soul, what the hell is it anyway?

And to "the other" Tom - sadly we seem to have yet another contributor who doesn't realise Britain has got a long way out of 1959. Whatever goes through their minds ...

The Lomaxes are NOT to be trusted on the question of roots and influence: they selected what they recorded to match their political bias, esp.in re pure survival of unspoiled and/or uncommercial "African" forms (tho the folk-purist notion that eg Charlie Patton's — let alone Robert Johnson's — music is just one step away from the abiding groundswell voice of the people is plainly nonsense, even by the somewhat skewed recorded evidence). But mid-19th century Black Gospel Choirs — eg the Fisk Singers or the Jubilee Singers — took at least much from European church-music form/harmony, probably more, as they did from field-hollers: not least because *even during slavery* a considerable degree of class stratification had already opened up in American black culture (and in argument as to how to further the struggle). OK, there must have been a continuum, but it was a LONG one, the difft ends far apart (geographically, socially: and no radio/ records yet to bust into this). And if there was traffic, it was two- way: at least some "rootsy" gospel music is less "cleaned-up" than "dirtied down" (esp. after the 50s, but probably right back to the 20s: as ref., ARC — a white-run record co., as they all were then — refused to record those parts of Robert Johnson's repertoire which they deemed "too white", eg his Bing Crosby covers).

Robin: What'd Tom do to you? He just mentioned that he didn't think Bowie had "soul". Which isn't particularly anti-British, just that Bowie did have his well known "black music" period, and Tom didn't think that it stood up. I mean, come off it.

I do think that this discussion rings false to an American precisely because on this side of the pond, "soul" means Soul Music, and "soulful" means at-least-part-Soul-Music. And suchforth. In the UK, from all this discussion, I suspect that this is some fairly meaningless marker which has lost the social context of its attendant genre. I blame the countryside. :-)

Personally I think this point - when concepts like "soul" lose the dangerous idea of "legitimacy" - is *precisely* when they get interesting.

On the other hand, this approach gets us in trouble when we have dorks like the Make*Up acting black or plagiarists like Lenny Kravitz acting sincere and it's all "soul" because somebody, somewhere has an extra-musical need for it to be soulful. Whoever mentioned Jon Spencer earlier, thanks.

As for explaining the unexplainable, I don't know. Again, point taken about the rules of critical engagement, but it seems to me that soul's universal promise to reveal more than the lyrics or music say on their face is just the logical next step from pop's universal promise that the next time you hear a song you'll like it even better than you did this time. Everything up to beauty itself is subjective, anyway.

old reliable Sam Cooke style soul: bad new shiny Autechre style soul: good

Bjut maybe it's just me I think the greatest soul band ever are Kraftwerk and Marvin Gaye bores me stiff (ho!ho!)

and so it goes, this generation (embodied by omar) turns its back on an "outdated" form of expressions, just as those to follow us will shun autechre (as some of us do today!) as an excuse to sell jeans (and perhaps they've already been used in commercials already!) and to bring back nostalgia of simpler times. this explanation could certainly be applied to nick drake -- what form of music is imbued with more "meaning" than the singer/songwriter? and yet i view him apart from the v.w. commercial and the reissues and the "renewed interest" and listen to the music and say, "yes, that nick drake was a soulful fellow."

i think some of the other posters are correct in saying that, stripped of its original context and taken as a "concept", "soul" becomes a vague, incredibly subjective and almost pointless signifier. thank God "funk" doesn't correspond with any higher principles!

Is it? :) I'm sort of curious why that is? I like yr implication of Autechre losing their soul for a next generation. This will no doubt happen. But really I hope my argument doesn't get reduced to It-sell-jeans-it-loses-its-soul. There is just something about Sam Cooke style soul that is so heavy with preconceived ideas of Great Sentiments, The Right Feeling, etc. and all I can hear is dead meaningless sound, just can't help it.

---- "this music sucks, it has no intrinsic interest except for nostalgic bores" ? ----

now I haven't said anything like this? I like nostalgia :)

i. a specific moment in black pop music between (approx)mid-50s and mid-70s. Multiple stylistic offshoots, some of which (funk, perhaps) shouldn't be included.

ii. music derivative of that moment, the stylistic conventions arising from that moment. still trace elements in most musical styles today.

iii. that moment reconfigured as something attitudinal rather than musical. So ideas of struggle, authenticity, freedom, emotion, rawness, organicness, liveness, pain...a lot of this stuff is very very bound up with interpretations of blackness. The 80s interpretation of soul as in jeans ads, literally adding colour to the yuppie lifestyle, comes into play here.

iv. 'soul' as a totally abstract concept - the rowland/t&f stuff quoted above. Basically a way of saying "this is good" possibly - but not neccessarily - with some ideas from i., ii. and iii. above mixed in. This version of 'soul' is a discussion-killer, and is also quite close to how I use 'pop', as some abstracted force driving most good music. The choice of 'it has soul'/'it rocks'/'it is pop' can be a way of allying yourself with other discource currents or it can be just personal preference.

(Interesting perhaps to analyse the sentences above - soul is something external, rock is a doing word, pop is something music is or isnt.....)

This is soul --
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxyLU5jHJf0

it's a hamhock in your cornflakes