TRANSCENDENCE

The singer has to first be the subject of the song.  In order to sing love, the singer has to be the subject of love-to have loved, to be loved, to desire love, to reject love.  Blues singers tell you that you have to have had the blues to sing the blues.  Something beyond sound has to come through the horn, or you simply have an interesting note.  In order to communicate feeling, the singer has to be the subject of the song.  Yet, singers that get stuck here may find themselves the popular expression of a particular thing which doesn't last past the next big thing.  Feelings and experiences alone do not last.  They can be changed in a moment by a different slant of light or the passing smile of a stranger. 

The singer that can be the object of the song has power, too.  It takes skill to communicate a reality which may be uncomfortable or unflattering to the audience.  Bruce Springsteen's American Skin, Bob Dylan's Blowin' In the Wind, and Dar Williams' I Had No Right share prophetic visions by using an objective lens to show how commonplace racism, war, and injustice have become in this United States. The singers view their own American identities as objects, making the contradictions between stated values and taken actions quite clear.  However, a keen social critique alone is not enough.  Political slogans set to music will only move people predisposed to that point of view.

So, the real power in the singing comes by transcending the subjective and the objective, going past both into something else entirely.  This is the power of Alice Walker's The Color Purple.  The voice of an African-American woman rings clearly, because the author is subject of the story-she is herself an African-American woman.  The story has power because the characters are objects of the author-the author doesn't simply share their experiences, she shows us those experiences and exposes the actions and consequences which they engender. What transcends is that I, not being an African American woman, can yet take part in the story.  The life of Celie becomes a metaphor with which I can identify, though I may never have shared a single experience with her.

Great singing holds subjectivity (the singer's experience) and objectivity (the singer's clear analysis) in a balanced tension which shares a quality of human existence neither contains alone.