Uncouth Reflections

Fenster writes:

Here at WUR (KUR for those of you on the west coast), we don’t play the hits.  Whether we play the songs you like to hear depends on whether you like the songs we like to hear.  De gustibus, baby.

So far we have a Sunday jazz thing from Fenster and Sir Barken has commenced with a Prog Rock Monday and a Friday Music Wildcard.  That leaves four days open yet, and what the heck Fenster will colonize another.

It’s Wednesday, so it is time for women, singing.

Why Wednesday: alliteration.  Why women?  Because women are on the whole appreciated in these here parts, in whole or in part.  So consider these Wednesday proceedings a musical version of our “sister” Tumblr site.  There, certain facets of women’s special qualities are appreciated.  Here another: voice.

I really enjoy the incredible variety of women’s vocals—variety in tone, articulation and, especially, expressiveness. Isn’t it the case that women are permitted to show a higher degree of emotional expressiveness than men?  It’s seems to be part of the cultural bargain with our biology.

Is it just happenstance that in our current era, still knee-deep in hip-hop, guys tend towards monochromatic tough guy talk?  And that when emotion and melody are married to hip hop it is through the importation of women, who are permitted to sing while the guys trash talk.

Not that guys can’t sing, of course, or that they don’t express emotion.  But women do impart their own special magic and that will be celebrated here.

For my first spin, I have selected the Mexican-American singer, Lila Downs.  She is a good choice given the theme here of what women can do with their voices in the name of emotional expressiveness.  In fact, Downs can be a little over the top in that regard, able and more than willing to turn on a mere centavo from an urgent whisper to a determined, vibrato-free dramatic statement, and then quickly on to a sassy taunt.

Notice the constant reshadings of her vocals in La Martiniana.

And her mercurial shifting of both tone and language in Perhaps Perhaps Perhaps.

And her resolve in La Llorona.

Fenster’s colonization of Wednesday is non-exclusive. Other DJs are welcome to set up their own music on Wednesday, or to add to the cache of women vocal performances.