Loneliness is gripping western societies. A key reason for such loneliness is that the institutions in which people once congregated seem to have lost attraction. But one societal institution is still going strong, is still open to people of all abilities and none, and provides friendship as well as healthy communal activities: choirs. In Sweden, an astonishing six per cent of the population sing in choirs. Such engagement ought to be possible – and desirable – in other countries, too.

When, in 2000, Robert Putnam identified the phenomenon he labelled ‘bowling alone’, he may not have realised what a fundamental shift he was chronicling. To be sure, in his book the Harvard professor of political science only investigated societal engagement in the United States, not other western countries, and he didn’t predict that bowling alone would unleash a loneliness epidemic. Yet declining societal engagement took hold across the West, and if anyone believed that social media was going to make up for it, they were mistaken. Today some seven per cent of UK residents experience chronic loneliness, defined as feeling lonely ‘often or always’; that’s up from six per cent during the Covid year of 2020. In Germany, 16 per cent of people report frequently feeling lonely; among 18- to 29-year-olds, nearly a quarter do. Loneliness plagues the elderly, too: during the first half of 2024, some 40,000 Japanese died alone.

Such figures have been staring us in the face for several years now, but no one is quite sure what to do about it. Governments can’t exactly command the populace to be more civically engaged. Engagement and community rise from the grassroots, but the organisations conceived and operated by previous generations often don’t feel suited to our times. Working men’s clubs are hardly a destination for today’s working men (and women) in the way they were in the 19th and 20th centuries. In an era of declining Christianity, churches – with their array of activities – are also not an obvious destination. On the contrary, in many western countries it is Islam that is growing. Rather bafflingly, running has taken over some of the functions of yesteryear’s community organisations: people train together and compete together, and when they compete they do so to raise money for charity.

Yet running is not for everyone. There is, however, another activity anyone can join, regardless of ability, and it’s inexpensive too (or even free): choirs. Britain, which has an unparalleled tradition of professional-level cathedral choirs, enjoys a respectable lineup of community choirs and parish church choirs, too. That, though, pales in comparison with countries like Estonia and Latvia, which not only boast an astonishing range of choirs but bring some of them together in massive song and dance festivals every few years (and I was privileged to attend this year’s Estonian Song and Dance Festival). A survey conducted five years ago showed that five per cent of Estonians sing in choirs.

In Sweden, a recent survey shows even more remarkable involvement: six per cent of the Swedish population aged between seven and 84 sing in choirs. That’s more than half a million people. There’s an association for church choirs and another for secular ones. On the latter’s website, I followed the instructions to find choirs in a particular region; by selecting the country’s southernmost regions, I found dozens of choirs: men’s choirs, women’s choirs, mixed choirs, gospel choirs, barbershop ensembles, youth choirs, student choirs – some of them requiring excellent sight-reading, others requiring no skills at all. In the 1990s, when it became clear that many more people wanted to sing in choirs, but deemed it impossible because they thought they couldn’t sing, enterprising Swedish musicians began launching ‘Can’t Sing Choirs’.

In truth, singing in choirs is often more about spending time pursuing a collective, communal and non-competitive activity. While concerts are enjoyable, for many people they’re not the main reason to sing. The main reason is simply that singing is enjoyable, has physical and cognitive benefits, and provides a way of meeting other people. I have seen the benefits first-hand: many of my friends are people I met while singing. As a student in Germany, I sang in two choirs at the same time. At one point, I introduced a friend from one of the choirs to a friend from the other. They fell in love and subsequently married – and when they had their first child, they asked me to be her godmother.

Our societies are not just plagued by increasing loneliness: they’re plagued by increasing polarisation, too. In choirs, like bowling leagues, politics plays no role. Western countries are, in fact, extraordinarily fortunate that, just when they need community organisations for people of all ages, all abilities, anywhere in a given country, such organisations do exist. If musicians in a few more countries followed Sweden’s example and launched their own Can’t Sing Choirs, we’d have the perfect answer to loneliness and polarisation – with some truly exciting music, too.