Seeking better harmony

After 80 years of being NASHVILLE a male-only organization, the Barbershop Harmony Society has announced that women will be allowed to join the group as full members.

The organization for a cappella (unaccompanied) singing, founded in Tulsa, Okla., in 1938 and since 2007 based in Nashville, Tenn., said Wednesday on its website that membership to the society is open to everyone, effective immediately.

But it also says its local chapters will get to decide how to, or whether to integrate their chapters, such as keeping male-only groups, or having female-only groups or mixed groups.

Legally and historically named the Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barber Shop Quartet Singing in America, Inc. (SPEBSQSA), the organization has nearly 25,000 members in the U.S. and Canada, allied with similar affiliated organizations around the world.

A chapter might typically have a large group choir in four parts, as well as smaller individual quartets.

Conflict over membership has been controversial before, and a parallel women’s singing organization, Sweet Adelines International (SAI), was founded in 1945. A second women’s barbershop harmony organization, Harmony, Inc., broke from SAI in 1959 over an issue of racial exclusion, with Sweet Adelines (such as SPEBSQSA and many other organizations) being white-only at that time. SPEBSQSA officially lifted that requirement in 1963. Since 2009, women have been allowed to participate in the organization as associates, but couldn’t join chapters or quartets.

Society CEO Skipp Kropp said Wednesday that preserving male singing groups and welcoming women into the organization are “compatible ideas.”