by Tracey Thorn
9
A WINDOW PANE
I
’m fascinated by the idea of the folk voice being almost invisible, or at least, that invisibility is the goal. ‘Good prose should be transparent, like a window pane’, wrote George Orwell, and a similar, perhaps unattainable, ideal seems true for many folk singers. The singing should always be in the service of the song; that seems to be the ultimate ambition. Bob Dylan writes about his early beginnings in Chronicles, ‘There were a lot of better singers and better musicians around these places but there wasn’t anybody close in nature to what I was doing… Most of the other performers tried to put themselves across, rather than the song, but I didn’t care about doing that. With me, it was about putting the song across.’ In traditional folk, where singers draw on a shared pool of material, it is all about interpretation, conveying the essence of the song, and much less about the beauty of the sound you might make with your voice. Folk singing developed out of an oral tradition of storytelling; as Will Hodgkinson writes in The Ballad of Britain, people sang ‘to tell stories, to mark events, to relay the news and to bring poetry to the most mundane aspects of daily life’. He goes on to interview various singers from the Traveller community, including Stanley Robertson, nephew of the famed Jeannie Robertson, who grew up in a folk-singing family. Stanley talks about how the singer inhabits the song, becomes at one with it, and all others who have sung and heard it: ‘You’re singing with a tribe. You’re a villain, you’re a wronged woman, you’re a wee boy with a letter, you’re everyone.’ In this sense, the singer merges with the characters in the song; his own identity becomes subsumed into the story. This is what Dylan is saying too, about his early singing – that it wasn’t even about trying to create and communicate a distinctive personality; he wanted to obscure himself, and be in the service of the songs. One of the things that make Dylan’s performances of his own topical songs work is his deadpan delivery. He lets the lyrics and the story they tell deliver all the feeling required, and there is no emotional demand in his actual vocal. He sings them in a plain, almost detached manner. Conversely, when you hear other singers cover one of his ‘angry’ songs, they often believe that they have to supply the anger in the vocals, and that is a mistake – the songs immediately sound histrionic, and you feel hectored and lectured in a way that you never do by Dylan’s own interpretations of his songs.
Shirley Collins reiterated this same perspective in an interview with Jude Rogers in the Guardian in 2008, in which she said, ‘A folk voice should just be a conduit for the song. You want no sheen, just the song.’ This idea of there being no sheen is central to folk singing, and is part of the music’s ongoing debate over the tension between the real, or the natural, and the artifice of performance. Folk music has always been big on the idea of informality, and presents itself as the antithesis of pop music: simpler, more homely and authentic. It is anti-glamour, in a way that reminds me strongly of the demystification of punk and post-punk. Also, unlike at conventional pop or rock gigs, there’s an attempt to break down the barrier between performer and listener; so at folk clubs there might be no stage, no amps, no dressing up, and the idea is to erase the boundary between performance and participation.
In the Guardian interview, Shirley Collins responds to the revived interest in folk music with ambivalence – on the one hand happy to see it being kept alive and handed down through the generations, but on the other harbouring a perhaps old-fashioned prejudice against the concept of performance. She describes certain modern singers dismissively: ‘Many of them are almost turning themselves into pantomime acts. They’re so self-aware, strutting around, turning it into theatre. What they should remember is that these songs are about people, not a person.’ It’s important, in other words, that the singer does not become the centre of attention, more important than either the listener or the people contained within the songs. It’s a dilemma, for singer and listener, both of whom have to partake in something that is definitely A Show, while also buying into the notion that something entirely natural is taking place. A certain suspension of disbelief has to be adopted by both sides.
