Singing...with or without an accent?

[kyblue]

would you find a vocalist singing with a non-natural accent annoying

If it's obviously not natural (and often it is obvious), then OH YES.

(But for some of us we're actually slipping back into something we've tried to put behind us, and it may come out natural!)

[mandopete]

...Am I babbling too much?

Ya'll caint babble too much on this here cafe!

[jim simpson]

I have a gal in my office that kinda hates bluegrass but came out to hear one of the bands I play in. She said my singing sounds different from my speaking voice. I try to sing natural so I was a little puzzled as I don't want to affect an accent that I don't have.

I heard that Madonna would get to keep her English accent as part of the terms of her divorce!

[mandopete]

I heard that Madonna would get to keep her English accent as part of the terms of her divorce!

English accent, is that what they call that?

[man dough nollij]

I heard that Madonna would get to keep her English accent as part of the terms of her divorce!

For some reason that American-with-a-fake-affected-British-accent thing is like fingernails on a chalkboard to me!

Mando content: Madonna would probably say the same thing of my playing...

[Patrick Gunning]

I don't seem to adopt a southern accent when I sing bluegrass, but when I sing anything by someone with an English accent (like Seth Lakeman) I almost can't help but pronounce the words with the accent. Something about how the phrasing works.

People tend to tell me, if I'm singing something that I haven't worked on much, that it sounds like I'm more consciously mimicking the original artist's tone and pronunciation. I think part of it is just living with the song for a while before you really feel it's your own.

[Jon Hall]

Being a Texas "pure blood", with a Jimmy Stewart inflection, Southern songs are no problem but it's kinda scary when I take a turn at Irish or Scottish vocals.

[AlanN]

When we first moved south and I would hit the jams, I got several "You ain't from around here, is you?" I guess it was obvious.

Thank Goodness not all grass is from the south. The Seldom Scene, with John Starling on lead vocals, did much to show that perfect trio harmony could be had with nary a twang in the bunch. Ronnie McCoury has that 'in between' timbre to his voice.

I like to inflect a southern thing into vocals (within reason) on certain tunes. But when I say the days of the week all ending in -eee, the family groans.

[mandopete]

Having worked for companies that are based out of Texas for the past 20 years, there's one line that I always hear (and I like) when I'm there:

Hi ya'll doon?

(How are you?)

[journeybear]

Living in Key West for nearly seven years I've picked up a few Southernisms. (I also played mostly country for nearly four years, so what are ya gonna do?) People here forget sometimes that we're in the South - cosmopolitan though it may be - and locals talk and act with a certain regionality. A few years ago I spent a month in northern Mississippi ("Miss-sip," they called it), and soon found myself unintentionally speaking similarly. So much so that one of my new friends asked if I was making fun, and I said no, I was just getting acclimated. Being surrounded by these voices, some of it had to rub off on me, especially me with my flat voice. There's more to "speaking Southern" than the drawl/twang, and niceties like calling someone "sugar" or "sweetie" or "darlin'" are so charming, I'll miss them should I ever move away.

When I sing, I sometimes put on a bit of an accent, but it's usually a clumsy attempt at humor. With my voice, it's probably best to just get through the song without calling too much attention to myself. Still, if you feel a song that way, go with it. I probably would myself if my bandmates would stop whacking me in the head every time I do it. All in all, it's best to sing from the heart, however your voice expresses that, because people pick up on fakery real quickly. If you're really feeling the music, you'll carry that through, and affectations won't matter.

Mandopete mentioned:

I love the the word "y'all", especially the possesive, yall's...

Just so y'all understand, that's the possessive form. The plural of y'all is all y'all.

[CES]

South Carolina born and raised, and haven't strayed further than North Carolina other than on vacation or business...where I'm from NC's getting dangerously close to the Mason Dixon Line (that smiley should really be missing at least one tooth)...

Amazingly, I don't have a very heavy Southern accent (wife's family is from Chicago originally, and we've only had a few communication issues over the years) when speaking, but I tend to slip into it when singing, especially if country, BG, or gospel...

Rather than affecting accents I have to be careful not to try to borrow the style of another vocalist. I tend to try to sing it "how it's supposed to be" rather than making it my own. A friend of mine and I were playing Simple Man (LS, not CDB) several months ago, and neither of us could get that guy from Shinedown's voice out of our heads....we eventually gave up, because neither of us can sing like that guy, which was frustrating b/c it's a great song and 4 chords...we kept saying, "Just sing it like you" but neither of us could do it...

