singing with american accents

Subject: RE: singing with american accents
From: GUEST,Joe Moran
Date: 02 Aug 16 - 10:33 AM

John Barlett said:

"Most Canadian pop singers sound like they're from Tennessee: we call that "cultural colonialism" her"

Now, I've asked this question before, but do American (USA) singers sing with regional accents?

For example, does Bruce Springsteen sound like he comes from New Jersey? Or does he just sound "American"?

Did Muddy Water sound like he came from Mississippi?

Or, could your average American recognise somebody from Texas, for example, just by their singing voice?

Subject: RE: singing with american accents
From: leeneia
Date: 02 Aug 16 - 01:05 PM

Actually, Bruce Springsteen and many others just sound like they've been living under a bridge. Any local accent is lost in the phlegm, raspiness and mumbling caused by years of poor health and substance abuse.

I bet sound engineers have a button that they push to make a guy sound like 'long-term homeless."

They think it sounds tough, I guess. Or like they've suffered and they really know what life is all about - it's dismal.
=============
Joe, I spend a week in Texas most years, and I have heard no special Texas accent. There can be a Western drawl, especially among whites who were born there, but the speaker could be from Texas, New Mexico, Arizona....

There's a saying on the east coast, "As soon as he opens his mouth, you know he comes from a square state.'" If you don't understand that, study a map of the lower 48 states.

Hispanics can sound different from Anglos. And it matters what the person's natural voice is like. An adenoidal, husky or nasal quality might be taken as part of the accent, when actually it's not.

Subject: RE: singing with american accents
From: GUEST,Tunesmith
Date: 02 Aug 16 - 02:23 PM

Well, lots of US singers surely effected an singing voice that's not their own. Or anything like it.
For example, rich kid John Hammond Jr surely effects an accent far removed from his own natural voice when he sings Delta blues...or any blues.

Subject: RE: singing with american accents
From: meself
Date: 02 Aug 16 - 05:35 PM

Canadians almost always sing in an 'American' accent, with a few notable exceptions: Neil Young, Stan Rogers, Randy Bachman (not much of a singer, but he sings 'natural'). Gordon Lightfoot straddles the border, dropping the hard r's.

And, yes, many if not most American singers affect some kind of faux Southern accent. I don't think Muddy Waters was putting it on, though!

Subject: RE: singing with american accents
From: Joe Offer
Date: 02 Aug 16 - 07:38 PM

Come to think of it, my son thought he needed to sing in his punk band in a pseudo-British accent until he was 30. Now he's 42, and sings his techno music in American - mostly for European audiences.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: singing with american accents
From: GUEST,HiLo
Date: 02 Aug 16 - 08:02 PM

Is there now a "rich" accent ? who knew.   Canadian singers sing in American accents ! John Allan Cameron, Rita Mac Neil, The Rankins, Well, west of New Brunswick they might! Joni Mitchell is pure Prairies as is k d Lang. I just don,t,t think it matters at all. Sing in a way you enjoy, easy as that.

Subject: RE: singing with american accents
From: meself
Date: 02 Aug 16 - 08:23 PM

I didn't mean them - I meant all the others! ('Pure Prairies', though? I don't hear that - more like 'pure generic North American').

Subject: RE: singing with american accents
From: The Sandman
Date: 03 Aug 16 - 10:50 AM

It is important imo to listen carefully to ones own singing, asnd try as much as possible to sing in ones natural accent.

Subject: RE: singing with american accents
From: The Sandman
Date: 03 Aug 16 - 10:52 AM

early bob dylan, sounds as if his accent is a larger bit of oklahoma and a smaller bit of his own

Subject: RE: singing with american accents
From: Joe Offer
Date: 04 Aug 16 - 12:04 AM

HiLo - there IS something called a "Mid-Atlantic accent" used by some American elites - more-or-less equivalent to the "posh" accent of England, but perhaps more exclusive. Wikipedia suggests that William F. Buckley, Jr., Gore Vidal, Franklin D. and Eleanor Roosevelt, George Plimpton, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Norman Mailer, and others used the accent. Tyrone Power, Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn, Vincent Price, and Cary Grant were Hollywood folks who affected the Mid-Atlantic accent. I'd say Grace Kelly would be another good example.
-Joe-

Subject: RE: singing with american accents
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 04 Aug 16 - 01:49 AM

Joe, that's what my folks used to call the 'Posh American' accent - heard a lot in the old B&W films of the '40s and '50s. Sounds completely unnatural and rather stilted - not a pleasant sound at all.

Subject: RE: singing with american accents
From: leeneia
Date: 04 Aug 16 - 08:50 AM

I think that article is full of baloney, Joe.

People of the N.E. United States often have a legitimate eastern accent. There's the Boston accent, the New Yawk accent, the Bronx accent, the sound of downeast Maine.

I believe it also occurs in Michigan and parts of New Orleans.

Think of your tongue. It has the tip, where we say T; it has the back, where we say hard G. In between is the center, the part we hardly think about. Now start talking English aloud and hold the center of your tongue flat and still. You will start talking with a NE accent.

It's called 'centering.'

Subject: RE: singing with american accents
From: Joe Offer
Date: 04 Aug 16 - 01:57 PM

And is "New England" the accent Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant and Vincent Price spoke with, Leeneia? And William F. Buckley, Jr., Gore Vidal, and Jackie Kennedy? A standard New England accent just wouldn't fit them. I have plenty of New England relatives, and they don't talk like Vincent Price or William F. Buckley, Jr.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: singing with american accents
From: GUEST,Tunesmith
Date: 04 Aug 16 - 02:21 PM

Well, Cary didn't move to the States - from England - until he was an adult, which probably accounts for his accent.

Subject: RE: singing with american accents
From: Joe Offer
Date: 04 Aug 16 - 08:09 PM

Tunesmith, other things I have read posited that a "Transatlantic" accent existed among internationally posh people on both sides of the Atlantic, particularly in English-speaking expat communities in places like Paris and Cairo.
Cole Porter would be another good example of this Transatlantic/Mid-Atlantic dialect and culture.

There's an entertaining YouTube video on the Transatlantic/Mid-Atlantic dialect here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gpv_IkO_ZBU

-Joe-

Subject: RE: singing with american accents
From: GUEST,Tunesmith
Date: 07 Aug 16 - 11:42 AM

I heard a song recently by a British rock band that was a criticism of British pop artists performing in a pseudo-American style.
Does that ring a bell with anybody out there?

Subject: RE: singing with american accents
From: FreddyHeadey
Date: 07 Aug 16 - 02:51 PM

NZ research by Andy Gibson



http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/7922639/Rock-n-roll-best-sung-in-American-accents.html


"...singing in a local accent would sound funny and because American rounding off of words makes it easier to sing them.
Mr Gibson said, "There were huge differences between the sung and the spoken pronunciation of the same words.
"Consider the difference between 'I' (spoken) and 'ah' (sung), 'girl', pronounced without the 'r' in speech and with the 'r' in singing, and 'thought' with rounded lips in speech versus 'thart' with unrounded lips in singing.
"Studies in the past have suggested that non-American singers wilfully put on American accents but my research suggests the opposite – that an American-influenced accent is the default when singing pop."
Mr Gibson believed his findings also explain why so many of us end up sounding like cheesy rock stars when we sing our favourite songs in private.
"We do it automatically; it doesn't require any effort to sing with an American-influenced accent," he said.
"The American-influenced accent is automatic in the context of singing pop music, and it is used by people from all around the world.
"It actually requires effort to do something different. The American accent doesn't stick out in singing because we are so used to hearing it.
"To sing in a New Zealand accent takes awareness and effort, and it is usually quite noticeable because it is so uncommon.
"The American accent doesn't stick out in singing because we are so used to hearing it."
The accent people use in their singing is more about the style of music than about where they come from.
"For example when we sing reggae we are more likely to use a Jamaican accent but even someone from Jamaica might use a southern American accent when they are singing country and western type songs," Mr Gibson said."

Subject: RE: singing with american accents
From: GUEST,Ebor Fiddler
Date: 07 Aug 16 - 04:46 PM

I can't help it, but I tend to sing a song much as I hear it. I've even found myself singing songs learned from the singing of Mike Waterson, in his Hull accent. It's completely different from mine, even though the Watersons hail from less than forty miles from where I am from! I have checked myself singing songs from other "live" sources with the same result. Down with the Folk Police!

Chris B.

Subject: RE: singing with american accents
From: Joe_F
Date: 07 Aug 16 - 06:19 PM

People who use "mid-Atlantic" to mean some sort of mixture of U.S. & UK should be aware that in America "mid(dle) Atlantic" has a native meaning of the east-coast states south of New England & north of the south.

And as to what counts as an American accent, one might quote Ogden Nash:

    Every state is a separate star
    With a different approach to the letter R.