Scat
As Scat ( Engl. To scat "rush to chase"), even scat singing is called a special form of singing in the American gospel and jazz singing that an impromptu singing of rhythmic and melodic juxtaposed syllables without word meaning and without coherent sense designated; the syllables and word fragments become onomatopoeic instrumental phrasesimitated, for example elements from the instrumental style of the surrounding musicians. The exact shape and sound of the syllable sequences is largely improvised spontaneously by the musician and the voice is not used in addition to conveying meaning, but solely as an instrument.
development
The origin of this form of singing is not known. Louis Armstrong claimed to have invented scat singing in 1926 when recording the title "Heebie Jeebies" with his Hot Five ; During the recording, the sheet of music with the text accidentally fell on the floor for him (and at that time - see record # Development of the record industry from 1900 - music recordings for records were recorded directly on a wax blank "in one piece" without editing during the sound recording Repetition would have been too expensive), whereupon he improvised the following scraps of words:
However, as early as 1924, Don Redman and Fletcher Henderson's band recorded the first, still somewhat awkward, scat singing in jazz history ("My Papa Doesn't Two-Time No Time"). Recordings by bands around Adrian Rollini such as The Little Ramblers in Hard Hearted Hannah from August 13, 1924 or The Goofus Five in the piece Go Emaline from September 24, 1924 show that scat was part of jazz music even before Armstrong's 1926 recording. Cliff Edwards had already made several recordings (such as Nobody or Homesick ) in 1922 , on which he improvised in a scat-like manner; in 1911 who had Vaudeville Artists Gene Greene with King of the Bungaloos presented a first recording with Scat.
Scat singing makes vocal improvisation easier in jazz singing, because the main melody is expanded or varied by additional notes for which no text is available. The use of consonants - in contrast to a classical coloratura - results in a similarity with rhythm instruments in order to evoke so-called " drive " (a temporal syncope that generates rhythmic tension and the so-called "swing" rhythm ).
Scat singing was therefore particularly widespread in the swing and bebop era and was further cultivated in the cool jazz and hardbop periods. Typical and successful scat songs from this period are, for example, How High the Moon and Lullaby of Birdland from the repertoire of Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan .
A well-known example is Cab Calloway with his play Minnie the Moocher (1931). In the chorus there are both simple ("Hidi Hidi Hidi Ho") syllable games and very fast and hardly understandable combinations.
Al Jarreau was also particularly closely connected to scat singing , who was able to imitate instruments with his voice in a deceptively real way and was therefore occasionally referred to as “a man with the orchestra in his throat”. Jazz pianist Aziza Mustafa Zadeh merged scat singing with Azerbaijani mugham and classical elements in the 1990s .
Another well-known example of scat is "Doo be doo be doo", with which Frank Sinatra ended the song Strangers in the Night .
In the broadest sense, vocal percussion and beatboxing , in which rhythm instruments are imitated with the voice, are variants or further developments of scat singing, a cappella singing originally also meant the imitation of instruments by the human voice, i.e. singing without text. “Hollarretidijia” - yodelling with consonants would be a European root that is also sung without text.
Scat singing and rap have roughly the same roots; American radio DJs later picked up this chant and developed an early form of rap from it (see also hip-hop ); a typical example of this is a text by DJ Dr Hep Cat :
- If you want to hip to the tip and bop to the top,
- You get some mad threads that just won't stop .
Typical representatives (in alphabetical order)
- Louis Armstrong - e.g. B. Heebie Jeebies (1926)
- George Benson
- Dee Dee Bridgewater
- Cab Calloway - Trickeration , Between the Devil And the Deep Blue Sea (early thirties)
- Bing Crosby - Some of These Days (1932)
- Sammy Davis Jr. - e.g. B. Love Me or Leave Me
- Urszula Dudziak
- Cliff Edwards
- Kurt Elling - e.g. B. Nature Boy (2003)
- Ella Fitzgerald - e.g. B. How High the Moon, Flying Home, Oh Lady Be Good
- Dizzy Gillespie - Oop Bop Sh'Bam
- Eddie Harris - e.g. B. Come on Down
- Ruth Hohmann - best known (East) German representative
- Al Jarreau
- Ulita Knaus
- Bobby McFerrin
- Mark Murphy - e.g. B. Bebop Lives , Stolen Moments
- Lauren Newton
- Dianne Reeves
- Scatman John - e.g. B. Scatman , Scatman's World (1994)
- The Swingle Singers - as an a cappella choir or octet with choral movements on works by Bach and Mozart ( 1960s )
- Caterina Valente
- Sarah Vaughan - e.g. B. Lullaby of Birdland
- Leo Watson - It's the Tune That Counts (1939)
- Aziza Mustafa Zadeh - e.g. B. Scrapple from the Apple (1997)
Web links
- Scat-Groove One. Typical example of a current Scat song number from Bad Egg ( Memento from September 29, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
Individual evidence
- ↑ Louis Armstrong: The Singer (NPR)
- ↑ see Cliff Edwards (Red Hot Jazz) and Louis Armstrong: Heebies Jeebies (jazz.com) ( Memento of the original from December 23, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ See Elmar Bozetti, Introduction to Musical Understanding and Design , Frankfurt 1988, p. 143.
- ↑ DJ-Culture ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