Fake accents tend to irritate me, but it's hard not to sing most country and BG without a little twang...without it you end up sounding like country night on American Idol (I think Randy Travis is still going, "Huh? I thought this was country night..."

[ShaneJ]

Please don't fake a Southern Accent, no matter where you are from. Even some singers in Nashville that are from the South try to sound even more twangy than they really are, and it sounds horrible, IMO. Everyone's best singing voice is their natural voice. Just sing and be yourself.

[Matt Hutchinson]

English accent, is that what they call that?

I think it's what she would call it, I don't know any English people who speak like that though and I've lived here 37 years!

In England almost EVERYONE sings with an American accent of some kind. I think it possibly started with post war variety entertainers imitating the big money US performers (take Morecambe & Wise - spoke with English regional accents but sung with American ones!). Nowadays I think people here see American accents as 'cool', maybe in the 60s British accents were considered cool in the US due to the Beatles.

Contender for 'worst fake American accent of all time' has to be Mick Jagger though (yet I don't mind it for some reason!)

Matt

[Bruce Evans]

Most of the time I sing like a native Michigander. However, I recently started singing Whiskey In the Jar at the Irish sessions. The last two lines of the last verse are:

But me, I delight in the juice of the barley,
And courtin' pretty fair maids in the mornin' bright and early.

Now, here in Michigan - where no one has an accent (just ask us) - that last word is pronounced, "IHR-lee". But that doesn't rhyme well with "barley." So I sing the last four words, "marnin' brite 'n arley." After 6 or so verses in normal Michinglish everyone knows that I am affecting the accent for humorous puposes.

Sometimes I sing a different word than "courtin'", too.

[Paul Kotapish]

I always try to sing in my own voice (and accent, such as it is), but I definitely find it challenging not to drift into emulating the singer from whom I learned the song. I, too, hate the sound of a phony accent, but at times the twang or lilt just slips in there on its own.

[allenhopkins]

Sometimes I sing a different word than "courtin'", too.

You scalawag, you...

Irish songs on St. Pat's, especially after the third hour, have been known to make me start sounding like some WASP guy trying to sing Irish. Maybe if I drank more -- but then I couldn't play 'em...

My main problem is leavin' off all the final "g's" when I'm singin', though when I'm talkin', I don't do that. My wife says it's annoyin'.

[Spencer]

You get all kinds of accents in the European bands, and there are a few common pronunciation errors that I have tried, more or less unsuccessfully, to correct with the locals, but you get used to it, otherwise you'd play alone a lot. Some bands try to copy southern accents, but most sing in a pretty much "standard" english, whatever that is.

When I sing, I don't consciously try to fake an accent, but once in a while something slips in. When we do "Don't that Road look rough and Rocky" the word "thinking" sure doesn't come out sounding like it came from where I grew up in southern Wisconsin.

Spencer

[mandozilla]

Matt said;

I think it possibly started with post war variety entertainers imitating the big money US performers (

Might it have been the influence of American recordings as well?

You know I was just thinking about Tony Rice as a singer. Though born in the Great State of VA, he grew up in California. He doesn't, excuse me, didn't (sorry Tony), sing with a full blown southern accent but some of his vowel pronunciations and inflections have a southern feeling to them.

Though he's not one of my top favorite BG singers, I enjoy listening to him on the 'Bluegrass Album Band' series. And I guess the way I approache BG singing is kind of like the way Tony sings BG...I've also figured out how not to be so nasal when I sing...did that a bit in my youth.

[Ivan Kelsall]

I think singing songs using an English accent, like how what we speak proper like,is the way to go ! (LOL!!!) . Oh boy !, if you could only hear some of our British regional accents,totally impenetrable to anyone outside that region. But it's great !.May the good Lord forbid that we all speak the same way. Now if y'all could sing in a really nice Texas drawl,that's fine by me - no insult to anybody not from Texas intended,it's just that when i listen to Jerry Allison,Buddy Holly's old drummer speak,he's got an accent as broad as Texas itself,i could listen to that guy for hours,
Saska

[man dough nollij]

That's why we needed subtitles on The Full Monty...

