Gig is musician slang for a performance opportunity. Most "commercial" musicians expect to be paid for them. Some get their noses bent out of shape over the word, but among us it seems rather harmless since we know what each other means.

Genuine Church Musicians do not do 'gigs'.

Eh, well, I can see how the use of the term in this context can have overtones similar to "hireling". Still, it doesn't necessarily mean that throughout the country.

The more formal synonym for the colloquial "gig" is "engagement" ... an arrangement to meet or be present at a specified time and place, or a job or period of employment especially as a performer. The term "gig" seems to have arisen in the 1920s.

In a different life, I played quite a few engagements, which my companions and I invariably called 'gigs'. In the circles I ran in at the time, the word connoted a purely commercial arrangement with a lack of any long-term commitment from either party (which does not mean that we failed to take our duty to perform well seriously).

I don't have strong heart-felt objections to using it in this context, but I wouldn't use it myself; it feels wrong to me, and if I heard others using it in this way, I'm sure it would sound odd to me, and maybe a little irreverent (perhaps just a function of my own history with the term).

I'm not opposed to the word "gig," but I agree with Jackson that using the individual names works well.

We call our events the "quickening". A bunch of us show up instinctually to sing for a mass, and by the time all's said (sung?) and done, someone has their head chopped off.

Etymologically speaking, I regard "gig" as corollary to playing a "casual," an older jazz idiomatic term. That said, there's nothing casual about serving Christ's Church. When a "child" I spoke as a child, when a man......

According to the idiot who reigns in Canada, we are supposed to say, "peoplekind," instead of, "mankind." The Church of Sweden has gone nuts and wont even refer to God as "He." The whole world has gone crazy, he, she, and them. If Stimson had said, "his" instead of "their," the politically correct would have been protesting in front of his house.

Sounds like the Russians were behind it.

... the idea that you can't end a sentence with a preposition.

Although that is something people might put up with, that is an idea up with which I do not intend to put.

>> Lord, your people are by and large, nuts.

Oh yeah!
thanks, CW, I needed a good laugh.

Of course we all know that language is fluid. That's hardly news, is it? Fluidity is what got us from Chaucer to Cranmer, to Shakespeare and Spencer, to Dickens and Chesterton, etc. Most of the time this means that a word comes to mean the opposite of what it meant, that sentences get ended with 'with', subtle or not-so-subtle developments in syntax arise, and other such altogether hilariously illogical Heinz 57s as the singular plural, which some will attempt to gentrify by dubbing it The Singular Plural. Still, it was predictable that the FA (fluidity argument) would try an outflanking maneuvre. Ditto the FAS (famous author syndrome) which, presumably, makes sense out of nonsense (voila!) - sort of like the composition student who shreeks, 'but Dr Dalrymple, Bach used parallel fifths!' (only to be reminded that he or she [but not they] was not Bach). The truth is that people use these sloppy nonsenses not because Shakespeare did, but because they like them, they're fashionable, because 'everyone' does, and because they don't want to be different, or because they are afraid of the PC police, or they are skittish about possible offense to members of the opposite sex who are standing by with a feminist chip on their shoulders, or that they simply don't prefer to think out a sentence that makes sense so will make do with whatever the patois du jour prescribes. Of all these, I suspect that fear of the PC people is most prevalent, even amongst those who aren't well disposed to PC-ness, and that imitating Shakespeare is the farthest thing from their minds. This is, after all, an age of increasing illiteracy and cultural decay, and bestowing a tonsure of legitimacy upon bastard grammar is but one more evidence of it. The only thing that's fluid in this case is the organ of rational thought.

As for the Swedes (and plenty of Americans!) not referring to God as 'he', has anyone noticed that the PC people are not at all bothered about always referring to the Devil as 'he'? Tell me that there isn't a glaring gender bias at work here, just as gender erasure is behind the so-called 'singular they'. Ditto, criminals are in ordinary speech always presumed to be hims.

Ha!
What humour!

I would like to point out a few things:

1. It was NOT the token "trad" who was quibbling about the niceties of language this time,
2. We refer to ourselves using the pluralis majestatis frequently, so we don't see what the big deal is,
3. This discussion really seems to have brought out the Strunk and White in Chickson,
and finally,
4. I was making a Highlander joke, for crying out loud!!! Do you expect King's English?

You guys - oops, sorry, "carbon based units" - are reading way too much meaning into this. There's no such meaning, I promise. I know that proper grammar is important, yes, and all my culture warrior friends at home berate me about this as well. Something about Professor Jordan Peterson has just set them off on this topic.

Well, it's worn me out. Call me anti-semantic, I don't care. Novus Ordo people call me that all the time. (...or am I perhaps getting mixed up?)

Anti-semantic!! I love that phrase and can't wait for an opportunity to use it.

When everyone l know learns to answer the question, "How are you?" with "I'm well" instead of "I'm good", it will be glorious!

Whoopee ti yi yo, gig along little dogies

Is the Picardy third not merely a Baroque PC concept, after all?

This calls for time in the stocks

Charles, I don't really trust stocks can it be time in bonds instead?

Not stocks.

Bouillon.

time in the stock(s), or in "gold buillon" (chicken apparently)...

either way you're in the soup.

an event? a choral event? a choral oblation/ offering? a sing? or you can stop using a noun with adjective and stick to verbs and adverbs ie describe what you are doing: like Singing at Vespers.

I misunderstood the above comment at first, and was feeling slighted for having been cantor today without being paid. When I do secular "gigs" it is often for pay. For tomorrow's funeral, I will received a check. For Sunday Mass no check. Hoping for eternal reward, though. Organists seem to get paid everywhere, but singers only get paid in some big choirs.

Wow, did they HIRE singers because the volunteers retired? I have sung in my parish since I was a teenager. My mother also sang at Mass for many years. Many of my brothers also sing at Mass where they live. If we move someday and really retire, I plan to "audition" parishes to find the best music I can.

I prefer "engagements" to "gigs".

I don't think I have ever used those terms for myself. I just call it work.