In a positive sense, what is the correlate of soul?
Let’s be frank, as we look into this question: the term soul is strongly associated with qualities found in African American music. It’s considered a positive quality and a quality that is bound to impress when attained by rock ‘n roll musicians. However, it’s not the be all and end all of rock ‘n roll. Rock ‘n roll can have soul, but we’ve seen it also succeeds through the expression of other qualities, some of which we characterize as “white” musical qualities.
As painful as it may be to process these ideas, you do understand what I’m saying, right? For instance, The Beach Boys are considered a very “white” group – and a great one at that. They took a vocal group tradition that was based partially on what would be considered some of the building blocks of what would lead to soul and made it their own. They came up with a great approach to music, but if it doesn’t have soul, in the sense that we commonly use that term, what does it have? What is the correlating, positive term that can be used to describe musical attributes we typically ascribe to white people?
Above is another song I’m probably not alone in liking that, by ear alone, we might reasonably expect to come from the hands and mouths of white folks. No offense meant on either side of the equation, but do you ever hear a Belle and Sebastian song and think, Yeah, soul, baby! Same goes for The Beatles’ “Eleanor Rigby”. There’s a great instrumental version by Booker T & the MGs that’s very soulful but lacking in…whatever “white” quality it is that the original possesses in spades, if you will.
If someone put a gun to our head and closed all doors and windows, so that no one could hear our thoughts on the matter, we’d admit that “Eleanor Rigby” is at heart a “white” song. What is it that makes it white? Is there a succinct, descriptive term that gives white people, for better and for worse, credit for some inherent characteristic or ability? (All tongue-partially-in-cheek thoughts aside, this term would also balance the playing field for all the black artists who, like black athletes, may have their talent taken for granted as being “natual” to them, unlike white artists who’ve “studied” their craft.)
When a “black” artist like Prince or Terrence Trent D’Arby or Stew from The Negro Problem produces a song in what we consider a “white” genre, what “unnatural” quality is that artist displaying? Another way to look at this question is, as follows: If there’s such a thing as blue-eyed soul, is there a brown-eyed _________?
So what is this musical quality that seems to be inherent in white people? Does it touch on our Kentonite concepts and our working definition of Proctomusicology? Is the term right in front of my white face and so obvious that I’m not seeing it?
A fascinating topic, Mr. Mod. It’s sorta been on my mind already. Lately, I’ve mulled over the problems RTH-ers have with bands like XTC and Jellyfish, bands that outwardly do not possess a great deal of what you might called soul, and are thought by some to be excessively “white.” I have some thoughts on the issue that I need to better formulate.
Gotta say, though, I hear a fair amount of R&B in The Beach Boys, even into the Pet Sounds/Smile. period. But is the term you’re looking for “emotional”? (But, good lord, not “emo”!)
There is a wide array of emotional and emotional responses that are inherent to all cultures. No, “emotional” is not what I’m looking for.
As I said regarding The Beach Boys, they pull from R&B traditions, but their resulting music is white. They are comfortably white. I think it’s safe to say that no one has ever heard a lick of a Beach Boys song (a real one – in their prime – not any of those post-Pet Sounds turds or Dennis Wilson solo outings that someone’s primed to post as a counter to what I’m saying) and thought, “Mmmm, I wonder what soul group this is?” or “Hey, that’s soulful!”
I’m glad I can count on you for looking into this matter with me, Oats.
I think I get the point about pre-Pet Sounds Beach Boys being very white. I’m supposing that you wouldn’t argue that cuts like “Wild Honey” or “Darlin'” are very soulful in the black tradition?
Maybe I feel a little a defensive about the post-Pet Sounds Beach Boys. I think Sunflower is a gem. I love Friends. I even dig Holland/Surf’s Up/Carl and the Passions. I have a weak spot for those down-trodden albums. I listen to those albums way more than I do Surfer Girl or All Summer Long.
