When I mentioned “Belting” in my blog, “What’s the Buzz?”, I left the reference hanging there without explanation. With the hope that somebody might want to know what I think that word means, I began putting this blog together. The scientific article that Garcia wrote and Debbie, my wife, found just keeps on making me happy. I introduced this text in “Royal Registers” and it is the confirmation of my long held opinion.
There are so many ways to hide stuff in plain sight. People have been creating new “vocal technique” since singing was deemed important by just putting a few choice words together. But what about using just one word? What about “Belting”? It has a long history of use as a label for the old traditional style of singing that was once well practiced on the old unamplified Broadway stages. It would seem to be a scanty bikini bottom of a word.
Question: What can you hide behind that little word?
Answer: Ignorance.
I grit my teeth when someone calls a“STYLE” of singing a technique. I used to hear people talk about “Rossini Technique”, “Verdi Technique”, “Mozart Technique” while I was still performing. Some even dispensed with using a composer’s style as a basis and used geographical terms to create “French Technique” and “German Technique” etc. Some just claim that they have discovered things no one else bothered to document and come up with something like “Extended Vocal Technique”. This one was brought to my attention by a roving vocal pedagogue making a presentation at Plattsburgh State University. I was “lucky” to be between contracts and in town for that lecture. Lately, it seems that an effort to define an “American Technique” has begun. This kind of obfuscation has been a habit in the singing business since before I started gettin’ busy singing. I can now propose another “Answer” to the above “What can you hide” question and it is: Willful Ignorance.
The snooty singing teacher who really loves “The Buzz” and wants to disbelieve in “Chest Voice” has a bunch of friends out there who want to make hay out of declaring “Belting” a dangerous technique that only the Hyper Educated can understand. Wikipedia is a good place to get this condescending message explained in confusing detail.
Wikipedia is wrong. “Chest Voice” is “Belting” and “Belting” is “Chest Voice”. The “perceived” dangers of singing in “Chest Voice” are bad enough to convince a large gaggle of pedants not to teach it at all, and for at least one individual to denounce it as myth. When you hear Fanny Brice or Ethel Merman “Belting” a song, you’ve got to believe in the vocal product they produced. You can dislike it, and you would not be alone in your epicurean displeasure. The Wikipedia writer would seem to want everyone to be confused enough to allow him/her to be the go to person for learning this “NEW” technique. Boy, would I love to know if that Wikipedia writer is a “Buzz” devotee. If so, the student would be sure to get stuck in that studio for as long as the student could afford to pay the price of lessons and never produce a Fanny or Ethel like noise, or even one tone in “Chest Voice”. I think the “Chest Voice” denier must never have heard of Fanny or Ethel.
“Belting” is all about keeping those vocal chords slapping together so that they produce a brilliant sound. The video examples I am including in this blog are not exaggerations. They are examples of what everyone CAN do. Anyone wanting to learn to “Belt” has an easier journey than the student of Opera Singing. The “Belter” does have to learn about all the tools an Opera Singer uses, but is not asked to use them in as complex a manner as the Opera Singer. If you want me to be snooty about it, I would just say that Opera Singing is a lot more sophisticated.
“Belting” is a wonderful, honest, practical and impressive style of singing.
Fanny Brice
and Ethel Merman
made good livings while “Belting” out songs on Broadway. They lived in transitional times, just like the times we are living in now. For them amplification was new, but no one needed that new technology to carry their singing to the ears of their audience. Fanny and Ethel didn’t need an amp because the vocal abilities of these two singing actresses were prodigious, well organized, well documented and, thank God, even recorded. They lived among a lot of belters. If you watched to the end of the above clip of Fanny belting out “When A Woman Loves A Man” you heard how less talented singers can make a mess of “Belting” and then Fanny imitates the little chorus girl who thought she could. Less talented singers always make the more talented look good and the really talented can often be really cruel. Anyway, the good singers would stand shoulder to shoulder with these great ladies and “Belt” out
duets
and trios
in those temples of popular entertainment. “Belting” used to be for anyone who could manage it. I’m so happy to be able to look back at these wonderful examples of “Great Singing” from that time through the wonders of the transitional technologies of our day.
I’d bet that Fanny didn’t care that Puccini had a different kind of singer in mind when he wrote his Operas. That great composer died before Ethel could even have been mentioned to him. It would seem that Irving Berlin had no Kirsten Flagstad
in mind for his melodies. That the Opera world and Broadway should be divided into pedagogical camps as well as stylistic antagonists is rather new, and only another crack in the ongoing shattering of what used to be pedagogical wisdom.
Ethel may have said something like: “I don’t know nothin’ about Opera, and I don’t want to know nothin’ about it.”, and Fanny seemed to give her opinion in a film:
The Opera World seemed happy to keep its skirts out of the low brow gutter from which Ethel might have declared her disinterest. Opera aficionados would have been quick to retort: “Who cares about Fanny and Ethel and there lowbrow singing anyway.” The Opera World I worked in seemed to think of the performer bound for Broadway as a twinkle toed non-singer. The Opera Maven might have conceded that the music written for Broadway was good enough to put a little rhythm in the orchestra while those off pitch shouting Broadway types stomped feet on Broadway boards. For the Maven, the Vocal Art was only audible at the Opera House. Opera Singers were and still are rare birds on Broadway.
While I was trolling around the internet looking for supporting evidence to include in this blog, I ran across a modern rumination about Broadway Style. Please give Ms. Anne Midgette a moment of your time and read her articles:
“Zambello brings personal touch to retooled Glimmerglass Festival”
“The opera-izing of the American musical”
My next blog on “Belting” will wade into the weeds of the field of dreams you can read about in Ms. Midgette’s offerings. I’ll be back soon.
By the way…..