Have you ever found yourself listening to the radio at night (in Salt Lake City), flipping through the radio stations while driving home, when you hear some cool jazz music? So you leave it playing, because it's not commercials, and besides, you feel obligated to listen to jazz because you think it might be sophisticated? After a few songs, and a little education on what Miles Davis sounds like, all of a sudden your ears are accosted with the ridiculous sound of nonsensical shrill babbling.
Oh, that has happened to you, too?
It's called "scatting," and it is an integral part of jazz music. Well, jazz enthusiasts, I'll go with you through Jazzland with Louis Armstrong, and Ella Fitzgerald, and even Billie Holliday, but as soon as they start with the "ba doo bee bop bwah bop de dop," in unison with the improvising brass instruments, I am stabbing myself in the eardrums in a desperate attempt to make it stop. Or simply changing the station, on the off chance that I don't have ice picks with me.
It's hard to put the ridiculousness of this type of "singing" into words; so let me just say that hearing scatting is the audio equivalent of walking along a city street and seeing litter on the sidewalk. It shouldn't be there, it's ugly, annoying, and you wish the person who put it there had a few manners, or common courtesy. The world is ugly enough (and loud enough) without us adding additional pollution to our MUSIC, for the love.
It's no coincidence that "scat" is also a word for animal feces. When they chose the word to describe this type of "singing," they knew what they were doing. Can’t we all come together to ensure that the vocals in our music are real words, and not just noise? That is a cause I believe everyone can get behind.
Let's all resolve to rid the world of all pollution, both in the form of littering, and scatting.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
8 comments:
Yuck- I hate that too. Sorry you were subjected to the scat. On the subject of jazz. We had neighbors that must have listened to the "Smooth Jazz FM station" here in NYC since when you would ask their 3 yr old what her favorite type of music was she would say "Smmmmooooooooth Jaaazz" Apparently she never had to listen to the scatting. Be bod dup op baa bat tang wow!
that is a pretty good rant. however, might I make 2 suggestions. 1- cursing, because while rants are good @#$&! rants are awesome. 2- statements like "ella fitzgerald should be dug up and beaten with lous armstrong's femur for helping create a world were scat exists".
be careful. amanda might read this. i think she is a scat.
This is your step-brother in-law, Ryan here. You know, Eileen's son. I was happy to discover your blog the other day.
skee ba dee bee bop a skeebady wop soo doo skabeedy doo bee bodda bee.
And I'm glad I could scat on it. I'm sure I'll drop by periodically. Feel free to check ours out as well if you're ever bored...
I just want to know who this "David" is. He has a lot of good ideas. Why does Blogger even make links out of the names of people who DON'T ELECT TO SHARE THEIR PROFILE? None of us knows.
Scat doesn't bother me too much...
I'll go ahead and beat myself up with Louis' femur.
so i love KUER (or whatever the NPR station is) until they put on jazz. and then i despise it and would seriously rather listen to Usher than the stuff they play. and i like jazz. i have coltrane and davis and mingus and billie and so on. but, the jazz they play in utah is just bad. smooth bad.
I almost died when I read this! I could not agree more with you. After being a jazz bassist at BYU, I realized that I pretty much only liked about 5% of all jazz, and negative 100% of all scatting. Jazz choirs are equally horrible. It's why I generally don't listen to jazz stations.
Post a Comment