Yes, I would agree: The Beach and The Beatles were very very white (not as white as The Cyrkle), but they certainly displayed some form of pure emotion that could be classified as “soul.”
TB
TB wrote:
Without turning this into a discussion on my general dismissal of The Beach Boys post-Pet Sounds/”Good Vibrations”, I don’t spend much time thinking about those two songs. I LOVE “Do It Again” and like a handful of other songs through those years. “Kokomo” probably ranks among my Top 5 post-Pet Sounds songs by the band, which tells you something:)
Although The Beach Boys and The Beatles surely possessed varying degrees of soul, however you might define it, what I’m still looking for is what it is that they possessed without question that soul artists, for instance, might be most likely to find elusive. To keep the heart and soul analogy flowing, is it head? Should we be saying, “That McCartney’s got head!” or “Man, I love Otis Redding but he’s got no head.”
I suppose Lame Ass Whitey Whining is not what you’re looking for. No, probably not. But I’ll keep trying: maybe by eliminating these negative options, I can zero in on something more effective.
Eliminate the negatives, Mwall. Perhaps you, of all Townspeople, need to confront and embrace your inherent “white” qualities! It would be easier for all of us to do if we had a cool term that made it seem like a positive.
You’re a brave man for going here, Mod — and I mean that sincerely. Right now, the most appropriate term I can think of would be “textbook.”
Genteel?
What about aggression? I can think of very little music by black artists where the underlying sense is, as Squirrel Bait so memorably put it, “I’m gonna beat you up at the end of this.” There’s anger in a lot of soul and funk, of course, but not so much with the aggression.
Since a lot of what is called soul in terms of vocal style comes from the way black people sang in church, maybe we should look to white church music for our analogue.
Those harmonies in Surfer Girl supposedly come from The Four Freshmen, but certainly church choir harmony is at the root of that kind of harmony singing.
The parts of pop music that do not come from blues and jazz basically come from the hymnal, don’t they?
Twang?
Twang and jangle are musical characteristics “native” to white Americans. How they fit in with a typically more deliberate approach to song structure and arrangements might get us very close to this essential, positive, “white” characteristic.
We can’t go with “textbook,” because that feeds right back into the “natural vs trained athlete” dichotomy.
I’ve never been much of a churchgoer, but maybe what BigSteve says about the hymnal makes sense. Our notion of soul grew out of the church, right? African Americans have claimed that cool term for what’s at the core of their musical spirit. Is there some religious term available for white folks to adopt? Help me out. I don’t know a lot of religious terms. “That Roger Manning’s got eucharist!” doesn’t sound as cool to me.
The word soul can be traced way back to the Greek word psyche, which itself, according to Wikipedia, is derived from the Greek verb “to cool, to blow.” Funny that white rockers have long been consumed by matters of psych and cool.
If the soul, in religious terms, is not corporeal and our religious tradition steers us toward the afterlife, perhaps we can say white rock ‘n roll musicians bring heavenly quality to music. That’s nice, but do you want to hang your hat on “heavenly?”
We could use the etymology of the word psyche and say “That music really blows!”
Oh, we’ve said that many times, BigSteve, but that would be an unfair burden to Jellyfish fans:)
We’ve already got the term ‘pop.’ Isn’t that what we use to denote the other end of the spectrum from rock and soul?
Pop is the term I was thinking of as well. I know there are one or two on this list who view that term as pejorative but I think it’s a good one.
I would not think of it as a diminutive of “popular” either. Rather, it is a music that stretches back to encompass the Great American Popular Songbook, barbershop quartet, “white” gospel, harmony groups like The Four Freshman or The Beach Boys, XTC, and a slew of others.
Pop has its merits – and it’s applicable to Motown polishing of its “raw” materials, but it says nothing about the essence of my people. Like so many terms we use to describe what whites primarily bring to rock ‘n roll, the term is centered around concepts of “study” and “industry.” I don’t think that’s fair.
Also, the term’s use primarily to describe some essence of “white” rock ‘n roll discriminates against all the black musicians who clearly function as pop artists, in some cases largely for audiences from their own culture.
