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Non-lexical vocables , which may be mixed with meaningful text, are a form of nonsense syllable used in a wide variety of music. Common English examples are "la la la", "na na na" and "da da da".
Non-lexical vocables are used in yodeling, Blackfoot music and other Native American music, Pygmy music, the music of the Maldives. In Irish traditional music and Highland Scots music, it is called lilting, and in English traditional music it is called diddling. Vocables frequently act as formal markers, indicating the beginning and end of phrases, sections or songs themselves, [1] and also as onomatopoeic references, cueing devices, and other purposes. [2]
The Blackfoot, like other Plains Indians, use the consonants h, w, y, and vowels. They avoid c, n, (ts) and other consonants. e and i tend slightly to be higher pitches, a, o, and u lower ones. [3]
The AIM Song has its origins in the Plains; as such, it holds similar characteristics to Blackfoot song. It is intended as an intertribal song, so the use of non-lexical vocables prevents bias to one particular language.
Other traditional musical forms employing non-lexical vocables include:
Scat singing is a type of voice instrumental music. A scat is vocalized using wordless vocables and syllables (e.g. "bippity-bippity-doo-wop-razzamatazz-skoobie-doobie-shoobity-bee-bop-a-lula-shabazz") as employed by jazz singers. Scat singing gives singers the ability to sing improvised melodies and rhythms, to create the equivalent of an instrumental solo using their voice. Scatman John (John Paul Larkin) renewed interest in the genre briefly during the mid-1990s.
Vocal improviser Bobby McFerrin’s performances at major concert halls worldwide show that “wordless singing has traveled far from the concepts demonstrated by Louis Armstrong, Gladys Bentley, Cab Calloway, Anita O’Day, and Leo Watson”. [4]
Another method of scat singing is practiced by guitarists who scat along with their guitar solos note for note. Notable practitioners include Theo Katzman, George Benson, Sheldon Reynolds, and Rik Emmett.
A non-lexical form of Latin is often used as accompaniment for orchestral movie and video game soundtracks. It utilizes strings of Dog Latin syllables and a deep tone to emulate ominous or grandiose Latin chants.
Non-lexical vocables that take on percussive roles:
The song "Swinging the Alphabet" is sung by The Three Stooges in their short film Violent Is the Word for Curly (1938). It is the only full-length song performed by the Stooges in their short films, and the only time they mimed to their own pre-recorded soundtrack. The lyrics use each letter of the alphabet to make a nonsense verse of the song:
B-A-bay, B-E-bee, B-I-bicky-bi, B-O bo, bicky-bi bo, B-U bu, bicky bi bo bu.
C-A-cay, C-E-cee, C-I-cicky-ci, C-O co, cicky-ci co, C-U cu, cicky ci co cu.
D-A-day, D-E-dee, D-I-dicky-di, D-O do, dicky-di do, D-U du, dicky di do du.
F-A-fay, F-E-fee, F-I-ficky-fi, F-O fo, Ficky-fi fo, F-U fu, ficky fi fo fu.
...
The song "Mairzy Doats" (1943) used blurred lyrics that sound non-lexical:
Mairzy doats and dozy doats and liddle lamzy divey
A kiddley divey too, wouldn't you?
The lyrics of the bridge provide a clue:
If the words sound queer and funny to your ear, a little bit jumbled and jivey,
Sing "Mares eat oats and does eat oats and little lambs eat ivy."
"A kid'll eat ivy too, wouldn't you?"
