JOIN THE CHOIR: TALENT NOT REQUIRED! (Talent nonetheless welcome)

DAVID ALLINSON
Volume 8, Issue 4

The Melbourne Law School Choir is the single best use of your time on Thursday afternoons at 1pm in the Law Clinic, Mezzanine level. 

Here are three reasons why:

1) Everyone in the choir is incredibly attractive. Simply by joining you go up a few points: a 5.5 becomes a 7.5, and so on. As a middling 4 myself, I can attest to the powerful aesthetic boon that the Law School Choir has given to my romantic allure. (Ed: The author’s opinions are his own and do not represent D.M. editorial policy).

2) Singing is amazing for your mood: the increased flow of oxygen to your brain will reinvigorate you for those dolorous 2:15-4:15 classes, and soporific afternoon study sessions.

3) Socio-legal theorist Max Weber contrasted a group of practical and radical American associations with the ‘tranquilising effects of the German choral society’. He found that singing in a choral society habituates a person to ‘let tremendous sentiments gush from their heart and through their larynx, free of any relationship whatsoever to his [or her] behaviour’.

So here’s the rub: whoever grows accustomed to singing in unison with others, very easily becomes ‘a good citizen’… in the passive, membership-oriented sense of the word. ‘It is no wonder’, Weber observes, that monarchists are so fond of this sort of thing: ‘where peoples are singing, you can settle down and feel at ease’.

What on earth, you are now asking yourself, does this have to do with motivating people to join the Choir? Well – you want a job, don’t you? You want to show that you’re a ‘team player’, don’t you?

You want to show that you have (as Weber suggests a choir facilitates) an easy relationship with oppressive authority, don’t you? Then surely a choir is the ideal training for a corporate legal environment!

I say this with my tongue in my cheek. One of the best things about choir, in fact, is that it’s one of the few places that is insulated from the pressures of law school, be it thinking about applications and jobs, or writing assignments (one of which I am , at this very point in time, clearly avoiding).

Just to be clear: you do not need to be good at singing to join the choir. You will, however, become better by practicing with us in a supportive and friendly environment!

So come along – 1pm, Thursdays. It will be the best decision you’ve made all week.

David Allinson is a member of the MLS Choir, which meets every Thursday afternoon at 1 p.m. in the Law Clinic, on the mezzanine level of the Law Building.