Tome, saying the music has “soul” doesn’t automatically put “emotion” into eqaution. There are pieces that are very emotionally restrained and yet they work, they have soul, they have the meat of it, if you know what I mean.
“Soul-less” means empty, devoid of character, bland.
It doesn’t mean “bereft of emotion”, though it can be one of the things.
Of course, I might add, a lot of it is up to personal tastes. We are all different plugs in the circuit so we pick up stuff in a different way… I guess…
I think you’re the one with the misconception. I don’t know anyone who argues that technical chops necessarily preclude ‘soul’, only that too much focus on technique can sometimes over-shadow emotion, depending on the artist. It’s not just the notes you play, but the notes you don’t play that count.
Although, in your specific example, I happen to think Jimmy Page overcomes his technical limitations with sheer emotional bravado, I know that this often isn’t the case, so here are a few counter-examples of technicians with soul:
Soul: John Coltrane (incredibly technically proficient)
No Soul: David Sanborn (technically proficient)
Wouldn’t know soul if it hit him in the head with a 2x4: Kenny G (not so much)
Soul: Stevie Ray Vaughan (incredibly technically proficient)
No Soul: Yngwie Malmsteen (incredibly technically proficient)
Soul: Diana Krall (Yes I’m serious, but only for her first 3 albums. She’s an excellent and under-rated jazz pianist who’s playing has, sadly, been pushed to the background on her recent saccharine schmaltz-fests)
No Soul: Norah Jones (competent, but bland and highly over-rated)
Okay, how about Don Pullen? He’s a jazz pianist whom I really like, but he’s never been accepted into the pantheon of excellent pianists whom he occasionally appears to exceed in technical merit. He’s a no-Soul kind of guy, if you ask me.
Stephane Grapelli is just the opposite. He whisked around that violin in jazz environments and really brought something to it, long after his unquestionably soulful pal Django died. Compare him to that fucked up chick who plays the steel violin to freaky '80s music whose name I can’t recall and you’re looking at night and day.
Soul might very well be indefinable and better described upon a bell curve, but it is almost always obvious by comparison.
I would call soul that aspect that makes a musical performance greater than the sum of its parts.
Most of the previous posters, in my opinion, are on target about who’s got soul and who doesn’t. But David Sanborn has been soulful on occasion (for example, on another Hand), and I also disagree with most of the civilized world about Wynton Marsalis and Hootie.
Who’s got soul? Billie Holiday.
I’ll Back you on this. Cake does songs that are almost devoid of emotion, but have soul. I can’t define it, but I think it shines through.
White Soul!: Hall and Oates, Righteous Brothers
Soso White Soul!: Elvis
Stole the Soul: Pat Boone
Hey! Show a little respect! If it weren’t for Frank, Basie wouldn’t have even had that gig.
I was flipping through the channels one day and came across Hansen performing “Soul Man”. Hansen…“Soul Man”… It sounded like they were playing straight off their sheet music. It makes me shudder to this day.
Can Classical music have soul? What pieces of Classical have soul, which don’t, and how much does the conductor contribute to the soul of a Classical work?
It may be hard to define on the receiving end, but an artist definitely knows when they are putting soul into their work. If someone is singing with their full attention and focus, their music will likely have soul. Soul’s a good name for it; you’re basically getting that person 100% at that moment.
There’s a difference between just running and doing nothing but running. Are you doing your shopping list or are you there in the moment for every step? Nowdays, we all multitask habitually and rarely have these 100% moments. It’s a lot like meditation. And, oddly enough, at the end you’re often not so sure how you got there.
Yes, and probably a great deal. I used to have a recording of the Ruslan & Ludmilla overture by Glinka that was my revival music (played when I needed to wake up, to hype myself up before a job interview, to lift myself out of a really bad mood, or just any time I needed to get charged up) done by the Vienna Symphony Orchestra in the early '50s. Alas, the vinyl wore out. I got another copy–different symphony, different conductor, thinking it would be the same, and it was so lame. It just didn’t work at all. Unfortunately I ditched the jacket along with the bad record so I don’t know who the conductor was; whoever conducted the VSO in the '50s, I guess.
