#i'm imagining there had to be a lot of improvising but also we've seen that fizz is clearly incredible at that

[fizzingfrenzy]

basically this YT comment

the fact that fizz, not once, but TWICE, came up with two grand ass vocal performances on the spot is telling of how talented this imp is, my god

[liketwoswansinbalance]

we could see that rafal can sing in rise, (the song about vulcan) but how would he sound like?

He strikes me as someone who would sing with a "Whatever. There's nothing to lose. Hell is empty and all the devils are here. So I'm performing for all these people who have poor taste anyway" mentality.

I don't think he would be head-turningly exceptional as a singer because I don't see the arts as his domain and I can't think of a reason as to why he would be professionally trained, so he's probably either an average singer or can sing better than most fellow amateurs.

The reason why I wouldn't automatically assume he's a bad singer is that he at least seemed attuned to sound? Though, I'm not sure if his having acute hearing/perception is canon in the prequels, even if it is canon in TLEA, so I could be wrong. And, he was able to maintain Fala's accent over a long period of time, so he can modulate his voice decently, I would think.

I don't think he singing would feature many or any random vocalizations either. He'd probably make sure he'd have substance to his lyrics and would keep strictly to the lyrics, even if he were improvising them. I also do not think he'd ever show any loose soulfulness like Hozier's style. He'd probably control his voice for emotional excess.

A note on accents: accents are often "neutralized" (Americanized) when people sing, meaning, Rafal would most likely lose his accent if he had a non-American one.

For potential representations of his voice, I've found some songs (some of these I've mentioned before):

"No Love in LA" by Palaye Royale - Like a anthem about there being no such thing as love in these Woods? Conveys his superior attitude well, especially at some points if he's in a cynical mood. Abrupt, combative, rarely melodious and continuous. I think there's also a kind of dryness or disparaging, spat-out tone to it, like a half-vicious/vitriolic, half-resigned, "[sigh] I'm done with all this" quality to it.

"Careful What You Wish For (the doctor said to)" by Jack Harris - Devoid of emotion or sung numbly at times. Abrupt. But it sounds too much on the verge of tears for him. Ominous.

"Who's In Control" by Set It Off - Very matter of fact and stative. Some kind of loftiness is present. Nearly everything in this song fits him, including the pitch I'd attribute to him. Neither too emotional nor too saccharine. Trying to get a grip on his situation. Starts out blasé, turns desperate.

"Innocently Annoying at 3am" by Elysewood - I've mentioned this one before. It's very close to how I think I'd imagine his voice.

"No Friends" by CADMIUM and Rosendale - About the right pitch. Even some of the lyrics, not all, fit him.

"Rule #27 - Drunk on Pride" by Fish in a Birdcage - I don't think he'd seem too mournful/sentimental with his voice. But the pitch seems about right to my mind, even if it's sometimes too high pitched to fit him?

"Rule #24 - Man-O-War" by Fish in a Birdcage - Emphasis on the flatness or speech-like quality. Probably, an example of a shanty (like the Vulcan song!). I just don't picture his voice as this deep or as accented like this.

"Rule #34" by Fish in a Birdcage - Sultry. Feels uptempo. If he's doing his villainous equivalent of playing with prey, I feel like this would be it. At the same time, I don't think he is that type of villain. He really does hop to it, and doesn't emphasize bark over bite. He bites without warning a lot of the time (e.g., killing Rufius). He conceals his motives and acts without anyone else being able to anticipate what he'll do. So, I guess this could also be singing for a theatrical and pragmatic purpose, like he did for his Vulcan song, to both serve as a distraction and to taunt. I feel like this song couldn't be entirely sincere since we've never technically seen him in love though.

"I Will Follow You Into the Dark" by Death Cab for Cutie - A love song if he's actually sincere? Seems unlikely, but if he wanted to seduce someone, I suppose this would make sense. Right out of the gate, there's death. I'm not sure if the pitch is quite right.

"Villainous Thing" by Shayfer James - Focus on not the voice itself but the (potentially) mocking tone: "Oh dear"—the drawn out sounds. We'd probably have to interpret this with a dose of sarcasm. Actually, this one reminds me of Sophie in TLEA as if he's addressing her. Eventually, I think it gets too ahem... lascivious for even him because his whole act (or actual nature) is that he's gentlemanly when he wants to be and can afford to be, and acts honorably in his typically skewed, perverse way.

[allthemusic]

Week ending: 14th March

From the rightly-forgotten David Whitfield to the iconic songs we've got this week - quite the turnaround. Which is partly why I'm still enjoying this project. It gets you listening to a real mix of stuff, and you appreciate the good songs so much more when they come up. Also, it's a nice reminder that this stuff all co-existed. People were out there listening to Little Richard and David Whitfield at the same time - wild!

Long Tall Sally - Little Richard (peaked at Number 3)

Okay, the fact that this only reached number three is a crime! The sheer energy, Little Richard's manic screams, rasps and whoops, that saxophone solo - this song's got it all. There's a reason so many artists have covered it - the original sounds so fun that any musician worth their salt would want to give it their own go!

