“From now on, it’s not going to be about how pretty the voice is. It’s going to be about believing that the voice is telling the truth.” - Sam Cooke explaining Bob Dylan’s voice to Bobby Womack, who had confessed he did not understand the style.
“The great advantage about telling the truth is that nobody ever believes it.” – Dorothy L. Sayers
Starting with the understanding that not all music is created, performed, or heard for that reason, who are the artists that make you believe they’re telling the truth? Not just that they might have a good voice, but that what they are telling is the truth, that you believe them? (Or, at least, that they themselves believe what they are telling).
There are all sorts of reasons why people listen to (and play) music. Enjoyment. Identity. Expression. Community. Exercise. Protest. It’s all of those things for me, and sometimes I think I could just about come to using the word “need” to express the place it has in my life. I think I might rather go blind than deaf, if I had to choose one.
I just read the other day that Dylan said of Woodie Guthrie “You could listen to his songs and actually learn how to live.” (Apparently this statement is in Scorsese’s 2005 documentary on Dylan, No Direction Home). I like the idea that there would be an artist or artists that fulfill that role. Dylan takes this even farther when he says that he “believes the songs” more than any evangelizer, preacher, or anyone else. Maybe for him that was the difference between looking at and looking along the sunbeam of CS Lewis’ Meditation in a Toolshed.
From a beliefnet Pete Seeger interview (I was interested in the quote, don’t let this come off as an endorsement of the website by any means):
Do you think creativity is spiritual?
I’m sure some people would call it that. And if there is anything such as spiritual, maybe that is it. Arlo Guthrie thinks there’s a stream of songs flowing past you all the time, and you just have to know when to stick out your hand and get one. Then he adds, “I’m lucky that I don’t live downstream from Bob Dylan.”
Dorothy L. Sayers also had a lot to say about creativity and meaning as she developed a kind of trinitarian theology of creativity.
First, the Idea: “passionless, timeless, beholding the whole work complete at once, the end in the beginning”; then the Creative Energy: “begotten of that idea, working in time from the beginning to end,” manifesting the Idea in matter; and finally the Creative Power: “the meaning of the work and its response in the lively soul”–in essence, what she calls “the indwelling Spirit.”
In other words, the person of creativity often starts with some kind of grand idea in their mind. Then there is an incarnation of the idea. And then the incarnated idea finds itself in a context with meanings and responses. Whether or not you care for the original religious motivation for this conception of creativity, I think the idea is quite coherent and sensible.
I also think this is why we can always “sing a new song.” There are as many personalities and contexts as there are people.
Whose voice do you trust in music? Who strikes you as genuine?
Snowy EP
8 Comments
i really enjoyed this post. and beyond the most obvious, YOU! I believe you. I will say the second most obvious that I could say: Rosie Thomas.
I have much farther to go
Everything is new and so unpredictable
I should just kick my heels together and go home
But I’m not sure where that is anymore
- Much Farther to Go, Rosie Thomas
Just one of my favorite songs/stories by Rosie. It has been 2 years now since I’ve been listening to her albums, and some of the songs still make me weep because I believe her, I believe in the story that is the song.
Now, a very great man once said
That some people rob you with a fountain pen
It don’t take too long to find out
Just what he was talking about
A lot of people don’t have much food on their table
But they got a lot of forks and knives
And they gotta cut something.
– Talkin’ New York, Bob Dylan
If you listen to this song, there is such a delicious comic timing to how Dylan delivers these lines.
A good followup question I think is: What is your voice? What have you done and what will you do to develop it?
First thought that pops into my head (I don’t know the answer myself): Is it a question of emotion/reason here? Music in all cultures carries significant emotional weight, and something that is obviously different about Dylan’s work is emphasis on words, sometimes moral arguments, sometimes intriguing stories, but never melodramatic emotion-tugging stuff. And the vocal/musical style is certainly conversational and focused on the grammar as in michael’s example above.
Second thing that comes to mind is Hendrix’s dictum that “music doesn’t lie”. One semiotician might agree and say that music can’t lie because, assuming we ignore the lyrical aspect, it doesn’t propose to say anything or stand in for anything. Another semiotician might disagree and say that music is most certainly a representation (which gets back to the emotion/reason question) and we tend to associate music with representation (perhaps why it embraces lyrics so easily).
Another thing, i notice that the Cooke quote isn’t about truth, but about believing (unlike Hendrix’s). I wonder sometimes which is more accurate (goes back to semiotics debate above) that music is pure expression transcending rational arguments, or that it makes us believe in the rational argument that it does in fact present. I’m sure it doesn’t have to be one or the other or either.
As to answering the question, who’s voice makes me believe? Will Oldham’s certainly. There is an ease in his songs that seems truthful, similarly with dylan/springsteen I suppose. Emily Haines. Her vocals are always beautiful, but never too beautiful to believe. David Bazan comes quickly to mind. And how can anyone not believe Elliott Smith? I certainly believe he is telling me a wonderfully intricate lie (perhaps the biggest lie) if not the truth.
most of this crosses over into film, too. once you read ebert’s scorsese book, there is a conversation in there about how Quentin Tarantino is to Scorsese as David Letterman is to Johnny Carson.
