10-10-08
College Issue 2008:
"We Need Belters"
There’s no business like show business like no business I know…
You hear it, don’t you? Ethel Merman’s voice. Those words are damn near impossible to read without the aural accompaniment. I don’t even have to show the words that are emphasized. You just hear it. Throbbing. In and out. Merman standing there with her arms open and a great big smile on her face.
But the trained singers and singing teachers of her day—and in the decades after—were not smiling. They were cringing. OK, maybe you’ve cringed, too.
Say the word “belt” when talking about singing, and Merman automatically comes to mind. A belt is loud, brassy, almost screechy. It’s yelling, in tune. It’s certainly not operatic. And, to some people, it doesn’t even seem musical.
“Belt, unfortunately, for singing teachers especially, has become a four letter word,” says Kurt Hanson.
Hanson is a classical singer. And he teaches classical singing at Northwestern. In the last few years, though, he’s been teaching the musical theatre certificate program. Which means he’s been teaching singers how to belt.
“I have learned so much by teaching musical theatre,” says Hanson. The main thing he’s learned is, contrary to classical pedagogy, belting is not unhealthy. Not if you do it right, anyway.
That is music to Lisa Popeil’s ears. Popeil is a trained classical singer who has made musical theatre styles the focal point of her voice research. She teaches extensively in L.A. And she has broken down her physiological research into five basic musical theatre styles: heavy belt, twangy belt, nasal belt, brassy belt and speech-like belt. Those styles can—and should—be interchanged according to the needs of the character, along with—gasp—classical singing.
But Popeil’s biggest challenge isn’t investigating the action of the vocal folds, it’s trying to convince university, mostly classical, voice teachers that belting is a viable form of singing.
“You have all these people at the university level who only have classical training, who have no idea the techniques and mechanics of belting, singing pop, rock, country,” says Popeil. “They’re vocally disabled—to sing a country song or ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’ like a normal person is painful.”
Kristen Chenoweth and Idina Menzel exhibit what Popeil calls "belters bite," which looks a bit like an underbite.
Being exposed to popular culture must be equally painful, since most music out there is non-classical. “There’s hardly any work in the U.S. for classical singers,” Popeil points out.
The prejudice is so ingrained that, Popeil says, some of her students aren’t allowed to bring in pop/rock musical theatre pieces when they audition for school shows.
That’s great if the schools are only doing The King and I. Once people (truly we’re mostly talking about women here, though there is a male belt) leave the university setting, though, they are not fully equipped if they don’t have a belt audition piece.
Allen Chambers has been seeing this for a number of years. The associate artistic director at Theatre Building Chicago, Chambers ends up casting all of TBC’s workshops, and the summer workshop series, Stages. TBC is a great place for those new to town to get their first professional musical theatre credit. But, estimates Chambers, 30-40 percent of the women who audition for him can’t belt. And they don’t get cast.
“Obviously, the belt is bread and butter for musical theatre,” Chambers says.
Just look at the popular musicals touring the country. Wicked. Definitely belt. (In fact, Popeil uses a picture from it as an example of “belter’s bite.”) Avenue Q. Hardly classical. Mamma Mia. Please. The Jersey Boys. Totally pop. Spring Awakening. Right, that cast was classically trained. Not.
Sondheim is legendary among female singers for demanding high belts—notes that classical singers would easily sing in a head voice, but that he wants sung from the chest. Yet, Sondheim has written non-belt roles for women. Johanna from Sweeney Todd, for instance.
And even though much of Rogers and Hammerstein’s oeuvre contains classical styles (Laurie from Oklahoma), there is always at least one belter in their casts (Ado Annie, in this case).
Porchlight Theatre artistic director Walter Stearns also would like to see more belters. More than that, he would like to see people pick up a little more of Merman’s projection.
“We’re not seeing people who can really project, not just their voices, but their emotions to the back row,” says Stearns.
He blames technology. People assume that they’re going to be singing into a mic.
