Soul-LESS in '05...Where has it gone???

I walked to the office this morning with Ray Charles in my CD player and it made me begin to really assess the state of BLACK MUSIC...particularly our great cultural tradition of SOUL music...What is Soul music you might ask?? Soul music has its most obvious roots in the Black Church and more specifically gospel music. Some of the greatest soul singers/musicians honed their musical chops in the black church. Marvin Gaye's father was a Pentecostal preacher (and also interestingly enough a cross dresser). Reverend C.L. Franklin was renowned as being a preacher's preacher and was also the great Aretha Franklin's father. One could list numerous other Soul legends that started off in the church. For a people who had (and continue to) be denied equal access to public resources (more specifically education) the Church was the only place to get the "training" to be a singer/musician. No conservatories...No fancy private instruction...Just an "A" and "B" selection on Sunday morning.

When talking about Gospel music we also must acknowledge its roots in one of the greatest American folk traditions...The Blues. The blues was and is the darker side of the conscience of Black America. If gospel reflected the hope and aspirations of a people in misery the blues reflected that misery in its purest and most beautiful form. It was sex and drugs before there was "Rock N' Roll". Those were the records that Marvin, Aretha, Al, Sam, and Otis put on after they came from church. It was and is as organic an artform as there could be... Somewhere along the line, in the early to mid 50's, Gospel and Blues had a baby...And the soul singer as we know it was born. It is a peculiar and interesting balance between the two genres. The vocal touches and musical arrangements were clearly church-inspired yet the content reflected the "street" sensibility of the blues. The "Gods" and "Jesuses" became "girls" and "baby’s." But the organic nature of it all kept the resulting product, above all things, REAL and SOULFUL. In the mid to late 60's we saw two particular giants of black music take this soul in a different direction. James Brown gave the world the first hints of what would become "funk" music. Most of James' compositions resulted from impromptu jam sessions. The center of it all for James was the rhythm. Guitar, Drums, Bass, and one kiss-ass horn section created simplistically complex soundscapes that could make a corpse get up and dance. And then there was Sly and The Family Stone. Sly was James' dirtier musical brother. The arrangements were choppy, the vocals were garbled and mumbled yet soulful, and the band reflected an ideal of racial equality that America THEN and NOW could not realize. Before there could be a Prince in all of his purple majesty and weirdness there had to be a James and more importantly a Sly. Funk was still SOULFUL music in that it is and was organic in nature; it was a collection of musicians playing instruments. It was LIVE, REAL, and RAW. No two live performances of the SAME song were exactly the same. The difference between Soul music and Funk in my estimation lies in Funk's de-emphasis on the vocal. James' or Sly's vocals stand only as accessories to the music and not as the central emotive instrument. When you listen to "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag" or "Sex Machine" or "Everyday People" it's the arrangements that stand out more prominently than the actually vocal performances. The bass line or rhythm guitar could give you the same sense of yearning or excitement as a vocal run. Funk is and was truly egalitarian in nature.

Skipping ahead a bit....Funk gave birth to Hip Hop; the last great American musical folk tradition. Young kids in the inner cities who could not afford instruments or lessons and were not as connected to the Black Church as the previous generation found their savior in two turntables, some funk records, and a microphone...and with that great breakthrough began a new culture that would affect billions and billions of people. Just like the Blues, rap was and is (in some cases today...but that is for another essay) the truest reflection of the social condition(s) of a people who still continue to be haunted by the legacies of slavery and Jim Crow. What the world gained in a new expression of a social conscience Soul music lost in rawness and energy. Musicians and large bands were slowly but surely phased out in favor of producers with computers who could create pitch perfect sounds and a fraction of the cost. In the music industry's never ending quest to make more money the true essence of SOUL had and has been lost. Soul is about perfecting an imperfect process. It is about letting the vocal go where it WANTS to go (even if it perhaps slides a fraction off pitch or key). It is about letting the band explore some of the space in between notes. It is about free expression. But in this age of mass production what we are now sold to be SOULFUL is choreographed and Pro-tooled to such an extreme extent that the resulting product is an expressionless, emotionless, inanimate musical object. Want further evidence?? Play Al Green's "Simply Beautiful" and Mariah Carey's "We Belong Together" back to back. Enough said.

To be fair there are some artists who are holding steadfast to the SOUL tradition. D'angelo (learned to play in the church), Maxwell, Bilal, Frank McComb, Erykah Badu, Jill Scott, Amel Larrieux, India Arie, Common Sense, Kanye West, and John Legend amongst numerous others who in some form or another understand that the essence of SOUL is in PERFECTING the art of imperfection. Making progress sometimes has more to do with looking back and reconnecting with tradition. Black people have been the conscience of this country since its inception. We cannot afford to let capitalism and greed silence it...Give me SOUL or give me death...