Or, I have always liked “Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks,” even when played by my son’s junior high orchestra. Recently I heard a version that was so bad it was almost unrecognizable. Done by the Colorado Symphony, under the direction of Marin Alsop. Well, I think you have to blame the conductor for that one. (I’d also bet it doesn’t get played anywhere but Denver.)
I also have a version of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, Pathetique, and Les Adieux that does not impress me in the least (and it’s really pretty darned hard for somebody to screw up the third movement of either the Moonlight or the Pathetique, but this pianist did). I would have sworn before hearing this that the soul (if you want to call it that–and I do) was in the music and not necessarily the execution, but this pianist made it so bland it sounded like elevator music.
Re: classical music…Yoyo Ma = bigtime soul
God yes. The conductor can make so much difference. (A lot is also due to the sound engineers, but conductors seem to have a lot to say about who is going to engineer the recordings, too)
Soul: Leopold Stokowski
Soul: Sir Adrian Boult
Usually: Eugene Ormandy
Usually: Zubin Mehta
Nope: Louis Clark
Nope: Danel Barenboim
Nope: Leonard Bernstein
Sort of: Andre Previn
Sort of: Herbert von Karajian
I hate hearing a strong dramatic classical piece reduced to elevator-Muzak flatness by a conductor afraid of dynamic range or sonic “vivacity”, one whose idea of a great performance seems to be “all the right notes get played in the right order at the right time”.
Oh yeah. Oh definitely defintely yes.
If you’ve ever heard several pianists play the same Chopin piece, let’s say, you would find great differences in how they are presented. There’s a misconception among some people that classical music is simply playing the notes in front of you.
Heck no.
You can hear the difference between a flawless technical execution and a “soulful” interpretation. For me, a lot of what people call “soul” has to do with phrasing, dynamics, and accentual patterns. It’s not just hitting the right notes, it’s how you hit the notes and when you hit and release the notes. What notes you emphasize in a phrase. That sort of thing.
It really does go beyond technique because there are a myriad of subtleties that simply have to be felt and understood by the performer.
It’s so difficult to explain. I mean, take something simple like a four-four drum beat. Eighth notes on the high hat, snare on two and four, kick on one and three. Simple right? Plug that into a computer and what do you get? A lifeless, static rock beat with absolutely no nuance or soul. Somebody who plays a technically “perfect” rock beat like this will be accused of having no soul.
Find a drummer with soul and there are subtle variations in the playing - the high hat gets emphasized differently on each eight note. The snare might just ever-so-slightly push or lag behind the beat; the kick might do the same. How do you teach a drummer to play the snare a hundreth of a second behind the beat? You really can’t. You just have to feel it.
And it’s not just random imperfections in the music. They’re not random, nor are they imperfections. It’s just, it’s…
Never mind. If you have to ask, you ain’t got it.
“Soul” in music is a subjective thing, obviously. So, used inappropriately, or to describe an artist or song you don’t personally like, it means, as Exapno stated “I do / don’t like that”.
When trying to use it descriptively, it translates most closely to “honesty”, as in “that person is honestly portraying the spirit / meaning / emotions of that song”. That’s why, earlier in the thread, people could say that, in their way, DEVO has soul (and I agree) - for what they were trying to do, they were doing it honestly.
Sleestak, your mini-rant about Page feels misplaced. Page IS a sloppy guitarist, true, but regardless, for what he was trying to do, he captured the spirit of the song. He has soul. Mistakes or sloppiness often crop up in songs that have soul - how about when the woman’s voice breaks saying “Rape, Murder” in the middle of “Gimme Shelter” - could a line have more soul? I don’t like it when the mistakes or sloppiness feel like a calculated play to simulate honesty - like when modern synth bands include tape hiss on their tracks, for instance - but when sloppiness just kinda happens, I don’t mind, and when it happens naturally, it can increase the sense of spontenaity and honesty and therefore soul of the song.