Johnny Carson was a true, actual talk show host. Letterman is a parody of the talk show host, aware of himself that even such a job exists, and satirizing the idea of a “talk show.”
As Ebert likes to say, Letterman has “quotes” around his show. And that these days more things have quotes around them than those that don’t, so it’s kind of the opposite – there are no quotes around the parody/satire/playing with, and the truest, legitimate, honest, personal expression is rarer.
Scorsese’s films are deeply, deeply personal, and about flawed people looking for forgiveness, redemption, revenge, etc. Quentin Tarantino spins it on it’s head, stylizes it with “Look at me!” clever, witty, poking fun at people who would take such a forgiveness/redemption/revenge mission so seriously as to treat it like a true story.
I was going to put quotes around “clever” “witty” because I don’t necessarily believe Tarantino is these things, but people who love him would say so.
I personally have fun with both (quote and non-quote art), and find value and entertainment in both. What I am personally more concerned with is Story and Character. I perfectly enjoyed Kill Bill, both as the “Ultimate Revenge Movie” with quotes, and as the tender, hurting mother, who is taken aback to meet her daughter, which injects some non-quote integrity to the films.
In the end, Kill Bills are my favorite Tarantinos. Up next is his “ultimate WW2 action epic” – and you can definitely expect there to be quotes around it. And it could be fun and entertaining – but I will be looking at those moments where Tarantino borrows from the version of the film that would be “true to itself”
just some thoughts…
Good thoughts all around.
I think to take up Jimn’s distinction between rational argument and emotion, the question could be reframed to suit that conception of music. Whose emotion strikes you as genuine?
True, Dylan unusually focused on lyrics (such that there is significant push to consider him among our best poets), and Springsteen said of him that he “did for the mind what Elvis did for the body” in popular music. He paved a new way of writing/performing.
The Art 101 or English 101 question is here, yes, of “Can art tell the truth?” but I think we’d open up neverending cans of philosophical worms (the boring kind) :).
I think Lewis’ Toolshed essay is a good model. Songs could, themselves, take the approach of “looking at” vs. “looking along” — perhaps the more emotion-centered songs are “in” the beam and the more rational are looking at it.
Meditation in a Toolshed is a good tonic for everything! Remembering his “third dimension,” revelation tells us when to look AT or ALONG and referees between the two.
Now, let’s bring Lil’ Wayne into the equation!
Actually, let’s stack him in with Adam Drucker (Doseone), Yoni Wolf (Why?), Townes Van Zandt, Antony Hegarty, & Sufjan. These would probably fit into a bit larger glob of artists who seem truthful/genuine to me.
Lil’ Wayne assembles jigsaw puzzles with his wordplay/delivery, not that I’m a big fan of his overall thematic content. But his conviction is hard to discount; his far left-field ideas must be the product of his uncensored psyche. He is certainly genuine, retaining personal integrity to rap about exactly whatever the heck he wants.
Adam Drucker writes in a stream-of-consciousness that seems almost completely unedited and directionless, disconnecting the need for words to form complete thoughts in order to make a song have meaning. A bit of his influence can be seen in lyrics off The Devil, You + Me by The Notwist.
Yoni Wolf must write like he’s journaling, and with that would come the advantage the skilled writer possesses over normal writers: he can see what he’s writing before he even writes it, and thus, has the time to revise it as he is putting pen to paper, resulting in what seems like a perfectly-composed thought, flowing with deceptive ease.
Townes Van Zandt only wrote to remember. As a result, it’s nearly impossible to truly judge his genius, which probably surpassed Bob Dylan’s. He had faulty short-term memory, due to electro-shock therapy as a child. His words came whole, like some equation would pop into Einstein’s brain.
Antony Hegarty delivers his music in a quavery, feminine voice that sounds utterly brimming with passion. His articulation illuminates the strong emotions underlying the words themselves.
Sufjan Stevens’ compositional intricacies often take over his music, while his lyricism sounds like a singing encyclopedia when it doesn’t sound like a singing storyteller. His ability must stem from a writer’s background as well. His development of ideas means he must do a ton of research, and thus, he is concerned with the accuracy of empirical information contained in his work.
Joseph Arthur also delivers his lines in a voice that is choked with feeling. Like Angus Andrew of Liars, his delivery is either whispering-quiet or howling-loud, and the sliding scale in-between is only a temporary rest stop on the way between the two extremes… because this is part of the both of them feeling the music as they are performing it and uttering words in time with it.
I had an idea for another song the other day- this is a total “quotes” song, because it would be all about how writing the song took more than 5 minutes. Some songs cropping up on the radio sound like they were penned in literally 30 seconds. “I’m so addicted to everything you do.” must be one of the single worst lines ever uttered in a song… ever ever ever. The guy who wrote it (Jared Weeks of Saving Abel) actually came up with that line while he was working at a hospital, walking the halls at 4:30am, singing to himself. He scribbled it down on some paper. The rest of that song is constructed around that line.
“I’m so addicted to sniffing super-glue.” should be in the Weird Al version.