The song itself has an interesting backstory - apparently annoyed that Pat Boone had also managed to get a hit out of Tutti Frutti, Little Richard deliberately was looking for a song so fast that Boone couldn't keep up, something that only Richard could sing. A little girl then approached a radio host who knew Richard, offering up the lyric about how I saw Uncle John with bald-head Sally / He saw Aunt Mary coming and he ducked back in the alley. He loved the sound of it, and it turned into a song with the help of a local songwriter, Enotris Johnson.

The end result is a song that's furiously fast, and - though I'd never really thought about it until now - about adultery! Sung from the point of view of some third party who promises to tell Aunt Mary what her husband's been getting up to. We know that he claim he has the misery, but he havin' a lotta fun with the titular Sally, who, we learn, is built for speed / She got everything that Uncle John need. Well, then.

The odd thing about all this is that I somehow never really thought about it? I knew it was suggesting something. But I guess that's partly because of the way that the song, in the end, seems to just emphasis how fun it is to go out and live wildly, hence the repeated line about how We gonna have some fun tonight. It's not a blistering takedown of John or of Sally, or even really a takedown at all, seeing as how the narrator's in on the act by the end of it all.

It's something we've seen a whole lot with these rock and roll songs - they just take their lyrics and the scenarios that they set up way less seriously. Instead of strictly being "about" some romantic situation, it's more about the aesthetics of it all, the style, the sound. This is technically a song about Uncle John sleeping around, but in practice, it's a song about speedy shuffle drumming, boogie-woogie piano, insistent bass, purring saxophone solos and Little Richard's inimitable voice as he goes woooo-ooo-oooo-ooo in the middle, or screams to rival the sax.

If you can't tell, I love this song. It's just got such a full, fun sound, and a pace that gets you tapping your foot and bopping your head. You can't make out all the lyrics, but there's enough that you can tell it's suggestive stuff, not just hand-holding and staring into each other's eyes, you know?

I should also mention that there's now authentic, black African-American R&B music that's hitting the charts, not just Bill Haley-style covers by white people. In particular, you can see this in the lyrics - loads of AAVE features that you really couldn't imagine a white artist comfortably using. It will be interesting to track this kind of "black accent" in music, and see who's using it for what kind of song. So yeah, gonna put a pin in that, for now.

Day-O (The Banana Boat Song) - Harry Belafonte (2)

From one strand of black music, to another disnticntly different one - this time it's not R&B, but Jamaican calypso music, song by one Harry Belafonte. You know this song, even if you don't think you do - Harry's is the most famous verison, but it's been covered by a lot of folks, Freddie Mercury also famously improvised over the opening lines at Live Aid, and from my own childhood, I remember Jason Derulo riffing off it for one of his songs. So it's definitely still a song people are familiar with.

It's a traditional Jamaican call-and-response work song, sung from the perspective of dock workers working overnight to load bananas onto a boat, and waiting on the dawn so that they can go home. Hence the repeated refrain, in Jamaican patois, daylight come and me wan' go home. And honestly, that's most of it. Harry vamps it up on the verses, with the refrain interspersed with lines about working all night off just a drink of rum, about loading the bunches, and about waiting for the tally-man to come and count what they've loaded, but it's basically just an account of a night working.

I should also note here that the sound of the song, apart from this, is really simple, just a rolling drum at the start, and some pitched percussion throughout. Apart from this, this song's sung a cappella. It's quite a different sound to what we've heard elsewhere, in a strikingly refreshing way.

Harry's gone on the record describing this as a song that's about life under colonialism in the early 20th century, with local black working class people forced to take up gruelling jobs for foreign companies, such as the banana exporter here. And it's interesting that when this version came out, Jamaica has some degree of autonomy but still wasn't officially an independent country. It only became independent in 1962, but the 1950s by the sound of things was a hotbed of people wanting independence. So I can see why songs like this might have become popular in Jamaica around this time!

It's catchy, too, which apparently was enough to make it an international hit. This wasn't unprecedented. There had been some big calypso-influenced hits already, in particularly the Andrews Sisters' Rum and Coca-Cola from a bit over 10 years earlier, which has been credited with bringing calypso to the US. Still, it's Harry Belafonte, who was born in New York, grew up in Jamaica, but then moved back to New York and was working there at this point, was just the right person to make the genre properly popular, with his album Calypso being widely cited as a seminal one. My guess is that calypso was probably popular with the same people who liked folk music more generally, with the Caribbean stylings adding a layer of exoticism that might have intrigued people.