Finally, the term pop says nothing about all the super-white rock artists who are far from the “pop” mainstream but who bring much “whiteness” to rock ‘n roll, such as Art and Prog rockers of the ’70s.
Here’s a white church joke from someone who grew up in one: During the Presbyterian sermon, there’s a black man in the church who keeps responding “Yes sir! You bet!’ to the things the minister is saying. After the sermon, an usher comes up to him and says, “Please, sir, can you quiet down.” And the black guy says “But I got religion.” And the usher says, “Yes, but you didn’t get it HERE.”
Still purging the negative, Mod, but trying.
Your Beach Boys comparison makes me think it should be WOUL.
Conjures up images of warm but scratchy sweaters that european folks wear. Can be made in many colors, processed in many ways. Spins a yarn.
In its raw form, features greasy lanolin-like qualities that seem to withstand any harsh elements. Strong, tearproof, capable of living on the rough terrain of rock.
Can be pulled over the eyes of the inattentive, perhaps those expecting a more authenticity in performance.
Made from those born to follow musically.
The adjectival form “woully” can indicate a lack of restraint or indistinctness or confusion similar to the youth culture it expresses.
To be more helpful, perhaps, is what we’re looking for along the lines of how a white singer sounds when he or she sounds like they really feel what they’re singing? That is, are we looking for a white equivalent of the soul feeling? That’s why “head” doesn’t work; it’s a brainiac term for rock nerds.
How about singing like you’ve got an “investment” in the song? That white enough for you?
While it doesn’t seem that proctomusicology was ever fully defined, might the elusive prock be the very term you’re searching for as the opposite of soul?
A lot of what makes soul “soul” is the immediacy of the performance, especially the vocal. The music and performance are very specifically projecting emotion and feeling, and there’s not always a large gulf between what’s on a record and what you’d hear live. A through-line on bands like XTC and the Beatles is that there’s more experimentation with sound, layering and atmosphere; taking things apart and putting them back together, rock deconstruction which sometimes creates a distance or a removal between the artist, the song and the listener. After a certain point, of course, acts like the Beatles, Brian Wilson and XTC were making records that they had no intention of recreating for live audiences.
I like to think this isn’t something that breaks down on racial lines. Prince has plenty of soul, but I think at heart he’s every bit the procker that Andy Partridge is. There was a thread on here previously discussing his early albums, and it seems like everyone was picking up on how the icy, empty feel of that music was imparting something else about him that was different from the surface of the music. Hendrix was very much about using the atmosphere of sound on his records to convey some kind of emotional landscape. He’s not somebody I’d throw in the prock camp, but this was the psychedelic aspect of his music. The Beatles themselves went through their phases of being more experimental and being more direct, shooting for their own “plastic soul.”
No, no — I like “pop.” It suggests music made for the primary purpose of achieving commercial success/mass audience enjoyment. Plus, when you say “Prince… a master of brown-eyed pop,” I know exactly what you mean.
Now, the achilles’ heel of this nomenclature is the fact that whitey will soon not be the largest single demographic group in this country — so muci that primarily appeals to the musical sensibilities of white folks won’t be “pop” anymore.
I do like WOUL, Mockcarr, and like Alexmagic, I continue to have faith in the unifying powers of the as-yet-fully-defined Prock.
Hrrundi, this whole “primary purpose of achieving commercial success” thing won’t fly with me. You think the Stax artists weren’t striving for commercial success? Gangsta rappers? It skirts the essense of what it means to be white and play music from that part of your culture that you can’t deny, as Mwall was hitting on. That’s really important. It’s what makes The Bee Gees’ “To Love Somebody” much more white than whatever soul artist who covered it ever could. AND THERE’S NOTHING WRONG WITH THE BEE GEES INFUSING A SONG WITH THEIR SOUL-CORRELATE TENDENCIES. That’s what I’m trying to get over, this notion that it’s automatically not soulful to be white. It may not be soulful, as we think of the term, but it can be [whatever]ful. Does that make sense? What is it that it’s full of? (Nice try, wise guys – I know where you’re headed with that question!)
