Thursday, February 24, 2011

Scat

Made up rhythmic words.

Not the scatological rhetoric throughout history.

And not a certain kind of porn.

It's one of the oldest American musical traditions.

Humor is often employed as the singer weaves his or her way on a musical trip.

It's a matter of improvisation. You literally make it up as you go along. And the deal is that people can dig the beat. They can move with the groove. You can mingle with the tingle.

I'd give you a written sample but it's real hard to spell scat out. It's a language all its own. And it's best expressed orally. You gotta hear the sound.

There are detail analyses of scat. Check it out. You might start at 'scat singing' at Wikipedia.

There are evan psychological studies. Then again there are psych studies of fruitfly behavior. Now studies are ok, but sometimes things just are.

I suppose what I'm getting at is for people to listen. There is musical structure.

Instrumental improvisors are different but related. They of course imitate actual musical instruments. The Mills Brothers come to mind and there are others.

By the way, that whole instrumental phenomenon sprang from a strike that forbade actual instrumentation aka musician's strike. So people found a way.

What's it got to do with Freedom? Just reread this missive.

Like I have told my kids, figure it out yourself -s-.

4 comments:

Hoo said...

Bibiddi bobiddi boo.

Mike H said...

Spells.

Who said...

Ah. You can actually be free to think listening to seemingly mindless syllables.

Mike H said...

Yes.