Is empathy the essence of Soul music?
One of the earliest memories of Kirk Whalum , saxophonist, is hearing beautiful music in the black Baptist church where his father was a pastor and hated it.“I love the Lord, he heard my screams,” the congregants had sung, with each syllable coming in a different tone.The hymn “reminded me of my grandmother,” Whalum said in a session on “The Genius of Soul” at the Aspen Ideas Festival, which is co-sponsored by the Aspen Institute and The Atlantic.“My grandmother was a housewife.And so she cleaned people's toilets.That phrase, the essence of a culture, came down to these notes: it took me to a place of shame”
Soul music
Years later, after a great career in jazz and pop, including playing the triumphal saxophone solo on Whitney Houston's “I Will Always Love You,” Whalum has come to appreciate the power of the kind of music he heard in church, and how it fits into an “artistic, musical, sonic diaspora of empathy”. There are many ways to label those diaspora.But the most appropriate one can be the most indefinable: 'soul'. Genre awards are often seen as terms of trade (used to divide the market) and terms of technique, referring to specific sonic characteristics.But what if the essential aspect of the soul is simply a feeling or a way of connecting?“What I've learned is that soul is the total mosaic,” singer-songwriter Clint Holmes said onstage.“When I was growing up, James Brown was Soul and that intrigued me because, as an artist, I couldn't touch that.But then I realized that soul is the feeling that flows from us to the audience”
