Motown Tom - MPI

13/07/2024

Bill Medley and Mary Wilson

Sorry about the poor qualityVisit http://www.righteousbrothersdiscography.com/

30/04/2024

Salle André Malraux with conductor arrangements 📷

18/04/2024

I just launched an app for students! myEssai is free and uses AI to power essay feedback for students! I'd be grateful if you check it out 😄 https://myess.a...

26/03/2024

Celebrating “Lady Sings the Blues” on Motown 60 for BERRY GORDY

21/01/2024

Co-penned by Berry Gordy and Marv Johnson, ‘Come To Me’ became Motown’s first single, paving the way for the label’s world domination.

20/01/2024

The Meaning of Soul: Black Music and Resilience Since the 1960s
by Emily J. Lordi

In The Meaning of Soul: Black Music and Resilience Since the 1960s, Emily J. Lordi reminds us that the soul has many directives: to “signify the special resilience, black people had earned by surviving the historical and daily trials of white supremacy” to represent “the musical techniques or practices through which artists enacted soul ethos” and, in its most familiar use, to refer to intellectual and artistic productions of Black Americans during the soul or post-soul music movements.

Lordi’s new book, however, calls for and provides a more expansive discourse of the soul, which reveals meanings that have traditionally been overlooked, underrepresented, or disregarded.

The Meaning of Soul addresses such slights of soul scholarship not only by analyzing Black American musicians from the late 1960s and early 1970s (and some more recent) but also by positioning soul not as a “discrete thing” but rather “a habit of thinking, a logic” To achieve this, Lordi pushes back against “paradigms that treat
soul music as a mere vehicle for civil rights messaging”, “mass-marketed representations of soul music (which sideline black women and mystify musical craft),” and “scholarship ...[that] tends to assume that the soul as a concept does not have aesthetics,
but only a politics” In this book, the stories of the soul come to life through the soul music and music makers, but their meanings transcend music.

The book establishes itself from the outset as representing a disparate discussion of soul, even before the first word. Its cover features Minnie Riperton, the gifted five-octave vocalist and composer known for her pop crossover hit “Lovin’ You,” which reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1975. As such, Riperton is usually an outlier in discussions about soul music, whether due to her membership in the late 1960s multi-racial, psychedelic rock outfit Rotary Connection, or her or others’ perceptions of soul artists. As her Rotary bandmate Sidney Barnes wrote in his autobiography, Standing on Solid Ground, “She had attempted to use [her five-octave range] ...at some of the local
black clubs, and [they] often booed her off the stage. They weren’t used to that weird-sounding s**t. They wanted her to belt out like Aretha Franklin or Fontella Bass.” as Aaron Cohen writes in Move on Up: Chicago Soul Music and Black Cultural Power.
“Besides Riperton’s singular vocal range, prowess, and stylistic choices, her background countered a general assumption about R&B Singers. "This makes Riperton the perfect case for Lordi’s counterview of soul musicality and cultural sensibility. In describing Riperton’s use of her unique whistle register vocals, Lordi writes, “In all cases, her falsetto marked a refusal to shout and an embrace of an expansive, often buoyant interior life for which Riperton sought both musical and social space”. Lordi’s ascription of Riperton's “innovative soul aesthetic” not only adds but also centers the under-researched Riperton in a welcome way. Another fascinating discussion is Lordi’s chapter on the impromptu vocal ad-libs of soul subjects both conventional (Aretha Franklin, Donny Hathaway, Nina Simone) and non-conventional (Sly and the Family Stone, Prince with Rosie Gaines).

