This weekend I was working on learning how the voice works; the science of the voice, the different ways to sing, and how best to work with it. One of my passions is to teach people a healthy way to sing. However, while I was off taking this class, I received the following review from Mark Anthony Neal on his New Black Man blog that made my day:
"Alison Crockett will never claim to sing “for the people,” yet with her new recording, Mommy, What’s a Depression?, in the spirit of the Occupy Movement, literally occupies Black music on behalf of the myriad issues that affect the everyday lives of folk who can never, legitimately, hope to benefit from the lives of the so-called 1%. With it’s double-worded title—a nod to economic realities that have looked like a depression for many even before the 2008 economic crash and the mental health issues that afflict far too many brilliant and productive citizens—Mommy, What’s a Depression? recalls a time when Black music captured the full range of human emotions, instead of simply our desires to be desired and to consume and be consumed….
….To call her an R&B vocalist would be too limiting; to call her a Soul artist is too conjure a tradition she is indebted to, but not defined by. On Mommy, What’s a Depression? Crockett’s gestures to Go-Go, Jazz, Santigold-styled Funk, gut-bucket Blues, Trip-Hop, Tin-Pan Alley, and what I like to refer to as “Cosmopolitan Soul”... "
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| Mark Anthony Neal |
I so appreciate that he gets what I'm trying to say. I've always tried to create sound pictures; like an old fashioned black and white polaroid camera for your ears. Then my brother, Teddy, produces the track and puts technicolor on it so you can see it even better. Cameras take pictures of anything and everything, which is what I like to do: sing about what I see. Thanks Prof. Neal for seeing my voice.
For the rest of the review, click here.
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