Word: mcferrin
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...GRAMMY AWARDS (CBS, Feb. 22, 8 p.m. EST). Bobby McFerrin and Tracy Chapman copped the most nominations; Billy Crystal will host the gala from the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles...
...favored, Whitmanesque sobriquet makes even more sense as an evocation of a McFerrin performance. He appears onstage alone, his only instrument a mike, his only prop a bottle of Perrier, and the song will take him over, take him away. He sings lyrics, he sings rhythms, he sings sounds. "Singing without words is easier," he says. "Consonants get in the way. It's hard to sing as fluidly with lyrics." He will slap his thumb against his chest to make a bass tone as his hand becomes the snare drum. The mike, rubbed against his close- cut beard...
...benign musical madness, that should come as no surprise from a singer who had written five plays by the age of 15. Born in New York City, where his father Robert helped break the color bar at the Metropolitan Opera by singing a major role in Aida in 1955, McFerrin grew up mainly in Los Angeles "in what they now call a 'dysfunctional family,' " he says. "I didn't get what I needed from my parents. They were busy dealing with their own pain." McFerrin started studying music theory at six and learned from his father "how to breathe musically...
...Bobby Mack Jazz Quintet during his senior year in high school ("We put 'jazz' in the name so there wouldn't be any surprises") and in 1970 dropped out of Cerritos College to hook up with the Ice Follies. It was not until a half-decade later that McFerrin "heard my subconscious tell me to sing -- the result, no doubt, of years of soul- searching and a nagging voice that kept pressing me to take risks." Now the risks have paid off handsomely, and exhaustingly. Feeling tapped out, McFerrin ended his latest concert tour on Sept. 30, and will...
...keyboard pieces and involving my father in some way." He is forming a twelve-person vocal ensemble he calls Voicestra "to sing and represent me so my music can work while I stay at home." Then there's Scrabble. And Hermann Hesse too. "There's a wonderful Hesse story," McFerrin says, "about a violinist who wishes to be the best in the world. His wish is granted, and as he's playing, he slowly disappears into the music. That's the hope of every artist. It's certainly mine." Fine, Bobby. Just don't slip away too soon...