GUEST,James H, thanks for your responses to my question.

Sleepy Rosie, my comments were not about what is "acceptable" to me and certainly were not about what is or should be acceptable to others. I can not speak to what "should be" acceptable to any other person.

My comment was about the authenticity in style & performance of a song with "authenticity" being defined by me (and not for anyone else) as "the way [the songs' composer/s] wrote them to be performed".

I believe that many African Americans gospel and secular songs the way we do because of socialization. I don't believe that we sing soulfully because of something innate that comes with the skin color or something in our blood. In other words, I believe that just like any other population, African Americans are taught through our direct experiences {in church, at home, at social gatherings etc) and through our indirect experiences (television, radio, movies, internet etc) to value and to imitate/perform certain types of singing, and certain types of instrumental music, and certain types of voices, and certain types of movements (or non-movements as the case may be).

Beyond viewing a few YouTube videos, I know very little about how Black choirs the UK sing. In those videos it appears that those choirs are vocally & stylistically the same as African Americans choirs. If that is the case for Black British choirs across economic lines (with "Black" here meaning persons of some Black African descent)-and again, I know too little about those populations to say that it is indeed the case-then I would postulate that it's so because they have been socialized to value (prefer) that particular music approach/style/sound the same as we (African Americans) have.

My point was/is that I think it would be much less likely for a person or people who have not been socialized to approach (interprete/sing/play/respond to) a gospel (or a Blues or an R&B) song the same way as most Black people have (been socialized to do so) to sing the song the way its Black composers wrote it to be sung-with some range for individual interpretation (what hip-hoppers refer to "putting your own flava to the mix" and what is also referred to as "owning the song".

I should expand what I just wrote to say "its [the songs] "Black composers or its White composers" since as you well know many "Black American" R&B songs were composer by White people. Imo, these people were or became immersed in Black cultures and produced a sound or sound that met the aesthetic senses of African Americans. That still speaks to my point about "socialization".

Mind you, I'm not saying that I believe that people who are unfamiliar with a culture can't "authentically" sing songs from that culture. It just seems to me that it would be much more difficult for them to sing those songs authentically than if they had more than a passing familarity with that culture.