what is soul?

When asking "What is X?" it's often helpful to see how the word "X" is being used. I'll only explore one possibility here, but think about the fact that people often claim they like music with "soul" in order to position themselves as being against "music without soul" - which they may find threatening, "lacking," etc. So people say, nah, I don't like electronic music - I like music with soul.

Also, Ambrose, I think people often do mean "I don't like it" when they say "It doesn't have soul" - it's just one more phrase that people use to try to attack music they don't like on a stronger/more concrete level than invoking mere personal taste. Note: I'm not attacking this tendency; it's at the very heart of music criticism and music discourse.

Is whatever tickles your bollocks.

Or equivalent.

This thread could use a revive:

Is it me, or does anyone else not entirely comfortable with the idea of 'soul' being lauded as an intrinsically necessary and important element of music. I.e. criticizing music because it doesn't satisfy the criteria of being 'soulful' is both unfair and unfounded. I’m coming from an electronic music point of view, in reaction to it's being often perceived as soulless and thereby bad; why it seems that say, Moodymann is privileged over Ryoji Ikeda.
Whether soul is an ineffable force that drives substantial content in music, or just a means of encapsulating and mythologizing certain cultures within musical stylistics, I feel I’m exclusively interested in is the sounds, not with the cultures that they’re associated with, and I can’t help but feel that I’m told that liking stuff like Raster Noton or Sahko or whatever is inferior, and either I’m imaging it, or I have to call bullshit on it.
Of course this gets much more tricky when things like Detroit techno come into being, with its generally dark, mechanical 808/909/303 driven sound, it's still perceived by its proponents as having elements of soul to it (the film title “High Tech Soul”, for example), and of course, much more difficult questions about separating politics and culture from action and production arise, and being a young, middle-class white person from Canada, my perspective is seriously limited. What has attracted me to techno was always the well, ‘soulless’ sounds, and if I shut myself off from the culture, am I actually missing something? Do you think that there anything about the social/financial/cultural conflicts of Detroit in the last 30 years that manifests itself/resonates with 909’s and 303’s etc. Is it soul because it carries on the legacy of Motown, carrying it into new directions, redefining soul, or is is just something that if you’ve got, you’ve got?
I do think that the effect of Detroit techno is inseparable from its context, and agree with my first two questions, but by no means the first. And what about contemporary European house, for instance which still privileges soul, but exist in vastly different conditions than Detroit in 1988. What I don’t get is why it’s perceived as intrinsically better, when in reality I generally can’t see anything past having an affinity for the sonic properties of the music (except maybe people that grew up in these communities and can relate to it as a formative experience through times of strife, but when people like Jay Haze say music ahs to have soul, then, well, to hell with him). I’m not really trying to shake up things, but yeah, I clearly feel that this is worth wasting as much time as I have writing this post.

Also, this has probably been answered here before.

geir to thread

A joint rolled in toilet paper.

All this started in the 80s, didn't it? Rare groove soul boys moaning about plastic pop and house music. Obvs people talked about "soul" before, but this is when it got ultra-fetishised by critics.

I'm pretty sure someone had soul before that. It was invented by Janis Joplin, and lots of people seem to like that Mercedes Benz commercial.

I mean "soul" as a concept debated and obsessed over by nerdy rock critics.

See: some idiot writing for Rolling Stone, circa 1974. Unless you were that idiot, in which case I mean the other idiot.

geir to thread

If you expect me to do the typical "rockist" thing, I surely don't do in this case. In fact, I prefer my favourite music cool, calm and collected, and prefer emotions to be in the melody and chords rather than in the performance.

And I have nothing against electronics as long as they are combined with melody and harmony. Which is fully possible, as evident by lots of early 80s chartpop.

I think that's pretty much what everyone expected.

oh come on geir I know you are definitely NOT a rockist

"if I shut myself off from the culture, am I actually missing something? Do you think that there anything about the social/financial/cultural conflicts of Detroit in the last 30 years that manifests itself/resonates with 909’s and 303’s etc"

yes and yes.

"And what about contemporary European house, for instance which still privileges soul, but exist in vastly different conditions than Detroit in 1988. What I don’t get is why it’s perceived as intrinsically better, when in reality I generally can’t see anything past having an affinity for the sonic properties of the music"

my problem with much new euro house (even of the "deep" variety) is exactly that: they ape the sounds but not the feeling.

church singing, but not hymns

hymns, but not church singing?

You mean, to make good house, you have to be black, gay and from either Chicago or Detroit?

Soul is measured in attention and emotional investment devoted by the listener, not the artist.

-- Sterling Clover, Sunday, 22 July 2001 00:00 (6 years ago)

^^^this^^^

but i might add that attention and emotional investment by the artist always helps

Q: "Mr. Owl, how many posts does it take to hit rock bottom?"

A: "Let's find out. One, two, twenty-six." *Crunch* "Twenty-six."

ILM: we don't care about music anymore, but we're funny right? right??

"You mean, to make good house, you have to be black, gay and from either Chicago or Detroit?

-- Geir Hongro"

it certainly helps.