continued to modernize over the past century.
Extremely short version; at its core, barbershop is a style of acappella arranging. I'll skip the specifics, but basically you can take almost any song and “barbershop” it. Some work better than others, of course, and it’s extremely effective with the “american songbook” kind of songs written in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. But the style itself is really cool and has nothing to do with the stereotypes I described above. While some quartets still choose to lean into those stereotypes for comedy, here are some examples of modern barbershop quartets.
However, what really differentiates barbershop from the rest of the acapella singing world is the long history of extremely well regulated competitions. Back in the 1930’s, groups of quartets started getting together to compete. Eventually they formed an organization to manage those competitions called the “Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barbershop Quartet Singing in Amera” (SPEBSQSA). This organization, since shortened to Barbershop Harmony Society (BHS), is still around and running these contests to this day. It’s the oldest one of a number of similar barbershop organizations, and it’s made up of tens of thousands of barbershoppers from around the globe.
HFI and the Trust Agreement
It’s also a 501c3 non-profit, and 99+% of the members are dues paying amateurs, not full time staff. Some of their operating budget comes from dues and ticket sales at events, but most comes from charitable donations. Without getting into the weeds, there are some technical differences between organizations like BHS and organizations whose sole purpose is to solicit donations and manage the funds in a “trust.” So, like many organizations like this, a separate “Trust” organization was formed in the 1950’s called “Harmony Foundation International.” A Trust Agreement was established where HFI would handle almost all of the work associated with soliciting money, and (after covering their operating costs) transfer those funds to BHS as requested by the donors. This is a very typical arrangement for this kind of thing, and everything went smoothly for half a century.
Important to understand here is that this is not a small amount of money. Certainly many donations are in $5 and $10 increments, but there’s also some extremely wealthy barbershoppers donating tens of thousands. Many have bequeathed portions of their estate upon their death. All of this adds up to HFI managing millions of dollars. I don’t know the specific size, it’s pretty well guarded. Again, very typical for an org this old and established.
What isn’t typical is what started to happen in the 2000’s.
Tension between BHS and HFI
All charities have to file and publish their books, including how much they raised, how it was spent, etc. Pretty obvious why, there have been some fraudulent charities that spent almost all the money they raise on themselves and none of it goes to the intended cause. There are charity watchdog groups for this exact purpose. On the flip side, it’s unreasonable to expect that 100% of the donations will go to the cause. The charity has costs too, it needs to pay it’s staff, pay for office space, etc. So there’s some give and take there.
But when you look at the 990’s, only something like $0.33 of each dollar was making it to the intended purpose. That’s….bad. Highly unlikely that anything shady was happening, these are all honorable people. And if you ask HFI, they have reasons for everything. But BHS was concerned about that inefficiency. They spent years requesting changes, meetings, adjustments, etc.
Those in BHS will say those requests were met with crickets. Those in HFI will say they responded appropriately to every request. We may never know where the truth is here. Everyone involved are friends, colleagues, and sing together in choruses and quartets. They are good people that don’t want to throw anyone under the bus of public opinion. Either way, tensions about the state of the finances were building between the two organizations.
Social Progress and EIH
While all of this was happening, society at large was also progressing. Remember that BHS started in the 1938. Women had only gotten the right to vote 18 years earlier. (for reference, Finding Nemo came out 18 years ago for us). Black people wouldn’t be able to vote for another 30 years (that would be 2051 for us). There were people still alive that had fought in the Civil War, some of them barbershoppers. To say that “times were different” would be a huge understatement. Also, “barbershop” as a musical form had been around for 40-50 years before BHS started. Like, think black-face minstrel shows...that’s the time period we’re talking about.
So unsurprisingly, Barbershop has generally grown with the times. Allowing black members. Disallowing overtly racist songs to be sung at contest. Changing bylaws and song lyrics to be more inclusive. Etc etc etc. And, as one would expect, all of these changes were met with resistance at the time, usually by the older members who would write articles in the society-published “Harmonizer” magazine about how “we’re supposed to be preserving the artform, we shouldn’t be changing things.”