Styles of popular music that frequently employ non-lexical vocables include:
Scat singing influenced the development of doo-wop and hip hop. It was popular enough in doo-wop that Barry Mann and Gerry Goffin made it the subject of a 1961 song, Who Put the Bomp (in the Bomp, Bomp, Bomp)". Neil Sedaka and Howard Greenfield, who worked with Mann and Goffin at the Brill Building at the same time, added non-lexical vocables at the start of their song "Breaking Up Is Hard to Do" when they could not come up with a good lyric for the opening line; Sedaka's first recording of the song was such a success that they made it a trademark for their next several songs, including "Next Door to an Angel" and "Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen." (Sedaka and Greenfield had become so attached to the idea that when Sedaka dissolved his partnership with Greenfield in the early 1970s, he labeled his final album with him The Tra-La Days Are Over .) It has also appeared in various genres of rock music. Jim Morrison of The Doors sings a chorus of slow scat on the song "Cars Hiss By My Window", trying to replicate a harmonica solo he had heard, as well as on the song "Roadhouse Blues"; scat singing also notably opens the B-side of Joe Walsh's 1973 album The Smoker You Drink, The Player You Get with the song "Meadow". The technique was employed in the song "The Great Gig in the Sky" by Pink Floyd, as well as the R&B song "Rubber Biscuit" by The Chips (also as by The Blues Brothers). The list of scat singers includes such greats as Jelly Roll Morton, Louis Armstrong, Bing Crosby, Cab Calloway, Scatman Crothers, Dizzy Gillespie, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Sammy Davis Jr., Mel Tormé, Tony Bennett, Cleo Laine, Roger Miller, Aretha Franklin, Van Morrison, and the Pointer Sisters.
Scatting also makes appearances in newer genres, including industrial music, in the chorus of Ministry's 1991 song "Jesus Built My Hotrod"; nu metal music, particularly in the band Korn (whose lead singer Jonathan Davis has incorporated scat singing into songs such as "Twist", "Ball Tongue", "Freak on a Leash", "B.B.K.", "Beat it Upright", "Liar", and "Rotting in Vain"); and the heavy metal subgenre of death metal, where scat singing is used by John Tardy of the band Obituary. Jack Black incorporates scat into several Tenacious D songs, most notably: "Tribute", "Cosmic Shame", "Classico," "Jesus Ranch," Low Hangin' Fruit," and "Bowie". Singer JoJo performs ad-libbed scats on the track "Yes or No". Other modern examples include "Under Pressure" by Queen, "Rag Doll" by Aerosmith, "Under My Voodoo" by Sublime, "No! Don't Shoot" by Foxy Shazam, "Ma Meeshka Mow Skwoz" by Mr. Bungle, "In My Bed" by Amy Winehouse, and "Stuck in the Middle" by Mika. Scatman John combined scat and early-1990s electronic dance music.
Folderol, a nonsense refrain in songs, is used in genres as diverse as Christmas songs ("Deck the Halls") and naval songs like "Don't Forget Your Old Shipmate".
The European pop genre yé-yé was named after the frequent use of English-derived "Yeah!" as filler. Spanish yeyé signer Massiel won the 1968 Eurovision Song Contest with La, la, la .
Due to the wide-ranging vocal styles used in popular music, occasionally songs have been mistakenly categorized as having non-lexical vocables, when in fact the singers are performing actual lyrics rendered partially (or completely) unintelligible to the ear of some (but not all) listeners. Two famous 1960s examples are "Louie Louie" as recorded by The Kingsmen and "Wooly Bully" by Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs.
Some bands have invented a language for their lyrics; examples include Kobaïan, used by French progressive rock band Magma, and Vonlenska, also called Hopelandic, employed by the Icelandic post-rock band Sigur Rós.
Adriano Celentano's 1972 song "Prisencolinensinainciusol" is sung in gibberish that sounds as American English.
Jack Black uses non-lexical vocables whilst singing as Tenacious D.
"Da Da Da" by German group Trio uses the phrase "da da da" throughout the song.
The chorus to the Simon and Garfunkel hit "The Boxer" contains the repeated phrase "lie-la-lie".
One of the most famous examples comes from The Beatles' song "Hey Jude", which ends with a long run of "Na na na na na na na". Similarly Elton John's "Crocodile Rock" employs "la, la la la la la" for much of the chorus.
Other notable songs to include non-lexical vocables include The Police's song "De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da", The Delfonics song "La-La (Means I Love You)", and Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich's song "Zabadak!".
