#Curious: Original Singer

Does singing require intelligence? A corporate resemblance...

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It was an interesting evening (pre-Covid) with friends who are into singing. Some of us, like me, were more of an audience when the singers played their tune, sang all-time favorite classics and famous Bollywood numbers. A random IQ (Intelligence quotient) related discussion with childhood friends and family led to the question – does singing need intelligence? Singing involves vocal cords to be sharpened and honed, memory to remember the notes and syllables, ability to synchronize in different pitch and tones, potential to captivate the audience via expressions, skill to synchronize with pre-defined music and other singers in a chorus. All those talents are needed was mutually agreed upon, but does it require intelligence?

Massive debates with arguments on both sides continued and as you can imagine, the fun evening over drinks became serious. A few conclusions were drawn— singing certainly needs a bountiful of talent, physical vocal endowment, understanding your audience, playing exactly to the tune etc. As you read this article, what is your take on this subject? I have done some Googling only to find that sometimes singing leads to higher IQ, but the question whether singing needs IQ is still unanswered—or not researched well enough, or maybe found to be un-correlated. However, as the thought puzzled me, discussing this further with my wife made me realize a massive challenge in this topic, which shadowed my understanding; also, lead to a startling corporate resemblance.

The one point we overlook is, ‘Who is a singer’? The dictionary meaning says that he is one who sings, but in the singing community – some stalwarts still remain who will tell you that they are just vocalists. A singer, in true sense, is the one who is original – one who works closely with the composer and music director, contributing in the making of a new piece of music. The original singer sings it for the first time, making something out of absolutely nothing, working with just some lyrics and maybe some music (sometimes that is also co-created with the singer). The singer navigates through and creates something new and original in terms of the pitch, vocals, hymns, matches to the tones and notes; thinking also on what will be easy for the audience to sing along and make it their bathroom favorite, a bar fab or something that will suit the classic and traditional audience. It is a creation that people will sing exactly in the same tune and end up calling themselves a ‘singer’.  

As you can imagine, all the above needs thinking and intelligence (IQ). In case you are still not convinced, let me put it this way, composing needs IQ, music direction needs IQ, finding the right note needs IQ. Those components of IQ— for example, comprehension ability, abstract reasoning, working memory, perceptual reasoning, and spatial relationship discrimination— all used while singing. Yet we fail to consider singing a field that requires intelligence, perhaps because we have scaled up that profession quite a bit and somewhere along the way, forgotten that original singing is different from just re-doing the original in a different voice, which is certainly more talent-driven. I started to relate this with some aspects of the corporate world, where sometimes we do not give enough value and attention to original work. For example, we do not differentiate between original thoughts on creating a process and running a process. In the new age of data science world, building a new algorithm versus re-purposing the one that already exists has similar recognition in many organizations.

We have management terms like “steal with pride”, “do not re-invent the wheel”, and many others – which certainly suggest more “efficiency”— causing “re-usability” getting more importance than “originality”. It is a much-needed jargon for a majority of employees, but this could be the root cause where we sometimes forget what it takes to be original, to start something from scratch, to think independently on a new topic. Have we ever wondered how many of our team members can create a new slide of their own? We have templates and old slides that are to be re-worked every time. The dilemma in front of us, while doing evaluations is, whom would we rate higher. Should it be someone who re-created / consolidated and did good job or someone who created something new, but maybe the work needs some shine?

Is the organizational policies promoting these aspects? Are we as leaders promoting these behaviors?

My take is that, irrespective of the organizational view on whether leadership and HR policies support one way or another, you strive to be the original, because when the Doomsday arrives, or the bubble bursts, you will need that part of the brain, which still thinks independently– that is what will help you survive and float. Do not get completely carried away with the “efficiency” factor or the concept of “re-use”. Try to hone the skill to be original from time to time – create a new slide for example. Think of a new process and challenge the status-quo. Think of a bold step, a new idea – be an innovator.

Be that choice of the composer - be the original singer!