Serenading?
 

First off, this is probably the wrong place to ask this, and I know this. I am asking it here however because I don't know where it would go. Anyone know where this should go? Thanks.

Second, what exactly is Serenading other than dressing up and singing for Fraternities? Or Fraternities singing for the girls, obviously.

But, what does it accomplish?
Why is it done?
Who does it? - The pledges only, or the entire chapter?
How often is it done?

As you can see I'm very "green" so to speak on nearly every aspect of Greek life and as I am Rushing this fall, I am curious as to what this term means.

I think it varies from school to school. When I was a collegian, the fraternities (not "frats" :eek:) would bring in their new members about a month after receiving their bids to sing to us in chapter (so about 2-3 times a semester, not all the fraternities did this). Its just something nice they did to make us girls go "ooh and ahh" over their new guys, or it was used as a prelude to a social they wanted to have with us.

I shortened it to "frats" to not sound so repetitive. :]

Did the sororities do it back, or was it just the fraternities?

we used to serenade fraternities-as a thank you to them serenading us, if we had a sister running for a sga office or some other position on campus(homecoming princess, etc.), just for fun. we would also serenade a sorority chapter on their "birthday" or to congratulate them if they won greekweek or sigma chi derby.

fraternities serenaded for the same reasons. in addition, they would come serenade if they were inviting a girl to become a little sister or the fraternity sweetheart and if one of their brothers pinned or became engaged to a sister.

Back in the day, you serenaded when you got your new members- both boys and girls. When someone became pinned or engaged (boys serenaded the girls). Sometimes you did it before your big events. Now I believe they are done by the whole Chapter to avoid being labeled a hazing incident. It can be done once or twice a semester.

Now, IMHO, they are a little on the raunchy side and will sometimes include dancing. I think for the most part they are done before big events.

We did not serenade on my campus.

No, we didnt ever do it back.

We serenade CONSTANTLY :p There are legends (and Facebook groups) about the Sinfonian Serenade.

Just about every interaction we have with a Sorority includes a serenade. Many of our Chapters will hire themselves out for serenades on Valentine's Day and other occasions. We've even serenaded complete strangers while out and about.

But to answer your questions...
Multiple things. Aside from the basics of getting our name out there and raising funds, it promotes interaction between the students, and in some cases gets people some extra lovin from their SO's :p
Why not? In all seriousness, we do it because we enjoy it and the recipients of our serenades enjoy it.
For us it varies. I can remember participating in serenades with only my fellow Probationary Brothers, some with just my Brothers after I crossed, and some with a combination of the two.
As I said before, we do it constantly. There's a stronger emphasis around holidays and both School and Chapter events, but we honestly never needed an excuse to do it.

While I was an active, sororities and fraternities serenaded before their big events/formals and sometimes as thank you after partnering for homecoming, etc.

We would serenade the independent dates at our house, then go to each of our dates' fraternity houses. This took place on a school night the week before the formal/event. We would typically learn one or two pop songs (for our Christmas formal, it was a couple of Christmas songs), then we would sing one of our sorority songs, and end with a fraternity song of each of the houses we were serenading--with the guys joining in. We usually had two or three part harmony, and practiced after dinner in the weeks before the serenade. It was a big deal at our campus and every chapter had a songleader. Some fraternities would come serenade if one of their members became pinned or engaged to one of our members, but not all did that.

Actually, singing in general was big among the fraternities and sororities.... We ate a sit down dinner each evening, and our prayer was sung, then we ended dinner with several songs, either one of ours or a fraternity song and sang a lot of songs during rush to the rushees. (not recruitment or PNM's......)

It's definitely something that varies from campus to campus. My school was very big into serenading. We serenaded before events/formals. We serenaded to pair up for campus events like Homecoming, Greek Week, Veishea, and Varieties. We would return serenade if fraternities serenaded us for an event, and occasionally fraternities would serenade the sororities for their initiation or founders day or some other random occasion.

For us, the entire chapter serenaded. There were probably 8-10 times per year that we either serenaded a fraternity or were serenaded.

Serenades for big campus events were an involved process. It entailed coming up with a short skit and rewriting words to popular songs. We probably practiced a few weeks beforehand. As far as regular serenades went, we had 4-5 songs that we all knew and sang regularly that were our "serenade" songs. Some of these were serious and some were fun.