Each artist’s section is accompanied by a well-researched bio, which helps establish context. However, the song choices for these artists’ ad-lib analyses are more obscure than what would typically be selected to represent them. For example, it would be easy for Lordi to pick a well-known chart hit like “Sing a Simple Song” or “You Can Make It If You Try” to represent Sly Stone. Instead, she digs deeper (in her own soul writing ethos) and chooses Sly’s 1973 cover of Doris Day’s “Que Sera, Sera,” which Lordi calls “one of the greatest and strangest of soul duets”. About Rose Stone, Sly’s sister, Lordi writes, “She also creates one of the track’s most interesting ad-libs or mistakes by singing lyrics from the first verse again, the accident only registers when she drops the word rich midway (‘ri-’). Sly, both encouraging and demanding, instructs her to keep singing. ... ”

Lordi also details on-stage ad-libs, recorded live in concert, by Franklin and Hathaway. Ad-libs are more prevalent and natural for concert recordings and are usually edited out of studio recordings. But the communal, call-and-response banter in live concert recordings tends to be glossed over and taken for granted. Lordi instead dissects these moments to make a case for “(expanding) the range of interpersonal soul affects ...” and “showing how the adlibs ... in the studio, on stage, in churches, and in clubs, create an exploratory approach to relationship with the self and others” For example, in Franklin’s live performance of “Dr. Feelgood” on Live at Fillmore West, Lordi observes that “she stretches out the first line, ‘I don’t want nobody,’ and draws the ‘s’ of the next word through the following measure to almost painful effect: ‘sitting around me and my man. She finally releases the tension, and checks in: ‘Ain’t that right girls? Ain’t it right? Yes, it is.’ What she’s building up to is an epic ad-lib not included in her studio version of the song” These are just a few distinctive examples of the more expansive readings of soul sensibility that Lordi argues for and offers.

The Meaning of Soul weaves varied stories and concepts of soul—in performance, in critique, and in the community. What it is not is a chronological treatise of soul music “that includes everyone’s—or all of my own—favorite artists,” as Lordi indicates in her introduction. Instead, she introduces unconventional topics ranging from soul artists covering songs by white (and black) performers; falsetto singing by Al Green, Isaac Hayes, and Ann Peebles; the use of “false endings” as a recording or performing technique; to conversations of post-soul, twenty-first-century artists, such as Flying Lotus, Solange Knowles, and Janelle Monae, and what she refers to as “Afropresentism”

While the book’s strengths and emphasis are on vocalists and vocality, instrumentalists are not left out and are well represented. Lordi’s work presents new and newer ways of looking at the soul, through gender, place, capitalism, sexuality, power, and closer musicological readings. The arguments presented are lovingly exhaustive, theoretically, sound, and, thankfully, soulful.

Melisa A. Weber
Tulane University
Email: [email protected]

22/08/2023

On August 13, 1964, the Supremes gave birth to 'Baby Love,' first cut the month before when it got the thumbs down from Berry Gordy.

21/08/2023

In case you missed it, we teamed up with the Detroit Riverfront to put on The Rivertown R***e - our very own rendition of The Motortown R***e 🎶

Performers were hand selected by Hitsville Next to pay tribute to iconic Motown artists and spent the past six weeks refining their acts. The audience was singing and dancing along to performances in the style of The Supremes, Stevie Wonder, Martha Reeves & The Vandellas, Marvin Gaye, Tammi Terrell, and The Temptations.

The show stood as a testament to the timeless appeal of Motown music, showcasing the remarkable talent Detroit continues to offer to this day!

21/08/2023

Terrence Blanchard head man at The San Francisco Jazz Festival.
Congratulations 🎉🎊🍾

First day on the job. Excited to be here. Cool and creative people working to provide great experiences for all who come through.

14/03/2023

13/03/2023

Live concert streaming tomorrow with (2:30 NY time)
https://www.arte.tv/fr/videos/107538-016-A/natalia-doco-sandra-nkake-et-cecile-mclorin-salvant/

01/03/2023

Motown Gospel
Nashville

04/02/2023

Rick James and his Stone City Band in Toronto

02/02/2023

Miracles Happen all this month ...

Spotlighting the legendary first Motown Act, The Miracles 🌟

Motown & it’s music made a large impact on the world and uplifted communities of color with song 🎶

Black history is every month 🖤💫

02/02/2023

02/02/2023

Kenny Garrett worked on Elden Ring

Experience ELDEN RING like no other with a special jazz concert that take you through a night in the lands between. Tickets on sale now.

21/01/2023

Next Month in Portland, Oregon

12/05/2020