It’s Saturday. While waiting for the Pacquiao-Cotto fight, I might as well as empty my “to blog” folder. Lots of music. I like Duffy’s voice. (In the US there is some criticism of the appropriation of soul music by white British singers, but I don’t subscribe to that argument. I think these singers respect the origins of the music and they also talented). This is Duffy performing her song “Mercy” live on the Jools Holland Show–an institution on British TV.
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My problem with this music (and indeed that of the rather “blacker” Sharon Jones) is not the appropriation per se but the implication that working class/black culture is in a continual state of decline, and that it needs to be “rescued” from whatever mire it’s currently in by well meaning white folks.
Birdseed,
C’mon Sharon Jones is a prison guard.
And where did Amy Winehouse or her producer Mark Ronson ever articulate that “… working class/black culture is in a continual state of decline, and that it needs to be “rescued” from whatever mire it’s currently in by well meaning white folks”?
As a rather sad fan of Duffy I check out tweets about her on a regular basis …… most of the folk who seem to love her, judging by their avatars, are black and American. The haters usually appear to be white and trendy.
These retro-soul girls just love the music, they’re not about rescuing anything.
I don’t think many people at the time gave Dusty Springfield much flack about appropriation and she certainly gets a lot of respect now. And a lot of these singers take a lot from her as well as the Motown/ Stax/ etc stuff of the 60s/70s.
Among the British retro-soul ladies, the best, in my opinion is Candie Payne. Overall I’m a fan of Mayer Hawthorne, Raphael Saadiq, and Adele in the retro-soul genre. The best retro soul-gospel is Naomi Shelton–she’s got serious chops.