Barbershop music encompass both men's and women's singing in the barbershop style – in quartets and choruses. Sweet Adelines International and Harmony, Inc. are two women's barbershop singing organizations that operate globally and in North America, respectively. Other women's organizations include the Ladies Association of Barbershop Singers (LABBS) in the United Kingdom, the Spanish Association of Barbershop Singers (SABS) in Spain, and the Irish Association of Barbershop Singers (IABS) in Ireland. A barbershop quartet is an ensemble of four people who sing a cappella in the exacting barbershop music genre. In North America most male barbershop quartet singers belong to the Barbershop
Barbershop quartet below the lead singer. Quartets can be male or female, but are generally not mixed male and female. A female barbershop quartet may be referred to as a Sweet Adelines quartet (taking the title from the barbershop classic "Sweet Adeline"), and the vocal parts have the same labels, since the roles perform similar functions in the quartet even though the vocal ranges are different. Most barbershop quartets are male. Barbershop singing originated in the late 1800s and early 1900s of America, a hybrid of both black and white expressive cultural forms at the time. The African-American influence is sometimes overlooked,