The biggest issue with a musician being honest and having soul is repeatability. As a long-time guitarist and semi-pro musician, I can tell you, going out on stage night after night and finding “it” is incredibly hard. So when Aretha, the high priestess of soul, does what she does, there is a lot of technique. The fact that she can go on autopilot and portray honesty is truly amazing. I think that is what can be confusing - some folks play with technique and can do the same things night after night and bleed them dry, while others can do things with technique and keep the honesty in there, while others may not have technique but tap into something honest - I think of, say, the Sex Pistols for the last category…
You and the Dixie Chicks 
“Long Time Gone”
“We listen to the radio to hear what’s cooking
But the music ain’t got no soul
Now they sound tired but they don’t sound Haggard
They’ve got money but they don’t have Cash
They got Junior but they don’t have Hank
I think, I think, I think
The rest is a long time gone”
Alan Jackson and George Strait sing about the demise of traditional (=real?) country music in “Murder on Music Row”, but of course it’s being played on Clear channel country-sounding-like-pop stations right next Shania Twain’s latest pop hit and the irony is lost.
((I’ve been reading Nick Hornby’s “Songbook” lately so I am feeling very open about what is valuable music…any superiority towards pop has been tempered by taking and appreciating music for what it is, and what it is to you at the time. Yes, I do love Meat Loaf and Jim Steinman and I will no longer apologize for it! 
))
While there is no real objective way to measure soul, this statement is absolutely true. Other Dopers have pointed it out with many artists, but sometimes the only way to determine soul is by comparison. I, of course, have my own contributions:
Soul - Robert Johnson, Crossroads Blues (please note that Johnson is exceptionally technically proficient as well, and in a technique that would make most modern guitarists cry with frustration)
No soul - Eric Clapton, Crossroads Blues. This version just disgusts me. It’s the forerunner of all those blues cover bands comprised of fedora-wearing yahoos that think they’re playing the blues when they take an old standard, speed it up, and put a guitar solo in it. Ugh. Mr. Clapton is a very proficient guitarist, and I’m sure a nice man, but when it comes to his brand of “blues,” the boy has no soul.
No soul - The Beatles, Hey Jude. They just saw through the song in standard workmanlike fashion.
Soul - Wilson Pickett, Hey Jude. He puts this song to bed, and that insanely soulful musical break at the end, led by Duane Allman and backed up by the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, with Pickett soul-screaming fit to have a stroke, was, according to what I’ve read on it, improvised. Christ, now that’s soul.
Soul - Leonard Cohen, Hallelujah. Beautiful song, beautiful lyrics. Cohen wrote it, and he put plenty of soul into his recording of it.
No soul - Rufus Wainwright, Hallelujah. Again, he just sawed his way through it. No connection to the emotion or lyrics. Boring.
Zero f*cking soul - Bono, Hallelujah. Jaysus christ, you self-absorbed clown. What the f*ck were you thinking?
More soul than a white boy from New York should have - Jeff Buckley, Hallelujah. He makes you hang on every word, and that single note held at the end is just unbelievable.
The introduction of race into the “soul equation” is confusing too. You often hear that white people have no soul, or that white people stole black music and destroyed its soul. Poppycock. In terms of rock and roll, it is precisely the combination of white and black traditional musical forms which made it utterly transcendent and powerful. It was the union of hillbilly country music and delta blues, soaked in a history of racial uneasiness and emotion that made it so drivingly powerful. Same goes for what’s become known as “Southern Soul,” or “Memphis Soul.” It was essentially Southern black gospel music turned secular, and most of it was composed of a mixed-race band. Hell, when Paul Simon was recording Graceland* in Muscle Shoals in the 80’s, he specifically asked for “that same black band that made all those great recordings in the 60’s.” When he got there, he was surprised to find that the black band (The Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section) was mostly white.
The sad part is now the charts are calling it 'Black Music", lumping Soul with Hip-Hop (good) with Gangsta (bad) with R. Kelly’s Music to Molest Children By (what the…?)
Wow, never thought I’d see this thread again.
What exactly is being called ‘Black Music’ now? That’s kind of a throwback, but it’s a marketing thing I’m sure… differences in content aren’t usually the dividing lines between genres (much less ‘this kind is good, this kind is bad’), so if it’s musically similar I guess I can see why they’re being lumped together.