The first time I had the opportunity to constantly let my Soul speak was when I became the frontwoman of “Bianca Blues & 7 Soul”, 11 elements and a wonderful horn section, fantastic Rhythm’n Blues.
For almost ten years I touched the evolution of black music with my hand, ears, and voice: from the fast rhythms entered in Blues to the wonderful intrusion of the Gospel into lay lyrics, while Soul mounted and fragmented again to a Funk rhythm.
James Brown, Ray Charles, Sam Cooke, Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding, Aretha Franklin, Solomon Burke up to Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye…
“Soul with a Capital S” as Tower of Power used to say!
It may be that “Soul” really means “soul”, but I think it called me. Since I was a child.
I listened to Prince’s Soul Funk, Whitney Houston’s Soul Pop, I captured the Jazz and more modern R&B veinings in Anita Baker’s, consuming languages, notes, and records.
Yes, I was looking for music that wasn’t “mine”, yet it was the water in which I swam more easily and in which I often let myself go dead afloat.
To look at the sky.
It doesn’t surprise me that “the music of the soul” has not only survived time but has been able to change and express itself in a thousand different ways and facets.
From Gospel comes Southern Soul, also known as Deep Soul or Country Soul.
Soul Jazz (I love it!) from Hard Bop, Blues, Gospel, and R&B.
From the mixture of Soul, Funk, and Pop, Smooth Soul.
From the meeting between contemporary R&B and Hip Hop, Hip Hop Soul.
Nu Soul from contemporary R&B and Pop Rap and so on.
It will be the Gospel that is inside, it will be the Soul (or the soul) that presses to get out between the scratches and falsettos of the voice, it will be those sprints on fast scales, that hanging on to time on each note, that running and that suspension, it will be the breath or the wind instruments, suffering and ecstasy, melancholy and joy, denunciation and play, the time that fragments (breaks) and (that) stops.
It will be some passing blue note, it will be sensuality and roughness, energy and strength, emotion or tears.
Nothing I think is equal to Soul to express what we feel.
I can say that I am a first-trained Soul singer, but you know, Soul never stands still.
Like me.
But I can certainly say that in all my music there is a bit of Soul.
Because in all my music there is a little bit of my soul.
“With a capital S” as Tower of Power used to say.
