I’ve mostly steered clear of the American Idol juggernaut, but I totally agree with this article in the Times:
American Idol offers a telling glimpse of the state of American popular singing, an art which has in the last decade been dominated not just by a single style–a kind of watered-down gospel-soul–but by a particular vocal mannerism: melisma.
As I’ve written repeatedly, this has also partly contributed to a decline in public participation in the national anthem. (At least for me.) When you have superstars “leading” the crowd with coloratura-like vocal theatrics, who dares to sing along?
Aside: I remember learning about melisma for the first time, ages ago, on Schickele Mix, a public-radio show that took an educational, but irreverent look at classical music. I read that they’re no longer producing new episodes, and there doesn’t appear to be an online audio archive. Too bad.
One reply on “Vocal embroidery”
What’s even more daunting is that much of the melisma that we hear these days is created digitally, with the manipulation of voices through computers. The biggest offender in recent memory is Cher, but it seems like everytime I hear a popular song (which is not often, I tend to avoid them), the voices are doing digital acrobatics. Makes the singers on American Idol all the more impressive as they are stuck out there all alone, with no computers for help.