My wife and I spent the evening listening to one of her former students, now a senior in college, perform with her jazz quartet.
I left the bar mystified as to why anyone would want to be a jazz singer. This young lady was clearly talented and she and her quartet put on an outstanding show, but a jazz singer seems to spend more time on the stage not singing than actually singing. She opened up each of the songs with her incredible voice, and she returned at the end of each song to wrap things up, but in between, while the musicians were taking their solos, she just stood there, attempting to achieve that delicate balance between moving to the rhythm enough to give the appearance that she’s enjoying herself without moving so much as to distract attention away from her band mates.
Not dancing, exactly, because if she were dancing, she would risk becoming the center of attention. It was more like grooving, a feet-planted, subtle hip- shaking waggle to the beat. And if I had clocked the amount of time that she was actually singing, I think we’d find that she moved her hips more than she moved her mouth during their set.
As a singer, wouldn’t you want to find a medium that highlights your talents more?
And even worse, jazz singers must sing scat, that bizarre series of nonsense syllables sung in an attempt to sound like a musical instrument. Yes, I know that improvisation is at the heart of jazz, but if you’re not actually playing a musical instrument, then either improvise using actual words or pick up a saxophone and take a solo.
The beeps and boops and dah-deet-dah-dah-dee-dah-da’s are just ridiculous.
Elysha wondered last night if there are classes on scat for people who go to school to study to become jazz musicians. Boy do I hope so, because I would love to audit one of these classes, just to hear what is actually taught.
A quick search found plenty of CDs and DVDs that teach scat, so I must assume that actual conservatories also teach this skill.
I have always found it quite telling that scat is also the word used for animal excrement.
I think that pretty much says it all.
