Vocalist.org archive


From:  bjjocelyn@p...
Date:  Sat May 18, 2002  3:07 am
Subject:  Re: [vocalist] Aaron Neville

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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