Earning a living playing music is difficult enough. However, Carmel, you and the group, always seemed to take the most difficult path available. How deliberate was that? Out of all the barriers you knocked down which is the one that satisfied you most? Isn't the music business the last place in the world you would expect to be segregated? But music created by black musicians is part of all our childhood backgrounds...
The prejudice gets tiresome no matter where it comes from. However, do you think things have changed in a generation, the time that has passed since you started singing publicly? Some of the most successful music over the centuries has occurred when one genre cross-pollinates with another. Surely, this applies to you
You were referring to the Anglo-American music axis, but you drew so much from Africa and pulled so many people in from there. That was very inspired at the time. In Africa music is an integral part of the social milieu, not put on an isolated pedestal as happens with commercial music here. Is that something you drew on also? Do you dislike being placed apart as a performer or do you like the buzz? You're one of the most comfortable people on stage that I've ever seen. Did that come naturally or was it something that you had to learn? You've always had honesty and directness emanating from the stage, so people are more likely to go with you rather than criticize English culture will often find fault rather than strength in a public figure. Did you feel that? You've been teaching a lot recently, and so you are coming face-to-face with amateurs. Growing up in the musical north, you must have had the piano-in-the-front-room culture. The enthusiastic amateur seems to have faded in the face of the professional on TV. Do you think that accentuates the journalists' alienation? This becomes an aural culture, not something to be learned out of books. What was the turning point when you decided to become a singer?
Well, does that mean that you feel fulfilled now? Your early recording experiences showed that, at the time, it was certainly not your favorite environment. The difference in technique between an opera singer projecting acoustically to the back stalls and a singer working a microphone is vastly different. When did you click into that? At the time, I presumed that, since you had chosen such a difficult musical route, you had to fight to get every inch of the way. You didn't seem to pick and choose who to battle, going toe to toe with everyone you encountered.
But don't you think there was some truth in what Roger Ames said about the process and what had to be? It seems to me that a lot of expertise in record making is being lost. But there always has to be a delicate balance between learning from others' experience and finding out for yourself. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be that lineage available now--the opportunity for apprenticeship and thoroughly learning a craft, the process from which I benefited. Recording a good vocal, putting a singer in a comfortable environment, is not something everybody gets, is it? It sounds as if you think that modern digital recording techniques are hampering free vocal expression. It can be a form of insecurity, not for you but for some singers who have to be absolutely in tune before they think they are really delivering. Some people are unable to trust their instincts fully. As for example the kind of effect you get from some African vocalists? Where are you going next? Even in this contemporary electronic fog, music still comes back to people just hitting things and opening their mouths, doesn't it?
Carmel at
the Stereo Society: Carmel
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the Stereo Society: Download printable cover art of four Carmel record covers from our Downloads page
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