Soul vs Technique

[datura800.livejournal.com]

I hope he won't mind me quoting him, but I read an interesting assertion in Alex's review of the new Mariah album (today's Guardian):

"Carey's voice has been mocked, bizarrely, as being a triumph of technique over soul - an argument that fails to comprehend that technique and soul are intertwined, that technique primarily exists as a means to convey emotion".

I thought this would be a good discussion to have here - it's a point I quite strongly disagree with (generally, not specifically with relation to Mariah), but I'll wait to see if anyone is interested in commenting before launching into it.

Comments

[datura800.livejournal.com]

Can you really separate Mariah from this 'rockthink' that you keep speaking of though? It's a kind of credablity which she has herself pursued (ie she's been determined to be seen as a talented songwriter and not just a performer) and, as I said, she operates more in pop/hip-hop these days where I think these notions of what is credible have a much stronger hold.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

no, it's absolutely the dominant way of thinking about yrself as a popular charting artist -- you really only escape it when you fold back to passed-by forms or new and rising form, when it begins to be in conflict with the issue of "is what i'm doing real proper bebop?" or whatever --- i'd be astonished if she escaped it thinking rockthinkily a lot of the time except insofaras she trusts her technique: it creates a counterweight to choices, and because she's genuinely so inside it (cf also celine dion) (though i actually think dion is more out there in terms of "not getting the dominant way of thinking") the counterweight has heft, which it obviously doesn't with imitators

you can't separate the issue of technique from the issue of musicality-as-expression -- what i'm objecting to is the easyread version of what technique is and isn't (as sean says, virtuosity might be a better word, except i think it has the "empty technique" gene in-built these days) combined with the easyread version of how expressivity works (or should work) in music...