Returning to the subject of accents, this has always been something of a hot topic in folk music: the adoption of the correct accent is taken very seriously. If you’re singing traditional ballads, then obviously you’re not going to adopt the vague transatlantic accent of pop, so the idea of singing in your ‘own’ accent has long been a badge of sincerity and character. Outside the more purist circles, though, where folk blurs into the world of rock, choice of accent is a more open, more personal decision. Nick Drake, for instance, is steadfastly English, even when his songs transcend folk arrangements and veer towards commercial soulful rock, as on ‘Poor Boy’. The track is loose and sensuous; a sax wails, the piano is jazzy and improvisational, the female backing vocalists are singing in an American accent, but there is Nick at the centre of it all, sounding as genteel and English as ever. It creates a tension, a slight awkwardness that saves the track from overproduced blandness, but did that awkwardness contribute to people finding his music difficult to grasp and interpret? Did that voice in the midst of that arrangement constitute something of the bizarre hybrid?
John Martyn, in contrast, sang in a more obviously US-inspired accent, and I would argue that it lent his singing some of the power and authority that an American accent often seems to imbue. An English tone like Nick Drake’s, beautiful and true though it is, will always risk sounding whimsical or even fey, whereas the swaggering resonance of US pronunciation brings with it a sense of innate machismo. I think of Sinatra, and what his accent conveys – confidence, control, maturity. Sometimes, of course, an English accent can be a way of deliberately implying the exact opposite: it can add an atmosphere of amateurism, making the voice appear less professional, less showbiz, even. Lily Allen, for example, is someone whose accent lends an unstudied artlessness to her performances, making her sound youthful, a little bit street, a little bit naive, but above all, less like a Singer, and more like a person who happens to be singing. She has the strength of personality to carry it off, but with an English accent you tread a fine line between simple and twee; and the desperate desire to avoid the namby-pamby, whimsical aspects of indie was another reason why I veered towards an American accent at the beginning of my career. No one singing in an American accent will ever sound twee as someone singing in English can.
Still, it’s a risk. Alexis Petridis, reviewing Laura Marling’s album Once I Was an Eagle in the Guardian, raised an eyebrow at the recent Americanisation of her accent, highlighting the fact that it had reached a point where she was pronouncing the word ‘verse’ in pure Brooklyn-ese, as ‘voice’. Too much obvious deviation from an accent you’ve established will be seen as insincerity. But it depends too on the kind of music you’re singing – we were fine with the idea that Joss Stone, performing entirely American-inspired music, was singing in that accent, and it wasn’t until she forgot herself for a moment and started speaking in it that ridicule loomed. That was considered a step too far and made her look foolish – and it’s noteworthy as an example of how clearly we distinguish between singing and speaking voice in terms of what’s acceptable.
An alternative way to avoid this pitfall is to use a regional accent, if you happen to be in possession of one. The Proclaimers did so in the most decisive fashion, securing for themselves a unique sound identity above and beyond anything in their actual songs. And two of my favourite singers of recent years, Rachel and Becky Unthank, sing in the Tyne and Wear voices they were born with, loud and proud. It’s a gorgeous sound, warm and earthy, and lends a sort of stoic muscularity to anything they sing. Again, there is a complete absence of twee. For the listener, though, singing along becomes problematic: if, like me, you’re someone for whom one of the prime enjoyments of music is the singing along, then accents can throw obstacles in your path, making you feel awkward and inhibited. Do you sing in your own, probably vaguely American singing voice, or join in w
ith the particular accent being used? If you do the latter, you risk sounding like you’re taking the piss.
And what about emotion and passion within the folk scenario of ordinariness? Is there room for any soul or self in the folk voice, and is there even meant to be? If the idea is that it’s all about conveying the song in the most honest, direct, authentic way possible, rather than using the song as a vehicle to express the self; that discovering unknown old songs is of more value than writing new ones, in that there is a buried tradition, which speaks volumes about our heritage, our past and where we come from, and that the singer’s duty is to learn and faithfully reproduce these songs, then is there a danger that the singing of these songs can become an almost mechanical process? Does it reduce the singer to a mere cog in the machine?
