All right, I was merely expressing my dislike of both the voice and the material sung. Now it's anyone's entire right to express the opposite view. There's no accounting for taste...
Praising legends such as Louis Armstrong and Stevie Wonder never implied in my mind that their attitude or originality had the least thing to do with their roots. Disparaging any given contemporary austrian artist, I could have said by the same token "What a sham of a tribute he or she is paying to Mozart". And by the way, fathoming how much ethnical or national identification could have been at stake in the mental cogs of those masters is and should always remain our last and least concern as listeners (as opposed to their biographers)
But what if W.A.Mozart or L.Armstrong suddenly revolve in their tombs on discovering how music merchants shamelessely bank on their posthumous worldwide recognition to launch and sustain folks of similar kin yet obviously lacking the millionth of their forebears' inventiveness? And, worse still, take advantage of the mass ignorance to derive whining bobbysoxers à la Britney Spears or Christina Aguileira from the already half-fabricated Aretha Franklin soul myth by the mere standardisation of drum pattern recycling?
Sure, "Peace" is a nice thing to say! Unfortunately, subscribing to the shallow view that conveying feelings goes above instrumental perfection is just one side of the story, mind you. What about the old fly in the ointment thing? Can't a weak rendition simply mar it all? Unless your motherly soul is forever desperate for living proofs of the oh-so-touching Human Touch, of course...
To put it plain and simple: say I don't know and I don't care about your falsetto break, your singing litterally enraptures me...up to the point where, for any reason (maybe a boring melody) the magic gets lost, and, sad to say, my distracted mind suddenly comes to notice your vocal shifting sound and subsequently lump it together with something it doesn't quite fancy.
AAron Neville may have developped some craft in the years. I'm glad he impressed you with his performing skills, all the best for him then! Trouble is, firstly his pipes never made me a believer at all, and secondly I rack my brains in vain to try and remember any solid melody of his brand.
You' ve got no idea how much we western europeans get submerged by less-than-good american sound (with an average 5 years lag from you all, to take the cake). I daresay AAron Nevilles then becomes a true quality product by these new standards! The French, priding so much on their revolutionary universalism, blindly take it for granted all non white music is good. Venturing the shyiest disclaimer would be a sin. So Hiphop is definitely in (... down and out...) What a bore for older generations like mine to hear a poor rendition of "Stand by me" for the umpteenth time, featuring a nondescript rap passage (twopence remote ghetto nursery-rhymed gossip nobody grasps but their writers), and to take it in the face from an all-but-bright youngster that this is the last new thing, an actual original tune from so and so's album, with the kuulest gruuve, and so on... Music carrying emotion, eh? Can't then blue movies also fill the bill?
Bart
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