To hell with that! To untwist this twisted mindset, the Mid-Winter Singing Festival is due to return to East Lansing’s Hannah Community Center.Everyone, skilled or not, is welcome at two huge evening community sings (8 p.m. Friday and 7 p.m. Saturday) and 11 workshops designed to knit song back into the social fabric. (You’re on your own with the sports and sex.)

The songs range from rock oldies to folk standards to spirituals to hymns to Broadway to country, with only two criteria: they must be fun to sing and learnable in 45 seconds. Booklets with lyrics to both chorus and verse will be passed out.

Joel Mabus, a mainstay of the folk circuit for 30 years, is among eight singers chosen to lead the singalongs. He said this year’s songs range from “Moon River” to Buddy Holly’s “Every Day” to “I Won’t Grow Up” from “Peter Pan” to “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain,” made famous by Roy Acuff and Willie Nelson.

Congregational singing and 1950s folk-revival material are not ignored, but they don’t dominate, either. Inclusiveness, not exclusivity, is the watchword.

“It would be easy to say, ‘Oh, let’s do “The Old Rugged Cross,” and all of a sudden you’re at a church service,” Mabus said. “We don’t go there.”

Nor is the Singing Festival a white-bread folkie affair. Kim and Reggie Harris, a husband-and-wife duo from Philadelphia, will bring African-American spirituals to the menu.

The Harrises will also lead a free children’s concert devoted to songs and stories of the Undergound Railroad 11 a.m. Saturday.

Seventh Annual Mid-Winter Singing Festival

Friday, Feb. 5 and Saturday, Feb. 6 Hannah Community Center, 819 Abbott Road, East Lansing Friday and Saturday Community Sings: $5-$15 For full schedule go to: www.singingfestival.com