And, no, it's not about the music.
"If you're too busy to sing, you're too busy."
In 1983, my father, Joe Romanelli, brought an unusual gift home with him: a barbershop quartet. Once a week, the men would show up in our living room and fill it with four-part harmony. I was a kid. I assumed this was how everyone's house worked.
It took me years to understand that it wasn't. And it took me even longer to understand what my father had actually given me.
Those were not easy years for him. Two small children, a young marriage, the daily weight of building a life. But one night a week, he would stand with three other men, open his mouth, and something would shift. My dad is an introvert. Usually quiet, contained, and content. But on that stage I would watch him laugh, cry, and come alive in a way I did not often see at home.
He told me more than once: Barbershop saved his life. Not as a figure of speech. As a fact.
I did not fully understand what he meant then. I think I do now.
What barbershop actually is
According to popular tradition, barbershop singing started with men waiting for a haircut in a barber shop; killing time, with nothing to prove. Instead of competing, they harmonized. What those men stumbled into was what most men today spend their whole lives looking for and never quite find: a structured, legitimate, socially acceptable container for male intimacy.
As Deborah Tannen showed, male intimacy tends to be quieter and built through shared activity rather than words. But Barbershop adds something most male bonding is missing: vulnerability. When you sing in a group, you are exposed. You cannot hide. The chord either rings or it doesn't. Your voice carries your feelings, energy, passion, and state. Every man in that room can hear exactly what's going on with you.
Essentially, Barbershop is formalized male vulnerability.
There is a concept in psychoanalysis called sublimation. Freud described it as the ability to take raw, difficult energy and channel it into a generative and socially acceptable action. Barbershop is sublimation in practice. The tension men carry but rarely name comes out as music. The men in a group feel free together, without embarrassment or shame.
Touching the divine
Every man carries a private weight. Father. Provider. Worker. Husband. Many men carry a silent, covert depression that sits just beneath the surface of a life that looks, from the outside, perfectly fine.
What Barbershop offered my father was something rarer than friendship. A few moments that transcended that loneliness. When the chord rings perfectly and four voices lock together, something lifts. Athletes call it peak state. Psychologists call it flow. My father called it “Wednesdays with the guys.”
It is older than any of those terms. It is what men have always found around the fire, in the ritual, in the tribe. The experience of dissolving just enough of yourself to become part of something that could not exist without you. That is the oldest form of strength we know.
You cannot get there alone. That's the point.
The rules
The Barbershop Harmony Society has an actual Code of Ethics. Good fellowship toward all members. No personal gain from membership. No forcing songs on unsympathetic ears. And the one that stands out: Do not let politics, religion, or divisive issues get in the way of the harmony.
That is learned wisdom. Polarized men cannot sync. So the frustration, the week's accumulated weight, all of it goes somewhere else. It goes into the music.
The code's preamble calls the whole enterprise "the sacred right of all people to seek haven from the burden of their daily cares." The words of men who understood what other men need.
The architecture
Every note in Barbershop is a chord. There is no solo. You are only as strong as your weakest voice. A man with an ordinary voice, standing next to the right three people, can sound extraordinary.
My dad describes it this way: the bass is the floor, the tenor is the ceiling, the lead carries the walls, and the baritone holds the structure inside. Each part is necessary. Remove one and the structure weakens.
This is what a healthy male relationship looks like. Not individuals performing alongside each other, but something interdependent.
Most modern men swing between independence, which we are trained to worship, and dependence, which we are trained to fear. Barbershop is neither. It is the third thing, the thing we were actually built for: interdependence.
The blueprint already exists
The blueprint for male intimacy has been here all along. Not just in Barbershop, though that wouldn't be a bad idea. In meeting the same men every week (a modern men's circle); a place where you do not talk about work, impress, or compare.
When four men with ordinary voices can blend well, they create a sound that is greater than their parts. It’s synergy. “Often, I face rehearsal at night dragging on all fours, wanting to go to the bedroom and sleep. Yet I know, and it’s been proven time and time again, that at the end of the rehearsal my batteries are charged; I’ve helped create something beautiful: harmony.”
Are you ready to collaborate with other men, to feel and spread joy?
Each barbershop rehearsal, all over the world, ends with the same song:
Keep the whole world singing, all day long.
Watch goodwill come a-winging, on a song.
Smile the while you are singing.
Carry, carry your part.
Keep a melody ringing in your heart.
And then, when the song ends, all the men yell out together; “One, two, three, it’s great to be a Barbershopper!.” They go home with a smile on their faces after an evening well spent.
Joe Romanelli founded the Jerusalem Barbershop Quartet in 1983, the first barbershop quartet in the Middle East, and has been singing ever since.
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Article by Assael Romanelli Ph.D., LCSW; Co-authored with Joe Romanelli
Published with permission. Originally published on Psychology Today.
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If you think your life could be improved by connecting regularly with other singers of good character (and really, whose wouldn't?), consider visiting Atlanta Vocal Project or one of the barbershop organizations in your area.