When I listen to the best of XTC, Jellyfish, sandbox-era Brian Wilson, I definitely feel my pulse quicken when sense their brainiac ideas coming to fruition. Mr. Mod’s right, it’s not what people mean when they say “soul,” but, when done right, it can elicit a similar response to listeners. Well, a certain kind of listeners, anyway. If I’m feeling snobbish enough, I’d say this is a result of modern culture poo-pooing intellectual pursuits in rock music. For some reason, it’s okay to be awed by a Coen Brothers film or a new Google application, but nerds with guitars who sing about nerdy things aren’t quite so beloved. (The Decemberists are the exception that prove the rule, maybe. Man, do I feel like I’ve typed this comment before.)
Also, prock doesn’t work here. What about a white, feel-good band like Teenage Fanclub. Not really “soulful,” but I get a similar feeling. And they’re definitely not prock. Hmm, how about “feelgood,” Mr. Mod. No, it will remind people of a stinkin’ Motley Crue tune; definitely not what we’re going for here.
Can’t go with “feelgood,” Oats. It’s not all about feeling good. I like what you’re thinking about, though.
Well, hell, Mod — if that’s the way you feel, why not just call it “Mxypytlyk”? Or “Splunge”? I mean, what’s the purpose of this discussion, if all existing terms carry to much baggage, and mockcarr’s typically punny “Woul” works?
BTW, mockcarr — you owe me some dates, you cheeser!
I don’t know, that could go a couple ways with Prince…
Hrrundi, I’m surprised at you – throwing in the towel so soon! Are you still stewing about those Louis Prima cracks from yesterday? I’m sorry, brother. Let’s move on and get back to work.
Let’s talk some more about why “pop” is too general. I know you’re steaming about my dismissal of that term, Hrrundi, but that leads us right back into cutting up on Jellyfish, and I know you don’t want that any more than I do.
Let’s take two artists of African American descent that you like, HVB, who’ve worked in more, shall we say, Beatlesque areas of music than most artists of African American descent: Prince and Terrence Trent D’Arby. It means nothing to say one of these artists has more or less “pop” than the other, but if we had a correlate to soul – a word that represents some essence of what we tend to associate with rock ‘n roll as led by white artists and white culture – we could say, “I like ’em both, but D’Arby’s got more [whatever].”
Another example that applies to me could be the band Love. I might be able to say, “I hear what Arthur Lee’s trying to do, but I don’t think he has much [whatever].” Maybe he doesn’t have enough “pop” smarts for me, but it’s something more than that. I hear him trying to operate in a style of music that I might be able to write off because he’s somehow not [whatever]ful enough for my ears.
Please note that as I’m being tongue-in-cheek and having some fun with this – as I hope you are – that I’m sincerely trying to better explain what it is that I’m kicking around with you. I do suspect there’s something worthwhile that white culture adds to rock ‘n roll – beyond notions of industry – that has gone unnamed since the genre’s inception and that has ended up, over the years, being dismissed or shamefully swept under the table.
Centering this notion around “pop” doesn’t work for me because too often a blatant effort at making a commercially successful song is exactly what makes any of us think a song sucks.
Y’all remember linebacker Reggie Green when he became a preacher and made that speech that got him in a lot of trouble, the one in which he identified the different races and said what they were good at?
I can’t remember what he said about blacks (soul, athleticism, something like that). But what he said about whites was that whites are good at ‘administration.”
So what do you think, Mod? Can we say that the Beach Boys really know how to administer a song? The Beatles too, man; they really had everybody doing their part.
I’m not kidding, although I’m sure people might think I am. So I want an explanation of why “administer” is not the term you’re looking for.
Mr. Mod says:
Let’s go Aryan with it then and call it Kultur.