Musical theatre students, then, need to learn to sing, and to project, in more pop styles. But how do they do that?
A Classical Base
Hanson is seeing more musical theatre programs springing up at universities around the country, and the music teachers associated with them are starting to teach more belt styles. But he says, students still need to start with a classical base.
“There is a feeling that if you study it, it will somehow stop sounding natural,” says Hanson, referring to the legend of George Gershwin telling Merman not to study singing or it would ruin her voice.
However, Hanson points out, classical voice technique teaches students “how to breathe properly…how to support the sound with your breath properly…how to resonate in your mouth and throat so you are getting the sound you want to get.”
For Albert Williams, who, in addition to his theatre critic duties, is an artist-in-residence who co-facilitates the musical theatre program at Columbia College, classical technique teaches students how to support their voices.
“It focuses on control of breath, placement and articulation,” Williams says. “Those are the three keys to singing.”
“A strong classic technique is going to be a good foundation from which you can depart later safely,” says Patrick Holland. “If you teach something really solid to begin with, then the different styles can be introduced.”
Holland is a classically trained pianist who has worked in many universities, on Broadway (for the original A Chorus Line and Annie, among others), was music director for the Arena Stage and the Folger Shakespeare Theatre, and has even taught radio, TV and film. Currently, he’s assistant conductor for Goodman’s Turn of the Century, a pastiche of 20th century vocal styles.
While Holland feels that universities should introduce their vocal students to more belt styles, he’s not sure students can get the depth of classical and belt training they need in three or four years.
“The student’s education really begins once they leave the university,” Holland says. “It’s incumbent upon any artist, as they leave university is to continue careful study.”
A Safety Belt?
“Belting in and of itself, as long as it’s supported, is not unhealthy,” says Hanson. But Popeil disagrees that to get that support, a singer has to study classical technique. To her, it’s simply a matter of teaching those safe techniques while teaching belt.
“It’s about the changing of the paradigm, that there is excellence to be had in any kind of singing,” Popeil says. “There are teachers out there who do not teach support. If you don’t have a clear idea of how to support, then the chords start pressing” and you start hurting your voice. If supported properly—even without prior classical training—Popeil says women can sing eight shows a week with no problem.
“What you want to avoid is singing chest voice that is supported from the neck,” says Hanson.
But he poses another question that voice teachers around the country are debating: How high do you belt?
“I believe that the sound can be taken to the top of the range,” says Popeil. “If done properly, it doesn’t just stop.”
“A woman has a register above chest voice that is called mix,” Hanson says. “A woman can make that part of her voice sound like chest voice without being in chest voice.”
He likens it to shifting gears. If the transmission is bad—or the driver can’t drive stick—then the car will lurch. But if the transmission is running well, you won’t even notice you’ve switched from first to second to third to fourth.
Hanson’s advice to women is to “’force’ yourself to go back and forth from head to chest voice.” He puts that word, “force” in quotes. Don’t push. Just keep running through it so that it ends up smooth. After a while, he says, “you’ll just fall into mix.”
Doing the Homework
So, what should potential students look for when looking for college and university music theatre programs? Hanson encourages you to make sure faculty—not grad students—are teaching the classes. He also encourages people to sit in on classes, and watch student performances. And he thinks it’s perfectly acceptable to ask the people in the theatre department who will be teaching the singing? If the teachers are in the voice department, then go there, and find out if the teachers there are comfortable teaching belt style.
Porchlight’s Stearns says that potential students need “to seek out a school where there’s a better camaraderie between” the music and theatre departments.
“It’s important to work with good people who keep you technically sharp and artistically honest,” says Hanson, whether that’s in the university setting or not. “It will move you to doing a number of gigs well, to having a lifelong career in which you can do any style.”
Chambers advice is admittedly a dream.
“If all of a sudden the art department, the architecture department, the theatre department and the music department can come to terms on something, that would be an education.”
Right now, he’ll just settle for women auditionees who can put a little Merman into their pieces.