Van Morrison employed scat in his performances. [5]
French singer Antoine Tomé has used vocal percussions and sung several of his songs in an imaginary language since the 1970's.
Examples by popular non-anglophone singers using such techniques include "Bla Bla Bla" by Gigi D'Agostino, "Eena Mina Dika" in the Bollywood film Aasha , Eduard Khil's "I Am Glad, Cause I'm Finally Returning Back Home" (known as "Trololo") sung entirely without lyrics, "Fuzao" by Faye Wong, "Lagu Lagu" by Sa Dingding, "Din Daa Daa" by George Kranz, and much (but not all) of the lyrics to Finnish folk song and meme phenomenon "Ievan Polkka".
Russian ska punk band Nogu Svelo! tends to use various non-lexical vocables in their songs. Their popular song "Haru Mamburu" (Russian: Хару Мамбуру) is composed completely from pseudoword vocables without any meaningful text.
Pseudo-Latin is sometimes used in new-age music, especially when it imitates Gregorian chant or other choral church music, e. g. "Ameno" by Era or "Adiemus" by Adiemus.
Franco Godi, in songs like ParapapaPerepepe, on his "Signor Rossi" album, perhaps an Italian sounding variation of the name of the Icelandic band Sigur Rós.
A signature of some Disney musical films is their songs' use of nonsense words, the longest and most famous of which is from Mary Poppins , entitled "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious". A close second is "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" from Song of the South , which won the Academy Award for Best Original Song. Nonsense word song titles include:
Nonsense lyrics also feature in the following Disney songs:
Originating in vocal jazz, scat singing or scatting is vocal improvisation with wordless vocables, nonsense syllables or without words at all. In scat singing, the singer improvises melodies and rhythms using the voice solely as an instrument rather than a speaking medium. This is different from vocalese, which uses recognizable lyrics that are sung to pre-existing instrumental solos.
Doo-wop is a subgenre of rhythm and blues music that originated in African-American communities during the 1940s, mainly in the large cities of the United States, including New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Baltimore, Newark, Detroit, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles. It features vocal group harmony that carries an engaging melodic line to a simple beat with little or no instrumentation. Lyrics are simple, usually about love, sung by a lead vocal over background vocals, and often featuring, in the bridge, a melodramatically heartfelt recitative addressed to the beloved. Harmonic singing of nonsense syllables is a common characteristic of these songs. Gaining popularity in the 1950s, doo-wop was "artistically and commercially viable" until the early 1960s and continued to influence performers in other genres.
In music, solfège or solfeggio, also called sol-fa, solfa, solfeo, among many names, is a mnemonic used in teaching aural skills, pitch and sight-reading of Western music. Solfège is a form of solmization, though the two terms are sometimes used interchangeably.
Vocal music is a type of singing performed by one or more singers, either with instrumental accompaniment, or without instrumental accompaniment, in which singing provides the main focus of the piece. Music which employs singing but does not feature it prominently is generally considered to be instrumental music as is music without singing. Music without any non-vocal instrumental accompaniment is referred to as a cappella.
Vocalese is a style of jazz singing in which words are added to an instrumental soloist's improvisation.
Many musical styles flourished and combined in the 1940s and 1950s, most likely because of the influence the radio had in creating a mass market for music. World War II caused great social upheaval, and the music of this period shows the effects of that upheaval.
The Rivingtons were a 1960s doo-wop band, known for their 1962 novelty hit "Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow". The members were lead vocalist Carl White, tenor Al Frazier, baritone Sonny Harris and bassist Turner "Rocky" Wilson Jr. Frazier was replaced by Madero White for a period in the late 1970s.
Blackfoot music is the music of the Blackfoot people. Singing predominates and was accompanied only by percussion.
In the broadest sense of the word, a vocable is any identifiable utterance or writing, such as a word or term, that is fixed by their language and culture. The use of the term for words in the broad sense is archaic and the term is instead used for utterances which are not considered words, such as the English interjections of assent and denial, uh-huh and uh-uh, or the interjection of error, uh-oh.
