Costs and rewards in barbershop singing

Abstract

Barbershop singing is a hobbyist form of serious leisure which, like other hobbies and amateur pursuits, has its own pattern of costs and rewards that is characteristic of the activity. To discover this pattern, observations were made of the principal activities of four male and female barbershop chapters in Calgary and interviews undertaken with 32 of their members. The object of the larger study was to develop a grounded theory of barbershop singing as serious leisure using a qualitative-exploratory research design. That part of the study reported here deals with the rewards and thrills of barbershop, which are compared with its costs: the disappointments, dislikes, and tensions. Overall, barbershop singers find a substantial ‘profit’ after weighing these positives and negatives, which indicates that, in their hobby, the bitter is well-offset by the sweet.