Looking askance at the TV while working, tonight I found a show at Film+Arts Channel. I would like to share my impressions.

1) A mountain of expensive electronic equipment apparently driven by a band called Placebo. Strange sounds, a melody line always decaying to a spoken grunt, a girl literally eating a mic. There was some lyrics but I couldn't understand a word. Sour expression, anticipating the effect that their music is supposed to have in the audience.

2) Trisha Yearwood in a duet with another female singer and a pianist, in a delicious rendering of "I feel I'm going home", supposedly country song. Smooth voices, plenty of expression. But (Alas) if they own those beautiful voices, then WHY don't they use them in their plenitude, why that nasal effect in high notes, that softening of the brightness that they surely have ? Yes I know, country is not Puccini, but the sound is the sound, and a bright voice is a bright voice, even in a romantic or melancholic song. There's no need to degrade a voice to appear more popular or more folky. Or am I wrong ??

3) Ladysmith Black Mambazo : ten black male singers doing unbeleivable things. (Remember their song at the end of the movie "Moon walker" with Michael Jackson? - the only part I enjoyed). South African Spirituals and songs with incredible harmonies (I swear they are simple harmonies but I'm unable to analyze them), producing a continuous pleasure from the first to the last note, rythms that awake our most hidden ancestral emotions, and an attitude of absolute joy. If the others were applauded, the Mambazos were acclaimed by an audience who reacted as if they were not a simple condescendent public for a TV show. Phenomenal.

And where am I requesting an opinion ? Point 2, if you like.

Un abrazo - Andrés