That’s Right Nate

I have been searching for some time for a way to get in touch with my roots as a white person by finding a musical form that is purely white and not influenced by African music and especially soul. Now, this is not racist.   In fact, African-American influence has done so much for music that it’s very difficult to find a musical art form that remains exclusively white and not influenced by other African culture.  Now, it isn’t true that white people do not have soul.  Somebody like say, Van Morrison has a lot of soul.  Here is Jon Cleary, a piano player giving an example of a white guy with soul:

He’s not making fun of black musicians or trying to sound black.  He simply is somebody with a lot of soul.  Unfortunately, the African-American influence is very clear in his piano playing and his singing.   My quest to find a whiter more Caucasian musical style brought me far away from the Creole influence of Jon Cleary’s New Orleans to America’s heartland.    It is here that Celebration Iowa takes incredibly talented high school students and shows them how to sing and perform while removing all remnants of distracting soul from their music.   I believe I have found my cultural heritage with Celebration Iowa 2007′s performance of We Built this City:

This one wasn’t my favorite, thought it started out strong.  I kind of wished they would have done something with the Sotomayor hearings because slow talking auto-tunes the best and she was talking really slow.  Oh well, these are still great.

I think this is exactly what Michael Steele was talking about.   We need a Republican to do this sort of thing and we can reach out to a whole new audience.  Their website is located here.

The great Jonathan Coulton with his ode to Spring.

I have a fondness for this band from New Foundland.   Some of their music is quite traditional folk.  This song is not.

I saw him in concert in Minnesota a couple years ago.  I didn’t know what to expect and he really blew us all away.