An Accidental American
A few years ago I was at a gig chatting to the lead singer of the headlining band during their long and exceedingly tedious sound check. The vocalist – we’ll call her Jill – had a strong and character-filled Yorkshire accent. Later, when the band played, I was horrified to hear Jill sing in what we blithely refer to as ‘an American accent’. This is one of my pet hates - British vocalists who, when they open their mouths to sing, suddenly relocate 3000 miles west - we’ve frequently had to rapidly terminate any number of auditions over the years when fours bars in, the demure and quietly spoken local lass turns out to sound like a Detroit hooker having a bad night. Does it not occur to these people that if we’d wanted a singer with an American accent, we’d have been auditioning Americans, who, to my way of thinking do it a damn sight better.
What is weird is that these UK wannabe’s don’t sound like any American I’ve ever heard – I can understand why the term ‘mid-Atlantic accent’ was coined. It works the other way too: we frequently laugh our little socks off at American actors playing Englishmen, doing what they perceive to be an ‘English’ accent. It simply sounds false even if you can’t put your finger on exactly why.
The UK is made up of hundreds of regional accents – some are incredibly localised – Manchester and Liverpool for example are less that fifty miles apart and yet Mancunian and Liverpudlian (aka Scouse) sound as if they come from completely different roots. Even within cities, such as Birmingham, the variety of different accents is astonishing. Shakespeare himself, as a Warwickshire lad, would have spoken with a pronounced Birmingham (Brummy) accent, and it would be great to see his plays performed in the way he presumably heard them in his head as he wrote them. There’s also a ‘rural’ accent that while distinct from area to area has a commonality usually involving a lot of oral action around the letter ‘R’
And I imagine the situation is similar in the US – accents abound, from region to region and even within States and cities. Though most people apparently deny it, everyone has an accent of some kind, (unless it was beaten out of them at boarding school).Who’s to know or decide what the American accent is?
A friend of mine in the US who swears she doesn’t have an accent at all, recently took a short quiz she discovered on the web (http://www.gotoquiz.com/what_american_accent_do_you_have)
Much to her horror it immediately and accurately nailed her as being “as Philadelphian as cheesesteak” (whatever that is) – for she was born and bought up in Chester County under 40 miles from Philly.
Out of curiosity I took the quiz myself. Apparently I speak with a North-East accent, probably from North Jersey, New York City, Connecticut or Rhode Island. Useful to know.
So when I next come across a British singer with Detroit tendencies, I can quietly take her aside, get her to fill out the quiz and then point out that the best way for her to really sound American is for her to sing in her own voice.
Jamie Field
Jan 2009