Bobby McFerrin - VOCAbuLarieS

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    In international music circles, Bobby McFerrin is considered an uncommon, almost superhuman treasure. Few mediums have demonstrated all that can be done and transcended with the human voice like this multi-genre singer, composer, arranger and producer has. It's criminal that for many he will forever be pigeon-holed as the dreadlocked Jamaican who in 1988 cheerfully chirped "Don't Worry, Be Happy" to #1 prominence on pretty much every sales chart known to man. While a joyous moment in pop history, "Don't Worry..." represents but a sliver of what his virtuosic music has offered the world. To put it bluntly, McFerrin is so much more than a non-threatening Negro singing smiles through song.

    McFerrin the technician and vocal spiritualist is such a force, that there isn't enough space on all of SoulTracks to describe his (and his collaborators) contributions to our ever expanding understanding of the near limitlessness of dynamic, musical sound that can be created by the human voice. That said, over the last 26 years, McFerrin's albums have sometimes been so high brow and meditative, like the cult classic Circlesongs, that they have kept some more commercially-minded audiences at arm's length. VOCAbuLaries brings them back with a bear hug and then proceeds to smother them with kisses, until the listener is dizzy from all the love.  

    Truly an ambassador's work of the heart and unparalleled technical perfection, VOCAbuLaries may be McFerrin's most accessible and theatrical work in more than a decade. None since the joys of 1994's Bang, Zoom! have come close to this kind of intoxicating spiritual bliss. There are no singles here and radio is so far from thought it seems obscene to even mention it when discussing this work (with the possible exception of NPR), but a hand is extended to those who just want to submerge themselves in a bath of luxuriating, polyphonic sound. The limitless nature of its expression is the marvel, as is the internationally produced project's restorative properties in human possibilities and its capacities.

    The blended chamber music meets African-rhythms meets classical meets Middle Eastern chant melodies on many of these numbers draws you into another rhapsodic world, one of sweeping, pure operatic voices rich with hues of African, European, and Middle Eastern timbres. Songs like the magnum opus, "Messages," tell dramatic stories that are moving and build every bit as much tension as a Christopher Nolan thriller. Based purely on the skill and arrangement of voice, "He Ran To The Train" manages the impossible feat of conjuring visualizations of a bed-ragged child clenching his luggage and barely holding on to his hat as he runs across dusty plains to catch an ever-elusive choo-choo. "Wailers" invites you into a hallowed circle of spiritual ritual that is at once Native American, Inca, African, Mayan, Samoan...until it is past tribe, past geography, only humans commenting on their own insignificance-and their power-in the vast universe. "Wailers'" rustic sounds bookends the classical Catholicism of "Brief Eternity" with its flirting woodwinds and melancholy strings that reference formalism, but whose vocal delivery is undiluted emotion. The calorically-dense "Brief Eternity" and the ever unfolding "Say Ladeo" are almost embarrassingly lush until you wonder just how sinful it is to indulge in their vocal pointillism.

    With the assistance of McFerrin's long-time collaboration with composer, arranger and producer Roger Treece, there are so many currents of polyphonic sound to be experienced throughout these expertly produced seven-tracks of high art, repeatedly clashing against each other, swirling over each other, bursting out of each other until something akin to an orgasm or nirvana is reached. In McFerrin's playground, no drugs are needed to finger the hem of these heights; only an infallible belief in the good the soul of humanity can still produce such purity in these conflict weary times. Fifty singers from around the world recording over 1400 vocal tracks join McFerrin and Treece in delivering defiantly optimistic expressions of this belief in our good through McFerrin's music, through his faith in our ability to produce the impossible, despite place, status, gender, race or ethnicity. Through works like VOCAbuLaries, McFerrin doesn't just tell you to be happy, he provides you a reason for hope, the tools for how to be happy and a way to let all those pesky worries wash away, if only for a time. Strongly recommended.

    By L. Michael Gipson