RE: [Harp-L] "Authentic" pronunciation?

[Ryan Hartt <rhartt1234@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I am a big fan of a lot of European traditional styled Blues bands. Many of them can play American Blues on a level equal to that of the best US bands. 
Knockout Greg, B.B. & the Blue Shacks, Sven Zetterberg, The Electric Kings and a bunch more perform with barely an audible accent. Then there are some singers that have an accent but it does not detract form the performance, two that come to ind are Egidio Ingala from Italy and Jussi Raulamo from Finland. It'll be three in the morning driving home from a gig with my guitar player and to wake us up I'll bust out my accent heavy impression of Ingala or Jussi's version of T-Bone's "Blue Mood" to give us a little chuckle. It is not the accent that makes foreign blues hard to listen too, it is when the singer's lack of commad of English renders the lyric nonsensical or unintelligble. 

Personally, I've had a band in Spain put two versions of a song I wrote on YouTube, and a band from Sweden record one of my songs on their demo CD. These guys have some pretty strong accents and get some things wrong or unintelligble, but hey so did John Lee Hooker, and I'm flattered nonetheless.
Ryan


> Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2010 08:15:39 -0700
> From: martinoldsberg@xxxxxxxxx
> To: harp-l@xxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: [Harp-L] "Authentic" pronunciation?
> 
> (This is a question that strictly falls outside the Harp-l boundaries. Sometimes even such things find their way in here (mostly jokes, endlessly repeated ...), and I certainly don´t mind if it stays on-list; it´s not my call, but please reply off-list if you have any thought on this that you care to share and feel that you want to be on the safe side of list policy. And for goodness sake, skip all political correctness, or whatever the going expression is.)
>  
> Thing is that like quite a few of us I´m every now and then playing with singers (in my case specifically one guy) who´s command of English pronunciation leaves a bit to be desired, and quite a lot of the material that we play comes from that part of the world: US of A, mainly.
>   I´m simply wondering what you native English speakers think when you hear a singer wrapping him/herself around, say, da blooze ... and out comes something with a decidely un-American accent. 
>   Is that pathetic, slightly ridiculous, annyoing, disgusting! -- or quaint, cute, quite nice in fact: "don´t try to hide your origin", or whatever. Or perhaps of no significance at all.
>  
> As I write this I´m listening to an Italian band (with harmonica!) where the singer has terrible problems with his pronunciation ("iss a ´ard rod"), and their entire material is drawn from the Americana tradition.
>   It bugs me like hell, I must say, but I´m a Swede (whose own pronunciation probably is shaky, but owes a bit to what I was taught back in my youth: British English. In the US they frequently took me for a Briton; in the UK they think I´m a foreign tosser trying to sound posh. However, I think I can create a passable imitation of American English -- but sing I can´t).
>  
>  My musical partner has a truly excellent command of our Swedish material, pays careful consideration to lyrics and never sings a song that he hasn´t worked up some kind of relation to. I´d say he´s a bleeding paragon.
>   When it comes to English/American material it´s different, and I sometimes cringe when I hear his failed attempts at rendering these songs believable (for lack of a better word right now) with that Sveedish seeping through. Sometimes, covering behind a few pints, I´ve given him a few pointers but these are sensitive matters.
>  
> Would be interesting to hear you from the other side of the fence on this.
>  
> Cheers,
> Martin
> 
> 
>