[Ivan Kelsall]

Lee - 'The Full Monty' were reet easy tha' knows. A few years back,a friend of mine from Newcastle in the North east of England,got up to play with his band at a Bluegrass Festival.The folk up there are known as 'Geordies' & they are wonderfully generous,warm hearted people.The accent up there takes a bit of listening to, to begin to understand the regional terminology they use. Matt (for that is my friend's name) announced to the audience "We're gan tay play one for yous all nah,a tune called 'Gannin' doon the rood' " - translated :-" We're going to play one for you all now,a tune called 'Going down the Road' " - I swear that possibly not more than 2 or 3 people understood him. I've met with a similar reaction when i've been up to that part of the Country. Having a pint in a pub,just having a general chat,someone will say " Why doon't ya speak proper like ? " - All good fun,
Saska

[journeybear]

... if you could only hear some of our British regional accents,totally impenetrable to anyone outside that region.

That point was made so well by Professor 'enry 'iggins in "My Fair Lady." But there are countless examples of mini-dialects in America as well. I've known a number of people from the area around Brockton MA (south of Boston), and that is an accent I always recognize. Talk about broad accents - take that "pahk the cah" and triple it, so "Brockton" almost becomes "Brackton." Jay Leno's from there, and he's bred it out of his speaking voice, but falls back into it whenever he has a guest from the vicinity. Also, since the leader of my Cajun band married into a family from the New Bedford/Fall River area, her accent isn't as distinctive as her husband's and their friends. Though it's only 30-40 miles away, it's markedly different. And when they get to talking after they've got a few beers in 'em - whew! And I can pick up on a northern Rhode Island accent, especially since I don't hear it so often here.

My grandmother was from Boston - OK, Brookline - and what an accent she had! I thought everyone from Boston spoke like that. Decades later I learned she had grown up in Nashville - probably broke her mama's heart when she married a Yankee and moved up there - so that was quite the odd mixture of accents.

Those of us who stay up after Letterman for Craig Ferguson get to hear a wee bit o' the Scottish burr. Glad that CBS took a chance on him, as he's hilarious and even (gasp!) intelligent - not a quality deemed desirable in this dumbing-down age. His accent isn't as thick as many other Scots', but sometimes it's quite apparent. "Early" comes out "airly," "down" becomes "doon," etc. It's been instructive.

[mandozilla]

Saska
As one whose ancestors fled the British Isles long ago but who still has strong feelings toward our Mother Country, it's good to know that we Americans aren't the only ones who butcher up the 'Queens English'!

[Ivan Kelsall]

Hi mark - You guys can always come back to the fold - as long as you bring you Loars,Gils.,Dudes,
Heidens etc with you - you'd be welcomed with open cases.
A note for Bruce,with his 'Barley' & 'Early' - they don't have to rhyme,people seem to get the idea ok.It seems a bit strange at first,but believe me if i had the time to think about it,there are MANY instances of this in Folk songs from all over the place.
We don't so much as butcher the Queen's English as 'mangle' it. We also don't invent 'new' words or new pronunciations of existing words as much as you guys in the USA seem to do on occasion. I watch many US TV series on British TV (not 'soaps' i hasten to add !) & often hear words that have been in the English language for 100's of years, either mispronounced or completely replaced with a new word,which seems to me to be un-neccessary. This process can't be stopped !.It's gone on for centuries,but i often wonder how these 'new' words come to be. In one of my favourite programmes C.S.I. - the word 'Criminologist' has been replaced with 'Criminalist',
why ?. Going back literally hundreds of years,we've had the word "Buoy" (BOY) a 'floating marker,anchored at sea'. It's become a widely used practice in the US to pronounce this word as "Booey" - for the life of me i can't understand why. Even the original spelling,doesn't make grammatical sense to be pronounced that way - & how do you reconcile pronouncing the word as "Booey" while still pronouncing 'Lifebuoy' as 'Lifeboy' & 'Buoyant' as 'Boyant' ???.
Please believe me - this is NOT a criticism,merely an observation as to how language can seem senseless at times & we Brits.are NOT without our linguistic downside either,
saska

[man dough nollij]

I work with a Kiwi of British origin. He never gets tired of giving me a hard time for spelling flavour, colour, and aluminium wrong. I argue that Americans are much more efficient-- we don't need those extra letters.