"Mah Nà Mah Nà" is a popular song by Italian composer Piero Umiliani. It originally appeared in the Italian film Sweden: Heaven and Hell. It was a minor radio hit in the United States and in Britain, but became better known internationally for its use by The Muppets and on The Benny Hill Show.
Trallalero is a kind of polyphonic folk music from the Ligurian region of Genoa, in northern Italy. It is traditionally performed by men, though there have been some female performers in the modern era. The name derives from the monosyllabic vocables, tra-la-le-ro, which feature heavily in the repertoire of the groups or Squadre. These are typically sections of songs without words during which the melody is sung on nonsense syllables.
A pseudoword is a unit of speech or text that appears to be an actual word in a certain language, while in fact it has no meaning. It is a specific type of nonce word, or even more narrowly a nonsense word, composed of a combination of phonemes which nevertheless conform to the language's phonotactic rules. It is thus a kind of vocable: utterable but meaningless.
Puirt à beul is a traditional form of song native to Scotland that sets Gaelic lyrics to instrumental tune melodies. Historically, they were used to accompany dancing in the absence of instruments and to transmit instrumental tunes orally.
The Edsels were an American doo-wop group from Campbell, Ohio who were active during the late 1950s and early 1960s. The name of the group was originally The Essos, after the oil company, but was changed to match the new Ford automobile, the Edsel. They recorded over 25 songs and had multiple performances on Dick Clark's American Bandstand. The Edsels were one of the few doo-wop groups to sign with a major record label, as most groups of that era found success with small independent labels; before their national hit "Rama Lama Ding Dong", songs like "What Brought Us Together", "Bone Shaker Joe" and "Do You Love Me" helped the group land a major recording contract with Capitol Records in 1961.
"Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow" is a novelty nonsensical doo-wop song by the Rivingtons in 1962. It peaked at number 48 on the Billboard Hot 100, and number 35 on the Cashbox charts. The band released two similar follow-up songs over the next several months, "Mama-Oom-Mow-Mow " and "The Bird's the Word".
"Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" is a song composed by Allie Wrubel with lyrics by Ray Gilbert for the Disney 1946 live action and animated movie Song of the South, sung by James Baskett. For "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah", the film won the Academy Award for Best Original Song and was the second Disney song to win this award, after "When You Wish upon a Star" from Pinocchio (1940). In 2004, it finished at number 47 in AFI's 100 Years...100 Songs, a survey of top tunes in American cinema.
"Who Put the Bomp " is a doo-wop style novelty song from 1961 by the American songwriter Barry Mann, who wrote it with Gerry Goffin. It was originally released as a single on the ABC-Paramount label (10237).
Lilting is a form of traditional singing common in the Goidelic speaking areas of Ireland, Scotland and the Isle of Man, though singing styles like it occur in many other countries. It goes under many names, and is sometimes referred to as diddling, mouth music, jigging, chin music or cheek music, puirt à beul or canntaireachd in Scottish Gaelic, or portaireacht bhéil in Irish. The syllables sung do not require any one-to-one corresponding note, and in this way it resembles scat singing, and is distinguished from the singing of sol-fa or sargam.
Vocal harmony is a style of vocal music in which a consonant note or notes are simultaneously sung as a main melody in a predominantly homophonic texture. Vocal harmonies are used in many subgenres of European art music, including Classical choral music and opera and in the popular styles from many Western cultures ranging from folk songs and musical theater pieces to rock ballads. In the simplest style of vocal harmony, the main vocal melody is supported by a single backup vocal line, either at a pitch which is above or below the main vocal line, often in thirds or sixths which fit in with the chord progression used in the song. In more complex vocal harmony arrangements, different backup singers may sing two or even three other notes at the same time as each of the main melody notes, mostly with a consonant, pleasing-sounding thirds, sixths, and fifths.
The Acappella Swingers is a musical voice group founded in Catania in 2005. It consists of two male and two female voices and the style is that of the doo-wop and a cappella sound.