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Guided by voices

Bobby McFerrin brings his inimitable vocal style to town
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By Darrell Jónsson
For The Prague Post
May 14th, 2008 issue

COURTESY PHOTO

The world's greatest one-hit wonder draws town-sized audiences to his sing-a-longs. enlarge

Bobby McFerrin

When: May 15 & 16 at 7:30
Where: Congress Center
Tickets: 2,600-3,700 Kč (May 16 only), available through Ticketpro and at the venue

There is something comical about the way Bobby McFerrin can conduct a full-sized orchestra, then spin on his bare feet, stick a baton into his natty dreadlocks and yodel like a hillbilly. Dazzling audiences now for over two decades, McFerrin is a master vocalist and entertainer who can tap dance across global music genres as easily as modern consumers grab jars of curry, taco and soy sauce from a delicatessen’s shelves. As strange as it all may sound, McFerrin consistently fills large auditoriums, arenas and even city plazas with audiences eager to join in his participatory shows.

With his portrait on nearly every lamppost in the city for the past two months, it’s no surprise that McFerrin’s May 15 show at the 3,000-seat Congress Center sold out weeks in advance (A second show was added; at press time, only the most expensive seats were available). But as the world’s most successful one-hit wonder, McFerrin didn’t need much help. His 1988 song “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” held Billboard’s No. 1 spot for two weeks, earning McFerrin a Grammy for his ingenious, a cappella, West Indian flavored hit.

Still, not everyone was captivated by McFerrin’s joyful vocal invention. As one particularly scathing critic in the Guardian remarked recently, “It’s not often that one record can claim to have laid waste to an entire musical genre ... in three minutes of revolting bumper-sticker sentiment and flatly dreadful advice.”

McFerrin’s visibility makes him an easy target. To his credit, though, instead of lathering the charts for the rest of his life with novelty a cappella, he dropped the hit song game to pursue one of the most peculiar and eccentric careers in pop music. His subsequent stints as a music instructor, celebrity conductor and author of a series of concept albums must have irritated more than a few A&R executives. But given his background — McFerrin’s father was an opera singer — it’s not surprising that his approach to music has always been iconoclastic.

At a press teleconference held last month at Světozor theater, McFerrin told journalists, “I spent about six years doing a lot of experimentation, recording my voice, singing constantly and trying out different things. The challenge for me was the fact that I wanted to be alone onstage without a band ... it took a couple of years. I deliberately did not listen to any other singer for two years, and would just go into my room and sing a lot and record everything. And then I spent another four years working on my vocal stamina, because in the beginning, I could do 10 minutes of solo work and then maybe 20 minutes. It took about six years to work up the sort of stamina I needed to be on stage for 90 minutes.”

Something else obviously happened to McFerrin during those years of singing alone in his room. He emerged with a sense of the universality of voice and a vision of magically taking large American and European audiences on town-size singing sprees. Given the rarity of public singing on such a scale these days, except at intertribal Central African Pygmy festivals and Southern California drive-in churches, what McFerrin manages to accomplish is nothing short of miraculous. As the New York Times reported last April, though, the results can be a little strange when he leads an audience at Carnegie Hall in a sing-along of “Itsy-Bitsy Spider,” complete with hand gestures.

With recording partners that include Chick Corea, Tony Williams and Herbie Hancock, McFerrin has legitimate claim to being a capable jazz singer. Still, when he sings like a trumpet he’s clearly not Miles Davis, and when he covers R&B his bass notes don’t touch the marrow like Motown’s James Jameson, and his gospel lacks the edge of the Staple Singers. Instead, he uses his seductive good humor to take audiences on a vocal flight that paints a picture of the world the way it could be — a planet interconnected with the global humanity of song.

Opening for McFerrin at his first show will be special guests Dan Bárta and Clarinet Factory. The second night is even more promising, with guests Tara Fuki and Czech-African singer Ridina Ahmedovou. As he reaffirmed during the teleconference, McFerrin won’t be rehearsing with any of his local collaborators. Instead, he’ll be “winging it” as usual, using a time-proven technique that he describes as, “I just open up my mouth and start singing. Something’s always there.”

Darrell Jónsson can be reached at features@praguepost.com

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