Anyway, it's also interesting to me that in the US, the song only really broke when a folk group, the Tarriers, did a cover, with Harry's blessing. In the UK, in contrast to this, people went straight for Harry's original, ignoring the folk cover. Part of me wonders if this is because Britain was already being exposed to Jamaican music, thanks to a steady stream of West Indian immigrants arriving after World War II to aid with rebuilding, the so-called Windrush generation. We've already seen at least one of these in Winifred Atwell, and there will be a steady stream of home-grown musicians of West Indian descent throughout the coming decades. As such, you have to wonder if the UK, thanks to its colonial past and continuing links to the Caribbean, is just that little bit better primed for Jamaican accents and sounds than the US was? Again, it will be interesting to track, at least...

Ooh, this week was good. Like, really good. Both songs from a different black musical tradition, both having made their way to the UK via the US, and both with a really distinctive sound that's different to what's gone before. I found Day-O probably the most interesting, with its unusual subject matter and its links to patterns of immigration and musical trends of the early to mid-20th century. And it's clearly been influential since its release. Still, my title at the end is given for my favourite, not the song I had more to say about, necessarily. And there's one song here that I defintely had more fun listening to...

Favourite song of the bunch: Long Tall Sally

[hotarutranslations]

#HelloProDanceGakuen! Public Recording!

#HelloProDanceGakuen

The public recording! Is over!

I'm already going to fall asleep in 3 seconds! The heat level was too crazy, my head hurts! I'm too tired but I'm not tired at all from the adrenaline! Look, you don't what I'm talking about, right!

I'll do my best to write!

First off,

We've had Hello Pro Dance Gakuen, since it started in 2019 but, All of the fans that loved and supported the show, Also the many teachers who have helped us, I want to convey the fun of dance! I love dancing! with just the mindset () As colleagues from different groups, With Hama-chan, Manakan, and Kaedy, Every time, sometimes desperately with tears our my eyes, we have encouraged each other

With that! We're finally able to have a large scale public recording! That is,

This isr really big for the show, I wonder if there will be another opportunity for this, I've thought,

I seriousssllyyyyy tried today,

I realized that!!!!!!

Thank you very much for your support🫨🫨🫨

It was amazing…… We did so many things……

Wait, don't give up, if you haven't seen it yet--

You can watch it!!!

This time the public recording event, Will be available on HELLO!PROJECT STREAM!

Big applause, everyone

The way I heard it, maybe it wasn't originally planned, I don't know but……

It seems there were a lot of applicants, That is, really, a lot of people wanted to see it, While doing it, while watching it, I also thought this so🔥

Happyyyy!!!

I don't know if there are others who think like that, Like those who didn't go got jealous, You really don't think so, please definitely watch it…… Everyone was amazing……

The streaming period will be determined soon⚠️

They have to check a lot of things, right-- There will be another announcement, wait for it!

Also,

For everyone on the worldwide level, Wasn't the non-stop showcase, too crazy?

When it was time for us to change our clothes, I changed quickly and watched from the sleeves🕺🕺🕺

I really wanted to see by the front🕺🕺🕺

Everyone in KOSÉ 8ROCKS break dancing🕺

Thats right, break dancing is now part of the Olympics and KOSÉ 8ROCKS was made up of Avengers of the best in the world in break dancing, it was really exciting at the venue too, aah, everyone will like them more with this

SHUHO-san led HOUSE🕺

SHUHO-san is a teacher who helped us in season 8 and has won many competitions, a lot of people have never experienced HOUSE, right, its stylish, right, I wonder if their feet are floating already I want to check the video, right

Also, The MC super duper heated things up, Umebo's Imagine-san!!!!!!

Umebo-san has helped us twice at Dance Gakuen

Also with Imagine-san, He has also been the MC for various dance battles around the world,

With that, Our first stage of a dance battle, I'm honored he was our MC……

The last scene was the best🕺

Also, also with peace of mind and trust, Joujou Gundan-sannn! They said it was really exciting and amazing,

During the public recording it felt like I was doing everything for the first time,

I'm grateful for their present that reminded of how things are normally-------!

Eh,

Really, doing an improvised dance battle….. Uwaa……

For Ishida, its my 13th year (I said it was my 12 year during the event⟵) and you may be thinking how many times is she going to say,

Improvisation and free dancing is really😕😕😕😕😕😕

Although,

it was super super super fun! I had fun! That is my #1 emotion!

Make no mistake, I did my best with my experience with a public recording and,

I was able to do it with your support!

Within this dance dance dance day, I also realized, I'm an idol after all...🤍 Idols are fun, I love them

Thank you very much for the wonderful experience!

This was thanks to everyone who supports the show! Thank you very much!

Finally started this month, Hello Pro Dance Gakuen season 10 is airing,

Don't miss it🌏💫

From now on I'll cook and eat a streak

Also everyone, For tomorrow as well for me,

It will be an amazzzzinnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnngggggggggggggggggg day

Those who know, know, right

My heart is in shambles

7:00PM……▶

Please look forward, and kinda, look over me… Howawawawawawawawa

7:00PM

(nah but maybe we can meet up again after 7:00PM) (How about we go there and then come back here later) (Well in any case look forward to tomorrow)

see you ayumin <3