Soul Music

I am stuck on soul music. And I’ve been stuck on it for a while. Usually these phases pass, but I keep discovering new recordings, and the music just generally seems to lend itself to the warm sunny joys of early summer. So I’m going to write about it today, and make a (perhaps misguided) attempt to describe why I find the genre so powerful.

For me, much of soul’s power lies in its gospel roots. Early on, soul music was decried for mixing religious musical styles with the devil’s music—rhythm and blues. Ray Charles met such criticism when, in 1954, he released the classic “I Got a Woman.” Eventually, though, people found the music simply too good to be stifled. And for that I thank my lucky stars.

It’s difficult, I think, to understand soul music without thinking about gospel music. Gospel music is a shared music—though performers stand at the front of an audience or congregation, there is no invisible wall separating the two groups. The audience lends its own voice, whether it be in the form of clapping hands, joyful utterances or an echoing of the performers. The salvation sought is to be gained through communal experience, a shared expression of joy, sadness or devotion. And so each lends a voice, and the sum is greater than its parts.

Whenever I listen to gospel music, I am always struck by how powerfully and purely the emotion pours from the music. And while gospel tunes are undoubtedly best experienced live, the next best thing might be a live recording. Here’s a live recording of Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers, singing “Nearer to Thee.” If you listen to it, you can hear the contributions of the audience, rising and falling in proportion to how impassioned Cooke’s voice is at any particular moment. And it gets pretty ridiculously impassioned by the end—it’s certainly worth a full, eight-minute listen.

Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers – Nearer to Thee (Live) (YSI) (filesavr)

So at least part of what makes gospel music so powerfully emotional is its communal nature, and soul music maintains many of these communal elements. This is particularly apparent, again, in live recordings. Cooke provides a wonderfully instructive example of traits common to soul and gospel, as we have sublime (live) recordings of him singing in both genres. Take, for example, the superb Sam Cooke Live at the Harlem Square Club (seriously, you want this album). The concert features a loud, responsive audience interacting with a particularly impassioned Cooke. The subjects of the songs, largely consisting of simple romantic notions, are entirely secular. I don't mean “simple” in any derisive way. Indeed, in the case of soul, the simplicity allows the music to speak to a common experience. Cooke’s songs speak to naïve teenage love or to nights of carefree dancing, subjects with which many have some experience. And he invites you to dance along, to sing along, to clap along, and to get caught up in this sweaty, shared outpouring of emotion.

Sam Cooke – It’s All Right/For Sentimental Reasons (Live) (YSI) (filesavr)

Listen, for example, to this recording of a medley featuring the songs “It’s All Right” and “(I Love You) For Sentimental Reasons.” Sam begins the song with a sort of lesson:

Fellas, I want to tell ya, when somebody come and tell you something about what your girlfriend has done, or what your wife has done, I want you to remember one thing: Don’t go home and hitting on her and all that stuff. Whenever they tell you anything about your baby, go home and, if she’s sleeping, shake her and wake her up. And wait til she wipe all the sleep from her eyes, you understand? And when she got all that sleep wiped from her eyes, look her there in the eye and tell her: it’s alright.

It’s not unlike a preacher talking to a congregation, here with a simple secular lesson of nonviolence and forgiveness. And later in the song, Cooke invites the audience to join him in singing “For Sentimental Reasons,” in traditional call-and-response fashion. These are elements right out of the gospel tradition. Or, listen to the recording of "Somebody Have Mercy." The title alone speaks to religion, and the recording begins with a simple, powerful call-and-response. Oh yea.

Sam Cooke - Somebody Have Mercy (Live) (YSI) (filesavr)

People sometimes describe soul as secularized gospel, but to me soul music is just as religious—it just places religion in a different, everyday context. I believe that those people in the crowd at the Harlem Square Club dancing and singing along and clapping were looking for the same sort of feeling of collective salvation that members of a congregation listening to/participating in gospel music seek. It’s all about the shared experience. They call it soul (hardly a non-religious term) for a reason. Or at least that’s what ignorant ol’ me thinks.

I’ve tried to distill what I find powerful about soul music into this piece. And you’re welcome to listen to me, but you’re also free to just listen to Sam Cooke himself, in this chilling recording of Sam Cooke humming “eight bars of what soul represents.”

Sam Cooke – Untitled (YSI) (filesavr)

If I were you, I'd listen to him.