Many have tried to describe the Bobby McFerrin experience, but there's simply no way to explain a voice that-like the Starship Enterprise-goes where no man's has gone before. How can one define, using mere words, the wordless? How can something so emancipated and unpredictable be reined in?
Bobby's vocal technique is often non-verbal, a construction of his own invention. When Bobby McFerrin engages in song he surrenders to his creative mind, not to the whims of the marketplace. He may have won 10 Grammys, but he exists outside of the music industry's self-imposed parameters, beholden only to a constant state of musical inquiry.
What Bobby McFerrin does is not an act....
(Read More) Many have tried to describe the Bobby McFerrin experience, but there's simply no way to explain a voice that-like the Starship Enterprise-goes where no man's has gone before. How can one define, using mere words, the wordless? How can something so emancipated and unpredictable be reined in?
Bobby's vocal technique is often non-verbal, a construction of his own invention. When Bobby McFerrin engages in song he surrenders to his creative mind, not to the whims of the marketplace. He may have won 10 Grammys, but he exists outside of the music industry's self-imposed parameters, beholden only to a constant state of musical inquiry.
What Bobby McFerrin does is not an act. Rather, as one of his CD titles put it, it's spontaneous invention. Always looking forward, never backward, he is all about adventure through music. He peers over the edge of the cliff, acknowledges the void below, and dives head first, buoyed by the element of surprise. A master of unpremeditated art, Bobby is brave and courageous, reverent and irreverent, serious and witty - he begs the question: When was the last time music was this much fun.
Beyond Words was also the title given to the incisive Bravo Channel documentary on Bobby, also released on DVD. An inside look at the creative process of Bobby McFerrin, it included commentary from some of his most high-profile advocates, among them Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, Yo-Yo Ma and Robin Williams.
Most recently, in early 2010, Bobby released VOCAbuLarieS (Universal Jazz and Classics), his first new album in eight years. The culmination of all that McFerrin's music has embodied over the years, and simultaneously a bold step forward, VOCAbuLarieS (partially based on material that first surfaced on Circlesongs) is a collaboration with the composer, arranger, producer and vocalist Roger Treece, a longtime member of Voicestra. The sophisticated, complex compositions and densely produced, multi-dimensional work shed new light on this uniquely talented artist who, since his arrival on the scene in the 1980s, has continually extended himself into new areas and consistently redefined the potential of the human voice.
Bobby has also collaborated, either live or in the studio, with dozens of other diverse artists of every stylistic stripe, and has appeared in numerous films and television programs-most recently on NBC's The Sing Off. He has been the subject of profiles on such TV staples as 60 Minutes and Ted Koppel's Nightline; served as a regular on Garrison Keillor's wildly popular Prairie Home Companion; sang the themes for The Cosby Show and Son of the Pink Panther; and has even appeared in several commercials.
McFerrin also continues to tour rigorously throughout the world-he has played everywhere from Russia to Japan-sometimes solo, sometimes with collaborators. No two shows, of course, are ever the same. In early 2008 alone he curated and headlined a seven-concert series as part of Carnegie Hall's Perspectives series, each tied to a different theme. The final performance found Bobby and some 20 vocalists, of various national and stylistic backgrounds, woodshedding for five days and then creating a spontaneous "Instant Opera" based on the tale of the Tower of Babel.
That idea, the improvised opera, was further explored with a new show called "Bobble," whose wordless libretto, using 16 stylistically diverse singers, explores the quandary of the people of the biblical city of Babel. How, it asks, did we communicate before we shared common languages? The program, spontaneously composed and conducted by McFerrin, has played in Europe to ecstatic audiences.
At another performance, at Washington, D.C.'s Kennedy Centre in 2008, Bobby hosted a show at which he was joined by several other vocal groups, including South Africa's Ladysmith Black Mambazo and Bulgaria's Le Mystëre des Voix Bulgares.
Bobby McFerrin finds his creative spark in a place many artists would find exceedingly frightening: having no clue what's going to happen next. Ask him where he went to school, and he just might tell you that he is a graduate of MSU: Making Stuff Up.
Critics have long praised Bobby's consistent creativity. The New York Times credited him with sparking a revival of a cappella music, giving the form a new life by purposefully ignoring the rules that had been set out for it, while the Los Angeles Times wrote, "The hyperkinetic, superpersonable, wide-ranging singer.does more than vocalize, conduct and produce music. He lives it." Newsweek opined, "There is something almost superhuman about the range and technique of Bobby McFerrin. He sounds, by turns, like a blackbird, a Martian, an operatic soprano, a small child and a bebop trumpet."
Some have called him a "one-hit wonder," but while it's true McFerrin never again scaled the hit record charts the way he did back in 1988, that phrase doesn't really apply because he never tried to have a second hit. "What 'Don't Worry, Be Happy' gave Bobby was 'the luxury of experimentation,'" is how Linda Goldstein puts it. "It allowed him the freedom to explore. He is a man of infinite, unfathomable, boundless voices and everything he has ever heard has gone into his brain, from the Mickey Mouse Club theme to the Metropolitan Opera."
More than 20 years later, Bobby still regularly sells out nearly all of his performances. His loyal fans know that, when one becomes a part of his audience, something will happen that has never happened before, and never will again. McFerrin is the rare artist whose continued success is based solely on his daring artistry and immense flexibility.
For the humble and modest Bobby McFerrin-a married father of three (his oldest son, Taylor, is emerging as a popular performer in his own right) who has lived in the Philadelphia area for some years-music-making is a quest, a means of communicating and spreading joy, not a competition or a business. He operates outside of the star system, his only care for the integrity of the music and his only desire to become a deeper musician.
"Music for me," says Bobby, "is like a spiritual journey down into the depths of my soul. And I like to think we're all on a journey into our souls. What's down there? That's why I do what I do."
(Shrink Text)
