When Jack trumps Zack and Mack

You’re Ray Charles’ manager. It’s October, 1961. Hit the Road, Jack is top of the Billboard Hot 100. You’re on tour in Chicago, playing The Treasure Island. It’s 2 minutes to show time. A man in a sharp suit hands you a scrumpled note. You unfold it and read:

You sigh. Jackie “the Lackey” Cerone‘s out there in front. Again. Shiny new girl on his arm. He hates them getting ideas from Ray’s song. You catch Jackie’s eye, smile and nod.

The black paper’s a novelty, but it’s not the first time you’ve had to make substitutions. Jack Ruby‘s the same. Mafia men are surprisingly insecure in matters of the heart.  Anyway, it’s easy: run through the alphabet and you come up with Mack or Zack. Both rhyming helpfully with back.

Here’s a question for singers and songwriters:  which is the better  stand in for Jack – Mack or Zack? One scores points for sound, one for meaning.  What makes Jack a million miles better than both?

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From Lorca to Leonard Cohen and back again

It’s a marvellous thing to write music that suits the original flamenco Spanish of the Lorca  poem as much as your English translation:

 

A squillo

It’s a lovely thing to see image and movement in the service of knowledge.  Ming Luke provides the words, Franz Palomares brings them to life and Ted-Ed provides the screen:

© Sing Better English 2020

What the Stranglers did to their Diphthongs

R.I.P. Dave Greenfield. Keyboardist, songwriter and singer.

When you listen to the Stranglers’ song Golden Brown, pay close attention to the way Hugh Conwell sings the word brown:

Lighting every step on the Stairway to Heaven

Stairway to Heaven is a classic choice for song contests.  If English is your native language, don’t take the words of this song for granted. If English isn’t your native language, don’t take the words of this song for granted. The words matter.

They matter, but they’re not a liturgy.  Dave Grohl captures the heart of the song without reciting every word in order. Or at all:

Bunraku

Because singing is communicating and connecting. And because all the arts inform each other:

Making music

Music: Poppy Ackroyd

Director: Ainslie Henderson

Producers: Puppet Animation Scotland

Akala: Carried Away

The mouth is almost like a percussive instrument. If you use it in the right way, your flow can have melody coming from the vowel sounds, but then percussion coming from the consonant sounds. And your flow of how you divide up these consonants and vowels determines how nice an instrument your rapping can become.

Akala

Lady Leshurr

“I started thinking, ‘You know what? Why don’t I just rap?’ Because it’s just poetry with a beat behind it, really.”

Lady Leshurr in The Guardian.

Jazz, respect and memory

What’s a Polish song doing on a blog about singing in English? Blaszane Mordy is here to show that connecting with a song is a conscious skill, and an ability, that transcends language. You don’t need to understand Polish to ‘understand’ Lautari‘s Blaszane Mordy. Emotion pulses within the shape of the words alone: