Singer-Songwriters

(kicking off with this first...wanted to clump all the artists I wanted to but never got around to rave about under this one...almost. ^6^)

I remember a rather amorphous discussion on singer-songwriters I had with someone I encountered (a Belgian, if it is of any relevance); amorphous because he was constantly straying—jumping—from one point of argument to a next and I was trying—in confusion and quite in vain—to tie up all the points along the way if not actually bring the conversation back to where it started, which was the merits and demerits of singer-songwriters and their music. As a high enthusiastic of many a singer-songwriter of our time, mostly Western but also an emerging crop of Asian artists, I could not (and can’t) find a major intrinsic flaw with the tradition, let alone a reason to shun it, and so I was rather surprised to hear the older man’s preference for non-ss artists. It was probably only indifference towards it, but when he said ‘oh that so-and-so (when I mention some favourite musicians), so you like those singer-songwriters!’ it sounded rather scornful. So I asked him what he liked. He ummed and hmphed and beat around the bush and quantum tunneled through various points, and after a rather tiresome rabbit chase nothing much came out, except for a vague remark somewhere that a singer per se is probably purer and thus better at the craft than someone who so unnecessarily wants to do it all. ???

I mean, what era do you live in, man? Even regular oldtime rock bands pen their own songs! With the perhaps perpetual exception of jazz and blues (which loves to be nostalgic and never stops covering old classics), and then pop (thinkin'...Britney) everywhere else I look I see the brilliant parts of any genre to be singer-songwriters. The whole indie scene is very much them (thanks to technology for once). I think it’s an exceptional gift to be able to write music and interpret and express it all by oneself, and when such artists come along the result is often vivid, sincere, and profoundly moving if one happens to be on the same frequency. For me, to listen to the congruent beats and lyrics that grows out of the contemporary artists through time is an amazing experience of witness, as they sing eloquently or privately, of the world we live in now, personal crises and exultations, or sentiments and small moments of life. Personal is the what feels so special about it, I guess, and so good.

Wikipedia has a pretty nice entry on the evolution of the singer-songwriter tradition, and also a list of singer-songwriters in the world, both focusing primarily on Western countries. (The absent Chinese part has a lot of catching up to do...)