Unlike Aretha Franklin, she doesn’t have a big, commanding voice. But just as some actors are able to do as much (or more) with less, so, too, with singers. And when it comes to expressing heartache and vulnerability, a voice that’s smaller, less powerful isn’t necessarily a liability—it can be a strength.
If it wasn’t for the music, I don’t know what I’d do.
Indeep, “Last Night A DJ Saved My Life” (1982)
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mail
Cool. Thanks! — Bill
(email from Bill Ryan, Director of the Grand Valley State University New Music Ensemble, in response to a message letting him know that his ensemble was featured here yesterday; their 2007 recording of this piece was lauded by the New York Times as one of the notable classical CDs of the year and by WNYC’s John Schaefer as one of the five best classical CDs of the decade)
Listen to “Sunny Day” by Akon and Wyclef.—Luke (my 18-year-old son, on the phone the other night)
Akon with Wyclef Jean, “Sunny Day” (2008)
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One of the things I find intriguing about contemporary popular music is the widespread practice (particularly in hip-hop) of featuring guest artists, usually, it seems, people whose style and approach are very different from one’s own. Implicit in this is the notion that hearing two different musical personalities can make for a more interesting and rewarding experience than hearing just one. And including another artist opens a song up, making it less a fixed, static thing and more a vehicle for improvisation and variation, something subject to different takes, whose content and texture ultimately depend to a large extent on the identity and contributions of the featured guest.
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My son called from Minnesota the other day to tell me that the weather was terrible, his car had been towed, he didn’t like his job, and he had a cold and a sore throat. Is it bad that the only motherly advice I could think to give him was to listen to Fats Waller [2/9/10]?
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The drummer’s comments were great [Brian Blade, 2/13/10]. You layin’ down a pretty good groove your own self, Richard.
Or anything else that’s got more than one syllable.
You want sweat.
Funk.
That clenched scream: “Uhowwwww!”
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Wilson Pickett, live, Germany, 1968
“Everybody Needs Someone To Love”
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“I’m In Love”
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“Ninety-Nine And A Half (Won’t Do)”
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“Mustang Sally”
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“We didn’t make enough money to press our suits,” Pickett reminisced when asked about the Violinaires, the gospel group he formed shortly after moving to Detroit from his native Alabama. “We would sing three programs a Sunday at different churches. We’d sing our hearts out, and so we done sweated up that suit three times — from the socks all the way up.
“The sisters would get up and they’d put a penny or a dime on the table and say ‘Ya’ll boys sho’ can sing.’ And we’d come in the back, and they got all the chicken baskets and pies and stuff to eat, and even occasionally one of the sisters would take you home.”
The young Pickett soon caught the eye not only of a sister or two, but also of the Falcons, a local R&B group with whom he later wrote and sang his first hit song, “I Found a Love,” in 1962.
“I was scared because these people says that if you leave God and go to the devil, you’re going to go to hell. You see, I wanted to sing gospel, but I wanted to make some money, too. So I said, ‘No I’ll never leave, I’ll never leave God.’ Until that evening that one of the Falcons came by and I was sitting on the back porch and I went down and tried it out. And from then on I told God, I looked up and I said, ‘I’m on my way this way — would You care to go with me? I’d really appreciate Your being with me. It’d make me feel better.’—Ken Emerson, “Wilson Pickett: Soul Man On Ice”
Wednesday’s featured artist, Curtis Mayfield, was so popular and influential among Jamaican musicians, including the early Wailers (back when the group included Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer [before becoming “Bob Marley and . . .”]), that one British deejay dubbed him the “Godfather of Reggae.”
The Wailers (with Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, and Bunny Wailer), “Keep On Moving” (1972)
Want more? Here (don’t miss “Soul Shakedown Party”).
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The Impressions (with Curtis Mayfield), “I Gotta Keep on Moving” (1964)
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reading table
It’s odd to think back on the time—not so long ago—when there were distinct stylistic trends, such as “this season’s colour” or “abstract expressionism” or “psychedelic music.” It seems we don’t think like that any more. There are just too many styles around, and they keep mutating too fast to assume that kind of dominance.
As an example, go into a record shop and look at the dividers used to separate music into different categories. There used to be about a dozen: rock, jazz, ethnic, and so on. Now there are almost as many dividers as there are records, and they keep proliferating.
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We’re living in a stylistic tropics. There’s a whole generation of people able to access almost anything from almost anywhere, and they don’t have the same localised stylistic sense that my generation grew up with. It’s all alive, all “now,” in an ever-expanding present, be it Hildegard of Bingen or a Bollywood soundtrack. The idea that something is uncool because it’s old or foreign has left the collective consciousness.
I think this is good news. As people become increasingly comfortable with drawing their culture from a rich range of sources—cherry-picking whatever makes sense to them—it becomes more natural to do the same thing with their social, political and other cultural ideas. The sharing of art is a precursor to the sharing of other human experiences, for what is pleasurable in art becomes thinkable in life.—Brian Eno, 11/18/09
Curtis Mayfield (with Master Henry Gibson on hand drums), “Move On Up,” live, The Netherlands (The Hague), 1987
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In the Sixties, you had percussionists like Master Henry Gibson that was playing with Curtis Mayfield and he was pretty much used as melodic accents. When you listen to a lot of Curtis’ work after the Impressions, rather than a horn player he’s got Henry Gibson out front on percussions. A lot of people had missed that in the sense of compositional expression.—Kahil El’Zabar
music clip of the day 