Exactitude? Everything on the beat, not laid-back, every note on the pitch, not blue notes. This is such a horrid generalization!
Then again, there is also a realm of electronic music that is so exact that it becomes funky…
“Man, that Prince… he’s one of the great brown-eyed adminstrators!”
Guys like Prince would definitely be black sheep.
Reggie Brown! Yes, Mwall, as silly as your suggestion seems, it may be appropriately silly, in a sincere and helpful way. It doesn’t quite roll off the tongue, but the concept actually does feed into my belief that conscious attention to detail, arrangements, and songwriting structure are relied on maybe more heavily. Working within the box!
I meant to correct you, Mwall, with “Reggie WHITE.” I’m getting colorblind.
That’s right, Reggie White. He WORE green, at least when he was with the Packers. The white man, as part of his administrative ability, is also good at correction.
Remember the Al Campanis controversy? He set off a furor when he said on TV that blacks might not have the “necessities” to to be managers in baseball. He dug himself a deeper hole by adding later that there weren’t many black swimmers because they lacked “buoyancy?” So I think either “necessities” or “buoyancy” would be good code words for whiteness in music.
Jesus, I had forgotten the “buoyancy” part of that…
Can I add, by the way, that “administer” doesn’t simply mean “organize” or “control.” It also means “deliver” and in some instances, “to take care of,” as in doctors administering to patients. Thus, it is possible to administer the healing moment of music.
Eh?
Wasn’t Handsome Dick getting around to this subject when he declared the Dictators “Young, Fast and Scientific”?
I don’t know if there’s a word to describe it but musical “whiteness” seems all about construction, cleverness and conciseness where “blackness” seems to be about emotion and passionate impreciseness.
Doesn’t James Brown have googobs of soul? His band never seems to play even slightly loose, and he seems to demand every note in it’s place all the time. He’s The Godfather of Soul, right? Does that mean that Steely Dan is where white soul starts?
It’s right to point out that soul musicians are not some “noble savages,” 2K. Soul is soul, but that doesn’t mean the best of it can’t adhere to some administrative principles.
I believe we made some progress today. Along with having a chuckle at ourselves, I hope we took some time to realize that there might be something worthwhile to add to rock ‘n roll through one’s essential whiteness. Still wish we had a cool name for it, though…
“Doesn’t James Brown have googobs of soul? His band never seems to play even slightly loose, and he seems to demand every note in it’s place all the time.”
I thought of that, but the fact that so much of JB’s stuff is built upon vamps that can be stretched endlessly gets at what I’m attempting to describe. Even with jazz or 50’s r & b, it’s the liberties musicians take with melodies and time that earns those “soulful” points.
dbuskirk hits an angle that I agree with. White/Euro music tends to lean towards structure and formality. Not in the black tie sense, but in paying attention to historically derived senses of melody and harmony. This is the “pop” part: incorporating the history of “what has been popular in the past.”
Black music has a long history of improvisation and atonality, which we’ve come to know as rawness and soul.
If I were to boil it down, black music is about putting oneself into the music, changing it a little through personal expression, while white and “western” music has a different hymnal tradition oriented around getting the music inside of oneself, so to speak. “Get into it” vs. feelings.
That indefinable thing that eveyone’s trying to put their finger on is “cool”.
E. Pluribus
There’s nothing inherently white about ‘cool.’ If anything, it’s a quality associated with blacks that whites have attempted to imitate, just like soul.
I was just reading a review in Mojo which referred to a “scholastic band”.
How’s scholastic work for you?
Neither “scholastic” or “cool” administer the noise.
How about “beyond the pale”?
I’m not sure whites are beyond the pale, Steve. I think they’re often pale. Maybe that’s the word we need? “I could really connect with the paleness of that song.” Nah.
“money” is the word you are all looking for.
“power” and “dominance” also come to mind.
that’s it.
No one can come up with the word we are all after here because you’re trying to describe something that is’nt there.
yes i’m a racist.
white people have nothing to offer.
that correlates to soul.