IMAGE

Image is a tricky issue. For singers of classical music, image is often defined by the songs the singers' voices can handle. It's a wait-and-see-who-you-are-when- your-voice-is-fully-developed proposition.

For today's young singers of pop, rock and alternative music, who you appear to be is usually more important than who you actually are.

My voice students would often rebel when I asked them to come up with words, pictures, photos or sounds that would help define their image.

"But I'm not into having an image!" some would complain.

And I would tell them that the music business was built around image as much as talent. If they did not understand how to define themselves, I would say, others would do it for them. And probably poorly.

Looking back, I believe I took the wrong approach.

This became clearer to me several days ago when I met with a young singer who was a voice student of mine when I was teaching at Concordia University, in Montreal.

Annabelle was an ambitious woman with a unique singer/songwriter style and broad range of interests. She clearly wanted to get somewhere fast. One day she told me she was concerned that, at the age of 21, she still had no record deal in sight. "Joni Mitchell was a star when she was my age!" she said.

Her comment came at a time when I was reconsidering how best to prepare people for a life in music. I'd just read an interview with Joni Mitchell in which she recalled how difficult it had been for her to continue to be creative when she was living a high-profile life in the celebrity fish bowl.

She advised young singers to be content with not "making it" too early. She suggested they write their music in peace and grow gradually.

I told Annabelle what Joni Mitchell had said, and I believe she took it to heart. Of course, it was not this one comment alone that guided her. She came into contact with a number of teachers who encouraged her to explore her varied interests.

Now, several years later, Annabelle's path is one of slow growth and risk taking. She says she follows what interests her and experiments with different ways to pull it all together in a style that is her own. She is gradually becoming known as a unique voice on the contemporary singer/songwriter scene.

Part of the problem with popular music today is that so much of it sounds and feels the same. Many young groups/singers have their images carved out for them by people who need and want to make money quickly. The financial movers are not concerned with the growth of an individual-with his or her evolving understanding of the world and how it can then be expressed through music.

This type of image creation will continue unless more singers are encouraged to understand the importance to their creative freedom of saying, No!

At the end of our meeting, I asked Annabelle about her PR package-how she was approaching her evolving "look." I used the word image. She said she thought of "essence" rather than image. Essence was a better way of maintaining a clear focus.

Later I consulted a dictionary. Image, I learned, is defined as "an imitation of any person or thing, a statue, an idol, a counterpart." Essence is defined as "the concentrated preparation of any substance."

IMAGE

Saturday, October 28, 2006