Sam Lou Talbot

1-1 Sessions

What is spontaneous song/writing and what can it do for you?

Improvisation has deep roots in evolutionary psychology. Song and dance are part of the same joyous celebrations and rituals found in religious texts, pagan rites, indigenous culture and folklore. In the deep South, during the Civil War, slaves working on the plantation fields would punctuate their days with field and holler songs, giving rhythm to labour and labour to rhythm yet, at night, and out of sight, illicit improvisation circles would be held in the forests around about.

Sliding forward in time, the black country players of the 1920s and 30s had no means to record their songs; so the songs they did play existed in the moment of production. The country blues genre, for example, deployed songwriting as a vehicle for performance. These songs – ‘written’ or transmitted orally – were not destined be reproduced, re-performed, or commodified. The Spirituals are such a form which still flourishes today within religious communities as a form of worship in which the Holy Spirit moves through the congregation, shedding prophecy. It is also called spontaneous worship which takes on the form of singing, which can erupt at any time in a song. This social phenomenon – which can be Googled or YouTubed – has its legacies in call and response music and ministry.

We could trace this back much further to the theologian philosopher, St. Augustine, who also wrote on the conversion of the voice in spontaneous song. He called it “jubilus” – a joyous state of rapture, or even ecstasy, going back to the mystics, such as the composer, Hildegard of Bingen. Augustine observed that jubilus occured when the singer moved from language – uox articulus – to the impulses of the voice which reside outside of language – uox confusa. There are parallels here within contemporary rap and hip-hop culture, in which if you watch a singer rapping gibberish, and making it up on the fly, you can often hear them moving in and out of language. Augustine maintained that in order for these non-verbal sounds to be truly jubilus they needed to come about during the song, though, not at the start. For him spontaneous song seemed to be a case of abandoning words when they would not do to serve the spirit.

If we turn to contemporary folk or American roots music, the singer-songwriter and occasional actor, Will Oldham, AKA, Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, who is no stranger to labour and dedication to the craft, has spoken on the trials of immersive songwriting. On creating an impromptu album with the Chicago based band Bitchin Bajas, Epic Jammers And Fortunate Little Ditties, he went into the studio empty handed, breaking open fortune cookies for lyrics. By his own admission, he is more of a “song maker” than a song ‘writer’, as he doesn’t tend to “go about writing things down”.

When asked: “I would imagine it would be very freeing, just to get in there and not have this burden of having to come up with the structured, carefully-crafted song.“ he answers on time:

You’re finally in a place where it’s about beginning and carrying forward. It’s about the present and the future, whereas most recording of songs is about the past and the present, and the future isn’t an active participant. When you’re recording a song that is really relying on all the work — the months or years that went into building that song — you’re always aware of that. And here, all of a sudden, we were bringing our past into the room, but everything we did was about what was happening from now and moving forward. It’s not about the past at all, which was a very nice feeling.

Will Oldham, AKA Bonnie ‘Prince ‘Billy

He also talks about songs as “living things”. Moreover, the critic Ross Simonini, a writer, musician, artist, and dialogist whom I have a lot of time for, intuits:  “…he [WO] performed songs with the direct gaze that is always at the centre of his art.” What does it mean to have a direct gaze? Surely this gaze can also be found in the live performances of the Irish folk songwriter and storyteller, Lisa O’Neill, or via Michael Stipe’s penetrating stage presence, or that of the punk-priestess Patti Smith, who had a way of summoning this quality effortlessly. This direct gaze was also a characteristic of the blues. Yet, many of the blues singers of the late 19th and early 20th century were either blind, illiterate, or both. As a result, their performances are considered ‘authentic’. These performances were often done without the intention of being re-done. Blues aficionados such as Lead Belly, conveniently picked-up (and reportedly exploited) by American folklorist brothers, Alan and John Lomax, and then the likes of Lightnin’ Hopkins, for example, were one man bands. In lieu of a drum kit, they kept time by tapping their feet, or, likely stomping them when vexed, or drunk, singing their way out of pain, and back into it again, and keeping a wandering tempo, as if the song was ever about to depart. The blues is a nomadic form. It was always about some place else, or some other person.

Moving into jazz, and avant-garde circles of the 1970s, the spontaneous, wordless chants and embodied psychedelic displays of Meredith Monk and jazz lumineers, such as underrated Jeanne Lee, a Music scholar herself, and the transcendent cosmic improvisations of Alice Coltrane ushered in new gendered sounds. Lee’s Conspiracy (1974) is a hushed yet feral record which showcases the range of Lee’s extended vocal fervour. One listen is strange, two cocoons the listener in her embryonic sonic world as if she is forever about to break out of the song, and spill vocal yolk.

Moving on, the Australian Bad Seed, and songwriter, Nick Cave, in the intimate faux documentary 20, 000 Days on Earth directed by husband and wife team Jane Pollard and Iain Forsyth, is pictured in dialogue with a pretend taxi driver, in what appears to be an imaginary circular late-night haunt around his adopted home town of Brighton. As he talks, he reveals his creative processes. Or, he sits in silence. At one point, he imparts that when he “understands” a song he is no longer interested in it.

Spontaneous song/writing can be prophetic. Strange things play out. It’s tricky to articulate in academic discourse, which tends to iron out mystery. It can also be an unravelling or a dismantling. It can leave us exposed – on uneven ground. Nick Cave for one, and a cacophony of others, have (pro)claimed that our songs can know more about us than we do. They reckon with us. They know us better tThey are relentless inventors – rewiring the past and imagining the future. Making sense of our random and messy lives as if we had a plan. We can go anywhere in a song, and perhaps the song will take us there. The only thing we need to do is to get out of the way.

They are tireless inventors – rewiring the past – and imagining possible futures. They have a way of consolidating our random and messy lives, as if we ever had a plan. They take our pain and grief, and loss, and transform it. Moreover, we can go anywhere in a song, and perhaps the song will take us there. The only thing we need to do is to get out of the way.

Anger is fire, and fire moves things

Nina Simone

When at a crossroads in life – or feeling “stuck” – developmental psychology has suggested that we try doing what we did freely between the ages of 7 and 11. I sang. In gardens, on walks, in the back of my Dad’s car, to rock, blues and Americana, on school buses, as loudly as I could, and in choir, and school plays. I was fortunate enough to be given free violin tuition aged seven, at then again, flute, aged 13, in which I am classically trained, at a time when working-class children who showed aptitude on tests were given an instrument and years of free-tuition. Sadly, such provision is being wiped out by the current establishment.

In my late teens, my Dad brought me a Japanese Fender guitar for Christmas. I recall finding it, hidden behind the back of the sofa, noticing its oblong shape, and hazarding a guess at what it was, bit not wanting to be disappointed.

So I began on electric, then a few years’ on, I picked up a cheap Aria acoustic guitar from my local music store in Winchester, whilst at arts school. Although I could only play a few chords, those chords made me feel.

I think that we hold these instruments over time, and that they then come to hold us. When my parents later got divorced, and I lost touch with my Dad, the guitar was the only thing that really made me feel. I realised I had shut down a whole bunch of feelings. As Dolly Parton has said, the guitar can become part of our bodies. Jimi Hendrix was surely the epitomy of this.

Then, at art school, aged 21, someone handed me a CD. I was stunned by the unapologetic woman on the cover, staring back at me, emblazoned upon the monochrome skin of a cracked, plastic case. It was Patti Smith, the inaugural ‘shamanistic punk poet siren’ with her band, and their groundbreaking LP Horses (1975), and it changed my life. What was it that you did?