What’s the deal with accents? For the sake
of simplicity I will ask about the English
language. Why do almost all British singers
lose them when they sing? Also, are all
accents relative? Is there such a thing as
not having an accent? I’ve heard that
Canadians (at least those who don’t live on
the east coast) have the closest thing to
a non-accent, which is why a large number of
Canadian news broadcasters get hired by
American newtorks.
One theory I’ve heard about British singers using American accents is that because Rock ‘n’ Roll and Blues, and a mess of other music styles were created in the United States, the American accent is an engrained part of the genres. This makes sense to me since I’ve observed the reverse, as well. I have yet to see an American try to sing a G&S song without slipping into an English accent.
Another example: American punk band Green Day seemed (to me) in their early albums to be signing with an English accent.
G&S?
I used to agree, but now I do hear British musicians singing with accents. Trying to think of examples offhand. You hear it in certain word pronunciations and such.
The ones that come to mind right now are pretty much anyone with an Irish background. Sinead O’Connor, The Cranberries, …
Crap, I can’t seem to think of any names right now.
I thought they learned phonics and had the music (words) written out for them phonetically? Or is that just for opera?
Okay, maybe it was for the groups from Sweden, Norway? and USA groups singing in other languages?
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In general, sung English gravitates towards a more British pronunciation unless the singer intentionally “americanizes” it. The sustained nature of sung vowels tends to eliminate a lot of the diphthongs that make words sound american, and the consonant “r”, arguably the biggest marker of american english, tends to get dropped. I know there are lots of examples to the contrary…
G&S = Gilbert and Sullivan.
Sorry about that, Irishman. I didn’t mean to sound so pretentious.
Accents in general are due to the fact that when a speaker learns a secondary language (i.e. not the speaker’s native language), they develop new lexical, morphological, and semological linguistic systems (with considerable overlap with the native language of course), but the phonological system remains unchanged.
I heard of a professor from Russia who was fluent in six languages and competent in several others. People said that he “spoke six languages, all of them in Russian.”
Music may be different because it utilizes the linguistic system differently than normal language. I’d expect that an auxilliary phonetic system is developed in the minds of good singers, because after all, singing is all about making it sound good. Of course, I have no evidence to back that conjecture up.
I know that an English prof of mine, when trying to determine our accents, had us avoid any songs. Something about singing changes accents, probably because you have to stress the vowels differently to carry the tune.
I’m probably just recaptulating what TheNerd is saying, but there are variations in pronunciation whever English is spoken. These have a variety of causes. An accent is merely a different pronunciation, usually because we pick up pronunciations as we’re growing up.
“What we have here is failure to communicate.” – Strother Martin, anticipating the Internet.
My voice instructor taught her classes that the easiest, best vowel sounds to sing are those found in Romance languages: ah, ay, ee, oh, oo. These sounds require you to open your mouth and throat more fully, allowing you to sing with more force. (Perhaps a singer on the board can explain this better than I have.)
Anyway, English has a lot of vowel sounds that constrict the mouth and throat: eh, ai, ih, uh, ae (the “a” in “had”). Singers approximate these sounds by blending the Romance vowel sounds that are the closest approximations. Long “I” – ai – is often sung as a slurred “ah - ee”.
Total WAG here, but perhaps American English is less “constricted” than British, and these Romance vowel sounds come out sounding closer to American than British.
“The dawn of a new era is felt and not measured.” Walter Lord
I think english singers sound american because there voice does tend that way when they sing.
Listen to Billy Bragg. He sings with a pronounced Cockney accent, but when he speaks his accent is so strong it is almost incomprehensible. (To this american, anyway)
I thought that I had no accent when I moved from Ohio to California. Then people started to ask me if I was from Texas.
When British actors play Americans, they use an American accent(southern,surfer,N.Y.etc.) the way we would use a British accent (cockney,etc).
The short answer is that they do it deliberately just as Americans put on an English accent when they’re singing Gilbert and Sullivan or some such. It is, I assume, felt to be more appropriate to the genres (rock, pop, blues, jazz, etc) which are American in origin.
Billy Bragg is an honourable exception (though he’s an Essex boy, not a Cockney). Likewise, a number of Scottish singers like the Proclaimers and Big Country (remember them?) retained and even emphasised their natural accents when singing. A lot of punk and ska (or ska-related) bands of the 70s and early 80s sang in their natural vioces as well: the Sex Pistols, Madness, Ian Dury, Stiff Little Fingers, The Men They Couldn’t Hang.
For the Irish, cf Shane MacGowan and Bono. The former is English-born and public (i.e. private, if you’re American) school educated and sings with a pronounced Irish accent. The latter is from Dublin, of lower-middle class origin and sings in teh standard American manner.
aschrott wrote:
Oh come on. So all those country music acts are having to make a “conscious effort” to sound American? I just don’t think so.
Ursa and Arnold are right. English bands sound American because they are imitating an American idiom (consciously or not).
Rock and roll was invented in the South, as the result of a sort of cross-pollination between R&B and Country music. The early British bands (Beatles, Rolling Stones, The Yardbirds, etc.) grew up listening to blues, and to rock and roll as performed by Elvis, Little Richard, The Everly Brothers, Roy Orbison, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Chuck Berry (all Southerners, all singing with southern accents, and in the Southern idiom). The Brits imitated the sound, and that’s why rock and roll generally has a Southern flavor.
Even within the US, most rock singers affect a southern accent when they sing (consciously or not).
Arnold is right about punk rock, too. Most punk bands (consciously or not) affect a British accent, because they are used to hearing punk as performed by The Sex Pistols, The Clash, and other Brit punk icons. The same is true of so-called “goth” bands, because of the Brit influence in that genre. (Think The Smiths and The Cure – Plenty of English accent to be heard there.)
Of course rock can be sung with a British accent. Larry pointed to a prime example in Billy Bragg.
I think some Gilbert and Sullivan tends to create accents more than other pieces, based on the lyrics.
“He’s very very good, and be it understood, he commands a right good crew!” Somehow, ‘right good crew’ cries out for an English accent.
On the other hand, “Poor wandering one, 'though thou hast surely strayed,” doesn’t seem to require (or get sung in) an English accent.
Just my thought…
- Rick
Accents were created so deaf people don’t know what country you are from.
What I want to know is, why does the guy from Greenday sing with an English accent? Aren’t they from California?
Canadians don’t have an accent, eh? Hoe aboot that. Eh? 
I got it! We Mid-Westerners ARE singing when we talk. That’s why other people sound like us when they sing! It’s the only thing that makes sense. We’re more talented than the rest of the English speaking world. 
Well, Spoke (as opposed to “well-spoke!”), I stick by what I said. Two words for you: Shania Twain (canadian–no real southern accent there). If you think that commercial music acts don’t get specifically coached on the linguistic image they project you haven’t spent much time in the music world. Those people get told how to dress, how to talk, how to walk, and–yes–how to sing so that they appeal to certain audiences.
Besides, I was speaking very generally in response to the OP which asked why british singers tend to “lose” their accents when they sing. My answer was based on basic facts of singing–not so much stylistic observations. I am a professional singer and I deal with this stuff all the time–but my background and experience are strictly in classical music where there are fairly standardized approaches to lyric diction. I would propose that you cannot make generalizations from your examples of acts from pop, rock, and country. It’s tough to weed out the poseurs from those that simply sing with a natural accent. My only assertion, really, is that the act of singing–unless it is conciously altered in an attempt to sound a certain way–naturally mitigates (not necessarily eliminates) spoken accents.
peace