But change is slow. Example, the 2004 International Champion quartet sang this at contest when they won. “All you see are smiling faces when it’s night time in Dixieland.” This song is from 1914. Take a guess what that song is about. I’ll give you a hint, the “crickets” calling are not insects. As amazing as they sound (they were one of my favorites when I first started), it’s hard to hear that and be confused about why black people weren’t clamoring to join the society. Side note: I’m sure that was not the quartet’s intent. They just didn’t know the history of the song and only saw the white-washed changed lyrics, not the original ones that referred to “coons” and “darkies.”
Gender was also an issue, however. What I haven’t mentioned yet is that BHS was originally a men’s only organization. Separate barbershop orgs were started for women and have their own sordid history. Actually, the split between Sweet Adelines International and Harmony Incorportated would make for an r/hobbydrama post all by itself. But in the past 10 years or so, public awareness of transgender/non-binary/etc folk has been growing. And this led to questions, could a trans-man join BHS and compete? Is that fair? If not, are there grounds to disallow it? Is it ethical to disallow it? Shouldn’t we want them to join? Etc.
A short term solution was reached that seemed like a really good one. BHS would go with whatever it said on your driver’s license. That basically mollified the controversy. Trans people could sing where they wanted. And the...less progressive people had a way to make sure it was just “women claiming to be men to cheat” (side note...hahahahah wtf???). There were some bigoted holdouts, but there wasn’t really any footing for them to argue. If the government recognized them as men, that was pretty much the end of it.
But it didn’t solve the real problem, “why does gender even matter anyway?” Good singing is good singing, regardless of your dangly bits. Society at large was turning away from gendered organizations, and it was getting more and more difficult to claim modern relevance. ESPECIALLY with young people and music educators. And without new blood, the artform dies.
So in 2017, BHS announced it’s new strategic vision, “Everyone in Harmony” (EIH). Simply put, everyone could join and compete, regardless of gender identity. It would be phased in over the course of a few years, to allow all the contest and administrative systems to adjust. Individual ensembles could choose who they wanted to join, but every ensemble would be allowed to compete regardless of what they decided. Actually 2020 was supposed to be the first international where all that came into play, but Covid had other plans.
EIH pushback
Now, if the less-than-progressive folks pushed back against the race issue, how do you think they reacted to allowing WOMEN on the risers? If you said, “badly” you win a cookie.
The society erupted. Fueling all of it was Facebook. With barbershop being primarily older folks, it’s probably not a shock that the barbershop world basically ignores twitter, instagram, etc and focuses almost entirely on Facebook. You no longer needed to write an article and get published in the Harmonizer. You could just word-vomit whatever vitriol you wanted via social media. And it got UGLY.
Some were very blatant and just said, “it’ll be a cold day in hell before I sing barbershop with women or allow them into our Champion association.” Others tried to mask it a bit by saying they, “just didn’t like how the change was rolled out, we should have had a say in it.” As if everyone didn’t know exactly what they’d say. Meanwhile, this drew battle lines between them and people who saw all of that as bigots raising flags to identify themselves. People in the middle were decrying “why can’t we just focus on singing.”
It. Was. A. Mess.
But it eventually calmed down. People kept going to rehearsals and contests, singing with their friends, and things started to settle back into a new-normal.
Follow the Money
At least that’s what it looked like. Under the surface, the feelings were still bubbling. As it turns out, many of the wealthiest members of the society were also in the “we don’t like EIH” camp. Old rich white guys being against social progress, who’d a thunk? We don’t know for sure ‘cause it’s confidential, but one of the going theories is that those wealthy donors started ear-marking their donations as, “I don’t want my money supporting EIH.”
Which sticks HFI in an impossible spot. They’re legally not allowed to collect a donation and then use it in a way that the donor says they don’t want. On the other side, BHS can’t promise that. EIH is the new way they’re running everything. Any money they get will have to further that purpose ‘cause it’s the direction of the entire organization. And remember, there’s a multi-million dollar endowment at play here too.
What we do know is that the pre-existing tension between the two organizations ratcheted up like crazy. Depending on who you believe, numerous attempts either did or didn’t happen to reconcile the situation.
Legal Maneuvers
In March 2020, BHS took action. They amended the Trust Agreement (which they claim is their right according to the bylaws) to add an additional 16 seats to the HFI board of directors. The Trust Agreement states that filling HFI board seats is up to BHS, so they fill them with 16 people who will vote in favor of BHS and outvote the current board that’s been working against them. Some have referred to this as a hostile takeover. Others have objected that HFI was under the control of BHS already, you can’t take over something you already control.
