Accents in shows: singing vs. speaking — Page 2

To me, as someone who has coached musicals, accents can sometimes sound less pronounced in singing because some of the delineating sounds of the accent have to shift because of note length, rhythm, rhyme(!) and so on. When singing, the key is to first make sure that sounds that are recognizably American are changed: fewer R's, T instead of D in "better", saying "nyoo" for the word NEW, etc. Also some American Theatre singers have a more back-placed heavy vibrato sound - which some have called the "Broadway" voice - which won't sound British even if the sounds are right. A British sound is more forward.

KINKY BOOTS is a show where the accents, spoken and sung, are not inconsistent but just bad. Other shows have inconsistent accents. The OCBR of Spamalot is a case in point. Actors are sometimes inconsistent in accents (it is not easy stuff to do eight shows a week) but KB goes to a whole other level. For example, in her song, Ms Ashford uses three different British accents plus American. Stark Sands and the rest of the cast didn't make odd mistakes in words. Whole lines, spoken and sung, were done in American

Billy Porter made many mistakes and his accent slipped all over the place but was mostly American. I felt he had the opportunity to make a strong character choice in having 'Simon' be British and 'Lola' sounding more American. That would fit 'her' stage persona and the contrast would have been interesting. Instead, to me he sounded American most of the time with sounds from two different British accents slipping in under the radar. Lazy work for a professional.

I was always taught that, when singing, the correct pronunciation of the word is not as important as ensuring that the pronunciation permits a pure sound. Hence, singers favor oh, ah, and aw sounds over more closed tones. "The land of the free-e-e-e-e," in the "Star Spangled Banner," where the long e lands on a high note (for the non-Americans on the board) and "Let your soul take you where you long to beeeeee," in Phantom of the Opera's "Music of the Night," rarely come out as long e's, but more as long a's, because a long e squeezes the throat. Also, instead of singing a hard American "r," or God forbid, a German, French, Arabic, or Hebrew guttural "r," the singers are often directed to roll the "r," as a British person or Spanish speaker might do.

My favorite spoken accent disaster is "Gone with the Wind," where Clark Gable refused to put on a Southern accent, where Vivian Leigh and especially Leslie Howard sounded British, and where Hattie McDaniel sounded too educated despite her character's bad grammar. As Ms. McDaniel might have said, "It ain't fittin'."

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I don't think it's been mentioned and I'm not a musicologist, but it seems quite common for British pop singers to use "Americanized" accents when singing.

This is demonstrated almost every week on Graham Norton's talk show. Pop singer of the week (including major names like Adele) sit on the couch and talk as if they were slinging bangers and mash in the pub. Then they go to the mike and sing as if they were in the Mississippi Delta.

I think it became convention when the bands of the "British Invasion" of the 1960s drew heavily on American blues and early rock 'n' roll, and began to imitate singers of those genres.

(This is by no means to contradict the voice teachers who have talked about the open sounds of American dialects. That may be a primary reason why the convention of "singing Yank" has survived.)

As for book shows, it seems to vary. I've heard OLIVER! sung with accents more or less intact (which doesn't mean perfectly authentic) on both sides of the Atlantic. OTOH, I've heard some of ALW's shows sung by Brits with something closer to American diction.

Updated On: 6/16/13 at 09:11 PM