English
中文The most immediately obvious stylistic trait in the music of the black American soul and funk singer James Brown (1928-2006) is his unrelenting repetition of one verbal phrase, which David Brackett describes as ‘resulting in a kind of ecstatic trance’. In the song I Got You this characteristic is in definite evidence. It is based on an expanded form of the following lyrical cell:
- A: I feel good, I knew that I would
- B: So good, so good, I got you
Brown’s expansion of this cell operates in a blues-influenced manner: he repeats the first line (A) once before iterating the second (B) to achieve a pattern (AAB) that fits with the 12-bar-blues-based harmonic progression (I | I | I | I | IV | IV | I | I | V | IV | I | V7). After doing the same for verse 2, the bridge section is unsurprisingly constructed from a repeated pair of two lines, creating an internal rhyme structure of ABAB in contrast to the AAB of the verses. In the last repetition of verse 1, he repeats line B twice as a form of punctuation, or ’rounding off’ of the song. This structure is varied at the melodic level by Brown’s continually varying, quasi-improvisatory vocal melismas and embellishments.
Repetition is also crucial to the larger-scale structure of the song. It is divided into three sections, establishing a rough ternary form, a form found throughout the history of music, from the earliest of medieval polyphony to the latest pop songs:
- A: V1, V2, saxophone solo, bridge
- B: V1, bridge, saxophone, V2
- C: V1
Thus the melodic and verbal lines which carry the identity of the song (V1) begin the piece, begin each section, and end the piece, giving the piece its satisfying sense of completeness, despite its brevity (the song is under three minutes long, perhaps in mind of the increasing reliance on radio playlist requirements).
The jazz-band-like instrumentation (drumkit, electric guitar, bass guitar, trumpet, trombone and saxophone) forms another obvious reference to the jazz-blues tradition and render the harmonic progression in a sparse, riff-based style. There is a call-and-response relationship between the first line of each verse (call) and the answering brass riff (ex.1), underpinned by a rhythmically straightforward backing in the rhythm section, which is disrupted occasionally by riffs which are taken up by the whole band, and act as structural signposts:
This can be linked to various aspects of Brown’s cultural and musical heritage; the work-songs of the plantation culture in early twentieth-century America and the religious Gospel songs found in American churches. Indeed, Brown began his musical career during the 1950s in a gospel band called The Flames. The technique is a powerful tool to create a rapport between leader and follower; in the field to spur the impoverished workers on to complete their arduous tasks and in the church to inspire devotion to God. Through Brown’s and others’ music it came to be one of the primary identifying features of black music throughout the twentieth century, and extends its influence into many other genres, even into the ‘game based’ music of some later twentieth-century classical composers like Philip Glass.
Also crucial to James Brown’s style, and a development and extension of the traditional call-and-response pattern, is his inimitable use of a harsh, rasping, gutteral vocal timbre, and animalistic growls, grunts, wails, shrieks and moans. The transcription of words like ‘whoa’ and ‘hey’ in the above table really cannot communicate the non-verbal and timbral content, which is quite astonishing and extremely emotive. It is understood that Brown was a vibrant stage-performer, and it is profitable to consider such gestures as his shrieks in the context of contact with a live audience. Furthermore, this exposes a great talent for recreating such symbiotic relationships in the artificial environment of the recording studio; where a live audience could not be relied on to provide reaction to the performance.
It is an extension of realising the importance of the non-verbal content of Brown’s songs to realise that the verbal content is not of great value as poetry. The lyrics merely provide a framework on which to hang different vocal sonorities. It matters more how the words sound than what they mean. It is often this characteristic which creates difficulty for listeners who are new to the genre of soul music, and particularly the music of James Brown; they seek lyrical meaning and are presented with none. It is essential to understand that this music functions in a different way to much music of the popular idiom. This point and that of Brown’s tendency to rely on repetition is addressed tellingly by Robert Palmer:
Brown has never been a critics’ favorite principally because of the apparent monotony of so many of his post-1965 recordings. But attacking him for being repetitive is like attacking Africans for being overly fond of drumming. Where the European listener may hear monotonous beating, the African distinguishes subtle polyrhythmic interplay, tonal distinctions among the various drums, the virtuosity of the master drummer, and so on. Similarly, Brown sounds to some European ears like so much harsh shrieking.
This ‘harsh shrieking’, or in the words of another writer, these ‘impassioned melismas’ are in fact imbued with great subtlety and serve to provide a means of understanding and measuring forms and modes of expression in mid-twentieth-century Soul music. With this in mind it would be a worthwhile and potentially very fruitful exercise to undertake a systematic study of the minutiae of Brown’s quasi-improvisatory melodic variations, since the very reason so many repetitions are present is so that the singer can display his skill at ornamenting the basic vocal line. One could easily relate such an attitude as this to the conventions of baroque arias where a repeat would be provided in order that the singer could display his or her vocal virtuosity.
This is not to say that such a study is necessary in order for Brown’s music to function as it always has done – as highly entertaining music which works exceptionally well in live performance. Rather it could serve to quantify the remarkable subtlety of his performances, to provide a framework or system using which to guide the listener in the same way as a score and libretto is supplied to the student of opera music. In this situation the provision of a traditional score and libretto would be distinctly unsatisfactory, since to judge Brown’s music on its lyrical content and harmonic structure is to miss the very way in which it is innovative.
The aforementioned study would take on an extra dimension if it were extended into the various types of music on which James Brown had influence. Most notably the discography of Michael Jackson bears significant debt to the style and not least in the appropriation of the focus on the value of entertaining stage shows and choreographic routines. Brown did much to develop the concept of the soul-singer as showman and cultural icon, and deserves to be remembered fondly as a great innovator who was not afraid to combine the seemingly simple and the cunningly complex to produce records of enduring quality.