Possibly, though I can think of many folk singers who defy this apparent ban on performance and personality. At its best, the folk voice encompasses the deadpan neutrality of Anne Briggs and the regal imperiousness of Sandy Denny, both of which I find packed with an unshowy, austere kind of emotion. In folk singing, the worst thing you can be is a bit fake, a bit pop, a bit showbiz. ‘Just sing it straight’ is the mantra, the apparent opposite of soul singing, with its ad-libs, vibrato and melisma. Folk singing strains towards the minimal, whereas soul singers so often seek to add, whether in the form of Aretha Franklin’s swoops of extended range, James Brown’s grunts of sexual exertion, or the likes of Luther Vandross and Mariah Carey who simply include as many notes as possible in each sung phrase. Sometimes, at its worst, the result comes across as simply showing off, but in the secure hands of the best singers you get a performance akin to that of an Olympic athlete, which leaves you breathless in admiration of its almost superhuman skill and ability. I’m reminded of Simon Frith describing Whitney Houston ‘swinging through a ballad like a trapeze artist’. Sometimes that’s just what you want. You can’t always have it sung plain; the ear needs treats and sweets some of the time. One of the few soul singers who does sing it straight is Sade, and while some dismiss her lack of range and versatility, others are delighted by her firm, almost prim refusal to overdo things, to be vulgar, to risk making a mess.
I inhabit a territory somewhere in the plainsong world of the folk voice, which rarely intersects with soul singing; and yet some people like to describe me as a soul or jazz singer. I’ve borrowed mannerisms and inflections from both sides, but essentially I’m a lyric-delivering kind of singer, a teller of the story, not an embellisher. Folk singing eschews vibrato and ad-libs, and I’m not strong on those. If I have any vibrato at all, it’s not soul vibrato, but closer to the deliberate note-wobble of someone like Chrissie Hynde, whose voice has always reminded me of the tremolo setting on a guitar amp – something added to the note rather than contained within it. And if I’m jazzy, then it’s the little corner table of Blossom Dearie and Astrud Gilberto that I’m sitting at, with singers whose economy of style, directness of delivery and absence of flourish I share. Singing is in many ways an elevated or enhanced form of speaking, and this particular style is aiming to be not too enhanced. If singing makes us hear, open up and be receptive to the emotion contained within words, it is also true that beyond a certain point singing can become so florid as to draw more attention to itself than to the words being sung, and that is a different kind of singing altogether – one I don’t have much time for.
Somewhere beyond me, though, out past the rather modest vocal territory where I dwell, there is a realm I gaze at enviously, where Dusty soars above me and Björk reaches levels I can’t. My style of singing suits me, and sits with my personality, but still, I’d love to be Adele for a day.
10
LOOKS LIKE AN ELEPHANT
I
’ve mentioned several times the importance of finding your own voice, and the recurring arguments focused on artifice and faking it. The most literal examples of this involve not the singer who puts on a different voice in which to sing, or gives a mannered performance, but the instances of actual fakery with which pop music is littered. In fact, the potential for deception existed right from the beginning of recording technology, and was recognised early, seeming to some to offer a solution to certain perceived problems. Greg Milner, in Perfecting Sound Forever, tells the story of pioneering orchestra conductor Leopold Stokowski, who engaged in some of the earliest attempts to record an orchestra in the late 1920s, and is quoted as saying this: ‘Opera today, while pleasing to the ear, is often a sore trial for the eye. Take Tannhäuser, for example. Venus, the most beautiful woman in the world, is using her charms to tempt Tannhäuser from the narrow path of virtue. But, unfortunately, the lady who plays the part… may sing like a nightingale, but she looks like an elephant… Electricity will change her. We can take her voice and record it on a disk. Then we can select a beautiful young lady who really may be accepted by the audience for a Venus…’
