"I do not have a great singing voice. I do not even have a good singing voice. My singing voice is the vocal equivalent of a lopsided gingerbread house made out of crackers. Every holiday season, I join a choir somewhere and immediately worry that the person in front of me will turn around, hear whatever sound just escaped my mouth, and think, "Gawd, who let her in?""
"And yet, I love singing at Christmas. I love the communal lift of it. I love the way a room of humans can accidentally produce something halfway beautiful while half of them are panicking about whether they are the ones ruining it. Every year, I promise myself that this time I will relax, open my mouth, and not imagine a panel of judges hiding behind the poinsettias."
Many people avoid singing because of fear about not being good enough. Communal singing can provide a collective uplift even when individual voices are imperfect. Muvuca is a Portuguese word for people coming together to create celebratory sound simply for fun, without auditions, payment, or professional training. The concept emphasizes freedom, inclusion, and the value of shared joy over technical precision. Instances of muvuca show beauty emerging from participation itself, as groups of untrained singers add individual sounds to a collective whole rather than striving for flawless harmony.
Read at Psychology Today
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