Either way, the existing HFI board did not take it kindly. Multiple letters are sent back and forth by lawyers over the following couple weeks. In early April, the pre-existing HFI board meets without the presence of the BHS CEO, to amend their bylaws remove him as a trustee.
BHS effectively decides that the situation has spiraled out of control, and that they need to adjust and form their own internal fundraising department instead of relying on HFI.
The PR Battle
On June 4th 2020, BHS has a meeting with a few HFI folks to give them a courtesy heads up about the fundraising department decision. They tell them the announcement will be coming on June 9th. Presumably because they don’t want to blindside HFI’s top donors, and want to give the HFI representatives a chance to help smooth things out.
HFI, however, does the opposite. They send a mass email out on June 5th, pre-empting the official announcement. They do so without any context, seem to indicate they don’t know why the decision is being made, and throw BHS staff right under the bus. BHS frantically tries to respond, but it’s too late. HFI has laid the groundwork to thoroughly fog the situation, and now every statement from both sides reads like defensive finger pointing.
Everything before this was conducted in private emails and communications. This opens it up to the general membership. It ignites an even bigger online flame war than the one a few years prior. And this time everyone is in Pandemic Lockdown. So all those opportunities to get together, sing, and calm down? Gone. Everyone’s only connection to the community is through their keyboard. Mostly Facebook. We all know how that goes.
Battle lines are again drawn. Threaded arguments hundreds of comments long. Accusations of all kinds flying all over. Dozens of zoom “town halls” and “info sessions.” Even a gigantic petition put out by one person to remove the BHS CEO from his job. Nobody explicitly says that that EIH is the inflection point, but everyone kinda knows it deep down, so accusations of bigotry join the fray. Total nutty-bananas chaos.
While this is all happening. HFI announces that they’ve unilaterally “dissolved the Trust Agreement,” effectively severing ties with BHS.
Say His Name, George Floyd
Notice that all of this is exploding in early June. What else was happening in early June? You guessed it, massive civil unrest and protests. About racism. The whole country (finally) has a huge awakening about the latent undercurrent of racist stuff that has flown under the radar for decades or longer.
The progressive parts of the barbershop world turn that attention inward and ask, “wait...why the hell are we singing songs about the good ‘ole land of dixie???” They start looking at standard barbershop songs and realizing that maybe the lyrics don’t say “Darkies” anymore, they certianly used to. Does whitewashing the lyrics take away the history of the song? Everyone turned to the TINY fraction of the membership that were BIPOC and asked them (of course). It was a very deep discussion that’s still ongoing now. There’s no solid answers to most of these kinds of questions, but the general approach seems to be that if it has horrifically racist history, let just stop singing it and go find songs that don’t have that history.
“So wait, just cause a song says Dixie, or Mammy, now it’s racist and I’m a racist if I sing it? That’s all the good songs! That’s stupid cancel culture!” shout a bunch of the less-than-progressive members. Whether or not it’s “cancel culture” they aren’t wrong that a TON of the traditional songs are extremely problematic. Remember that this whole artform started around the turn of the century and mostly centered around songs from that era. It’s an especially effective arranging style for songs of that era. The whole purpose of the society was originally to preserve the musical tradition of that era. And you know what? Society at large in that era was super racist, so tons of those songs are super racist.
The BHS/HFI split isn’t about “Dixie songs,” it’s about money and legal control. And it’s about allowing women into the society. But it all gets rolled into a gigantic sh*t storm. All while we’re stuck at home with no ability to actually get together and sing.
Epilogue
Eventually, a lawsuit was filed. Briefs were submitted. Debates were had in the public arena. And at long last, oral arguments were heard by a judge about a week ago. A lot of the decision seems to center around whether BHS’s “Hostile Takeover” was legal, and whether HFI is allowed to “dissolve the Trust Agreement.” There’s millions of dollars at stake, and potentially the future solvency of our hobby.
In short the judge said, “You guys are stupid to let it get this far. Come to a joint decision about how to move forward by March 15th or Daddy will have to lay down the hammer.”
March 12th. No word yet. We’ll see what happens over the weekend. But no matter what happens, this is probably just the beginning for years of appeals and litigation. Folks are going to be arguing about what happened in 2020 for years.
Sources if you want to dig into it more:
