Monday 30 April 2018

Why I Feel Good About The Future

"Make Me Feel," by Janelle Monae
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGRzz0oqgUE

Do yourself a favour: Listen to this song while you follow the lyrics* because if you listen to it while you watch the video, you'll get distracted from the musical brilliance. (Of course, you won't be able to read all the lyrics anyway if, like me, you're the type to close your eyes when you start moving helplessly to such an overpowering groove.) Because the video is also brilliant, watch it, if you want to, at your second listen (believe me, there'll be a second listen).

They say that Frank Sinatra was a master of unorthodox phrasing, but there's no denying that Janelle Monae is his equal while she's singing this song.  Listen to her sing the word "questions," and the word "intentions," and the word "compression," and the word "confessions," and the word "stop," and the word "jean," and the word "shag," and the word "don't," and tell me she's not in touch with the fanciful possibilities of the English language and with the marvellous little surprises of musical syncopation.

You can hear James Brown and Michael Jackson in this song, I think. And Prince -- you can hear Prince, too (he's gotta be the source of that jangly rock guitar riff in the chorus that explodes at you out of nowhere). I imagine you can hear other performers as well, but I can speak only to what I know when I'm discussing music made by someone from a much younger artistic culture than mine. (Some of us lucky bastards aren't yet blind or deaf.)

But make no mistake -- this is all Janelle Monae's song. I suppose you could say it's just another irresistible funk number, and I imagine you could say its sexual charge is meter-breaking, and I wonder about how the accompaniment to the singer's stunning voice is produced (people? machines?), but what I really want to believe is that this number is about nothing more than being carried away by love . . . Wait -- "nothing more than"? Jesus, being carried away by love is everything. Janelle Monae, while she's feeling her everything here, makes us feel our everything, too, which is one of the great things that great singers do.

Monday 2 April 2018

Sometimes You Just Know

"I'll Take You There," by the Staple Singers

Because I'm certain non-material phenomena don't exist, "soul" is a word I like to use carefully. Like millions of others, I was brought up to believe that it denoted an actual entity that existed somewhere inside me, but also separate from me; unlike me, however, it would live through a blissful eternity if I behaved myself before I had to leave the scene. The whole scheme eventually struck me as unjust and nonsensical and I abandoned my belief in it a long time ago.

Singing isn't my new religion, but I love it infinitely more than I ever did that old religion. I find it infinitely more useful, too. And I think I get the use of "soul" when it comes to singing (and playing): it's artful and sincere, and it makes you and the singer(s) and player(s) ecstatic or sorrowful (mostly the former, in my experience).

Heck, I'm just running my mouth. Listen to this song, its soulful lyrics, its soulful players, its soulful singers, the soulful woman singing lead. You'll know what I mean.

(Of course, the joke's on me because I think they're all talking about heaven, and I don't believe in heaven.)