When I was in music school the most powerful thing I was told by my teachers was that the voice was capable of doing anything that any other instrument could do, in a technical sense. It couldn’t play more than one pitch at one time [practically speaking] but other than that, the sky was the limit.

Now that I’ve graduated and joined the reality based community I don’t think that’s quite true. There was a lot of romance at the time about how Miles Davis wanted to be a singer and wanted to make his trumpet sound like a singer and blah blah blah but mostly we were the bane of small groups, brought out only for ballads, tacked onto big bands as an afterthought [and with simply ghastly charts...Van Morrison, anyone?]; sure, our goal was to sight read as accurately and quickly as any instrumentalist but I can still sight-read piano music faster than I can sight-sing. This is probably my technical failing and many apologies to those of you singers out there sputtering with righteous indignation. In my experience, however, I consider these shortcomings to be representative of our trade as a whole. I can remember one particularly chafing Steve Coleman chart where, to be honest, our whole group was a bit at sea and thinking: This really does not sound good when sung. Like, I’m trying everything here, and it just sounds foolish. The IDEA is laudable and pedagogically no doubt very sound [9/4! time no changes! whaaaaaaa] but it’s heartless…soulless…vaguely irritating.

Lettin' it all hang out

I submit that a big part of this phenomenon is not that the voice is limited in any way; on the contrary. What makes the voice so powerful is its intimacy and ability to connect. Without that it’s just a reedy or brassy sound, probably better accomplished by reeds and brass. In fact, culturally we seem to have such an attracto-repulsive fascination with the voice that people will watch even the FAILED American Idol auditions and just let their jaws swing freely in horror and awe. When you’re singing your {ahem} emotional pants are down. You’re putting it all out there. When you hear/see/feel “it all” from another human being, you get a charge that’s not always comfortable in the same way that total honesty is not always comfortable. Even singing that is considered technically not-that-great [and really, what does that mean anyway?] can give you that charge of naked heart.

So it sounds weird and unsettling to have this purity of heart directed at such a challenging piece of music that your frontal lobe is all contorted and you’re getting that little narrow wrinkle in between your eyebrows.  It’s like going to a yoga class that is ostensibly all about connection and spending the whole time talking about the iliotibial band and your left big toe.  Sure, you can [and should] know about that stuff, but don’t forget to bring it on home, you know?  There is TOO MUCH abundance of spirit in the voice to cram it into a lyricless leadsheet exploring the Locrian mode.  THAT’S why it sounds weird.

We’re now at the point, on this fine hemisphere of ours, where we are so inundated with recordings and simply flawless music coming at us from all directions that a human voice, with its tremors, spit and waverings, seems like taking your top off in public. I can now see [after many years of headscratching and sneers] why karaoke is so popular: it’s a reclamation project. And those of my yoga students whose practices are deepening as the years pass are getting more into chanting, and I believe that this is why. The voice is not just another instrument, with all due respect to my jazz teachers. It is a demonstration of the unclothed, honest heart. It is union of the highest sort: you imagine the note, you “hear” it in your mind’s ear, and then almost immediately you manifest. You conjure sound from empty air. Singing is yoga:  pure, unadulterated spirit.

2 Comments »

November 26th, 2008 Bree Says:

A-men!

November 30th, 2008 einajs Says:

Phew, I’m glad you agree! This is the kind of stuff it makes me nervous to write. But there you have it: try not to suggest Steve Coleman’s “Uhren” at holiday singalongs.

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