The sheer brutality and sexism of this suggestion is bracing in its straightforwardness and its clear belief that here is a simple solution to a problem that we can all agree upon. It sets out the case for faking the lead singer, and as with most technological advances, once it becomes possible to do something, it is perhaps inevitable that sooner or later someone will do it. The moral implications don’t seem to have troubled Stokowski for a moment, though as it turned out, they would trouble the paying public, who would prove bitterly resentful of this kind of deceit when it was practised upon them. Taking for granted that any audience would rather listen to a beautiful young lady than one who ‘looks like an elephant’, Stokowski merely anticipated the trend of popular music, which would make it ever more difficult for female singers to sidestep the question of their appearance, and be judged solely on the quality of their singing. Within the world of commercial pop music it became obvious that it would be easier to sell a record ‘sung’ by a conventionally attractive woman, and so the temptation was there to commit the ultimate act of vocal artifice. One of the most notorious examples is that of Black Box, who sampled Loleatta Holloway’s voice on their hit ‘Ride on Time’, and on other releases used vocals they had recorded from Martha Wash, while claiming the model who lip-synched the vocals in ‘live’ performances and videos was the group’s real lead singer. Or maybe they never ‘claimed’ any such thing, maybe they just didn’t think it really mattered, believing, like Stokowski, that the jarring disconnect between a beautiful voice coming from a ‘not beautiful’ body was too upsetting to impose on an audience, and that they were merely fixing things to make it nicer for everybody.
To prove that this kind of fakery wasn’t only a sexist conspiracy against women, one of the other more famous examples involves men. Two men, in fact; the men who were or weren’t Milli Vanilli. Their story and their controversy is well known – they were disgraced and had their Grammy revoked after it was revealed that the group members Fab Morvan and Rob Pilatus had not been the ones singing on their record or indeed at their concerts, where they were miming to the vocal performances of others. The public reaction that followed demonstrates that, in fact, people do think it matters who is claiming to be the singer; that there is a fundamental issue of integrity, which the record-buying public take seriously. After the Milli Vanilli revelations, members of the public filed lawsuits against the group demanding refunds. This is curious, of course, because while it’s indisputable that there was deception happening, if people had bought and enjoyed the records, they didn’t really lose anything once it was revealed that different people had been doing the singing. The record they liked was still the same record, still sounded exactly the way it had the previous day. Indeed, those who perhaps had the most right to feel aggrieved were the singers who actually performed the songs, only to see others claim all the credit and rewards. Nonetheless, it’s a fact that the public felt they had been defrauded. It seems that there is a bond of trust between those selling and those buying records – the voice has to belong to the person you have been led to believe it belongs to, or else you have been c
onned and deprived of the true experience you thought you were paying for.
It turns out that the public can get irate about vocal authenticity even when it’s not an instance of one person pretending to be another, but of a singer – Beyoncé, perhaps – lip-synching to a performance she herself had previously recorded, at a presidential inauguration, say. I was taken aback by the controversy over the Obama inauguration. The situation was explained pretty quickly – a vocal had been pre-recorded as a safety copy in case of technical issues, and then lack of rehearsal time with the orchestra, combined with a strong wind on the day, or something, made them decide to go with the pre-record and not risk any musical dissonance at such a large and important public event. Didn’t sound very controversial to me. Was anyone actually suggesting that Beyoncé herself hadn’t sung the pre-recorded vocal? Or, and here I may have to pause for a moment to laugh, that Beyoncé can’t sing? That she’s been faking it all this time and she’s no better than Milli Vanilli? We need to have a quiet word with ourselves here if we have gone down this path of thinking. Those arguing that the avoidance of a risk that this particular musical performance might go awry was a bad thing, and that Beyoncé should be ashamed of herself for her artistic cowardice, should take a moment to remember that this was not a concert, or indeed a musical event of any kind. It was a symbolic, wholly stage-managed piece of state pageantry, and the singing was absolutely not the central event. What this story proved to me, though, was that people can still get agitated about the idea that what they are getting is not what they signed up for.