Man, I loved serenading! A lot of girls complained, but it was such a big tradition, when it came down to it, most of them had fun.

Serenades were banned on my campus during my freshmen year. This was 2 years before I went Greek so I really don't know the details.

^^^^WHAT!?! Awww, man! I'm so sorry, lovespink88. No serenades at all? They only lasted a few more years after I left then. "Back in the day" though, there were two common serenade times. First, was when fraternities would stop by houses to serenade new members at the end of sorority bid day. The second time was the HUGE serenade week in which both the sororities and fraternities took half a week each to stop by the other houses to express interest in social events for the following semester. Choreography, themes, customized songs, food gifts, etc...

Glad I'm not the only Sinfonian in here...Serenading rules.

You gotta be able to sing, though. Serenading, but sounding like garbage, is useless. You'll go back, and they'll laugh.

We only serendaded when we went Christmas caroling to all the houses, but we sang at other sorority houses, too. Some fraternities serendaded us to show off new pledge classes.

Yep. We used to do that.

And when we went caroling at Christmas, it was complete with a brass ensemble.

LOL. Very true.

To the OP, though, why is it done? It's fun . . . and potentially romantic. And tradition. So why not?

LOL. It's a good thing we didn't do serenades, then - much as I love my sisters, most of them couldn't carry a tune in a bucket. Made pref night interesting, especially the year I (the only active at the time who could sing) was a rho chi. :p Serenades just weren't part of the campus culture where I went to school.

I come from a big family that loves to sing, so the descriptions of serenades sound magical to me! This was not part of the campus culture where I went to school, and I had no idea this charming old-fashioned tradition was still alive and well at other campuses. Keep it up!

Well, we still have 'social calling', the second thing you described. Like you said, the purpose of them is to express interest for socials (and to tell the sorority/fraternity what a great time you had at your last event, if you had one that semester). The girls just look cute and bring food, while the guys have a little more variety. Some fraternities just bring flowers, candy and other little gifts, others do a song, dance or both. Oh, and chapters will only send about 2-5 people.

Fraternity brothers of the groom often serenade the bride with their fraternity's sweetheart song - or some other appropriate song - at the wedding reception. Also, any women who may be special to a chapter for what ever reason - such as House Mothers, cooks, mothers, sisters and friends who have helped the chapter - may be serenaded as well.

At my school, the fraternities do the serenading, but my chapter always sings back (I think we may be the only sorority here that does so). They only serenade during Monday night meetings, and we know in advance when they'll show up, so we can plan meeting accordingly - usually they serenade to introduce their new member class (in which case just the new brothers sing & dance), or to promote some kind of event coming up, like Derby Days. They often bring flowers to give to our president and some of the other sisters, too.

I really like the custom-- it's one of those things that I barely knew about before I decided to go Greek, and my first serenade, I was like, "seriously, this is REAL??" But I think it's really cute and fun, and most people seem to enjoy it. :)

So they took away the 'all chapter' serenades but kept the rest. It used to be this HUGE production on the first day of the week for the sororities, and then I think the guys started on Wednesday. I have memories of my entire house getting dressed in whatever themed costume we were that time around, practicing our songs that had personalized lyrics that could be changed for each fraternity, and driving all over campus for a few hours for these quick 5 minute productions put on in the living/great rooms of the fraternities.

I remember when Brittney Spears hit, and OMG...I swear we saw at least two sororities in the school girl costumes at EVERY house we stopped at. (We'd wait outside in these big groups at the houses because we were all serenading on the same night, and there would literally be hundreds of women standing outside the fraternity houses waiting their turn.) Some other themes I remember were Hawaiian themes, WWE Raw, blacklight glowstick dancers, just anything you could think of. The costumes and lyrics definitely were starting to get more and more outrageous, so I can only imagine what the very few years left of it were like.

The "left over" days that weren't the official serenade night were when the mini groups went to the houses we wanted to exchange with. If I recall correctly, they would bring cookies, brownies, candy baskets, Pokey Sticks, etc... to leave with the guys. So that part is the same. Don't get me wrong, serenades were A LOT of work, but I loved them! Occasionally a song will come on the radio that we used, and I don't even know what the right lyrics are; I know the ones we sang though. Ahhh, memorieeeeees!