I haven't posted for a couple of days as I have been suffering from a stinker of a cold - a bit of a Christmas tradition with me. Unflatteringly referred to as "manflu" by women this has plagued me at this time of year for as far back as I can remember. Hopefully the worst is over and I feel up to returning to GOTPO (giving out the pay online - my new name for blogging) again. It's about R&B - and what that term seems to mean nowadays.
The term Rhythm and Blues (R&B) goes back to the nineteen forties originally but, when I was a teenager in the sixties, it was used to mean music with a heavy blues influence that had drums and bass and electric instruments. A lot of artists we would now describe simply as blues such as BB King, Freddy King and John Lee Hooker were regarded as R&B. In the sixties, among young white musicians, a great appetite for blues (or R&B) developed and in this era bands like The Rolling Stones, Them, The Pretty Things, The Animals started out playing Rhythm and Blues before veering off into what became rock. Elsewhere it would be interesting to chart the movement from Blues to Rock, looking at how Van Morrison moved from "Baby Please Don't Go" to the country-rock with a jazz influence that was "Tupelo Honey" and the Stones went from "Spider and the Fly" to "Nineteenth Nervous Breakdown".
In America R&B moved into popular music in a different way. Elvis Presely's breakthrough single "That's Alright " was an old blues song originally written and recorded by Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup. Rock and Roll a la Chuck Berry was really a souped up version of Rhythm and Blues.
This is all well-documented elsewhere but what really exercises me is what they call R & B nowadays. It is tempting for me to say that it is synonomous now with dreck but perhaps that is unfair. Here is what Wikipedia says:
"Contemporary R&B has a polished record production style, drum machine-backed rhythms, an occasional saxophone-laced beat to give a jazz feel (mostly common in contemporary R&B songs prior to the year 1993), and a smooth, lush style of vocal arrangement. Electronic influences are becoming an increasing trend, and the use of hip hop or dance inspired beats are typical, although the roughness and grit inherent in hip hop may be reduced and smoothed out. Contemporary R&B vocalists are often known for their use of melisma, popularized by vocalists such as Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder,[1] Whitney Houston[1][2][3] and Mariah Carey.[2][4][5]"
How the hell a term that used to describe John Lee Hooker can be used to describe Mariah Carey remains a mystery to me. The use of melisma in the artists cited, in my opinion, falls into the area of bathos, overdone and far too obvious. "Ars est celare artem" is obviously not a maxim any of these singers. If you want to hear melisma used for its originally intended effect - to heighten emotion (not grandiose sentimentality) listen to Joni Mitchell singing - well - just about anything. It's beautiful and natural, as it should be.
The bit that makes me laugh out loud though, as they say on Facebook, is "although the roughness and grit inherent in hip hop may be reduced..." Mariah Carey? You bet it may!
Everything got very small towards the end of this. Does that represent whispering?
ReplyDeleteNo - it represents me getting fouled up with fonts after I pasted in the extract from Wiki.
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