“Singer-songwriter” is used to define popular music artists who write and perform their own material, which is often self-accompanied generally on acoustic guitar or piano. Such an artist performs the roles of composer, lyricist, vocalist, sometimes instrumentalist, and often self-manager. According to AllMusic, singer-songwriters’ lyrics are often personal but veiled by elaborate metaphors and vague imagery, and their creative concern is to place emphasis on the song rather than their performance of it. Most records by such artists have a similarly straightforward and spare sound that placed emphasis on the song itself.
The term has also been used to describe songwriters in the rock, folk, country, and pop music genres including Henry Russell, Aristide Bruant, Hank Williams, and Buddy Holly. It came into popular usage in the 1960s onwards to describe songwriters who followed particular stylistic and thematic conventions, particularly lyrical introspection, confessional songwriting, mild musical arrangements, and an understated performing style. According to writer Larry David Smith, because it merged the roles of composer, writer, and singer, the popularity of the singer-songwriter reintroduced the Medieval troubadour tradition of “songs with public personalities” after the Tin Pan Alley era in American popular music.
Almost anything can be a metaphor for songwriting. Prying open a jar of pickles? Yes. Playing Russian Roulette? Sure. Tending to a plant. Why not? If writing songs is inseparable from life itself, then it must fall somewhere between meditating and giving birth, at the equator of zen and utter pain; the middle path between the sacred and mundane.
Each time I go to create music, I am awed by the sense of motion and majesty that pulses through me. This is not bragging, it’s just the truth.
by Monti Karus
Kelebek Evrimi at Menada, Skopje – Macedonia; from left to right: Monti Karus, Dejan Spasovic (guest), Katerina Dimistrovska and Umur Sadico
What happens when three traveling street musicians from different backgrounds come together into a single path for a brief snapshot of time? You get the culturally rich sound garden of the Kelebek Evrimi project.
October Books, the well-loved independent bookshop in Southampton, UK where I work was facing a rent increase and an uncertain future towards the end of 2017. What to do? My colleagues and I started to look at alternative premises in the local area and the city center in early 2018. We first viewed the former chemist next door, which had a smaller retail space and a lower rent, so we registered our interest. But it was not to be – someone else got in before us.
Everyone has a story. Complicated, joyful, challenging, and beautiful. This is mine.
I am an independent artist living and creating music, films, and installations in Los Angeles. Born in Russia and emigrated to the United States seven years ago at the peak of my career as a journalist, I dropped everything and started my life from scratch. Some people may say I waited too long, but I say the magic happened when I was ready and the time was right.
by Heath Church
When I play a song for you, I want to create an experience that sticks with you. I want to take you to a place in your mind where you feel accepted and understood in a unique way that you haven’t before. That’s what music does. It understands us. I think everyone needs a chance to feel understood.
by Iris Johner
It’s lost and heavy-hearted that I decided to settle down on my own in south Portugal in November 2017. After three years of travels around the world and a summer back to my hometown realizing time was flying and driving my dreams away from me, it appeared to be the perfect deal for a start over – as the one place I would most likely call home.
by Jack Norton
I, Jack Norton, am an Emmy Award winning singer-songwriter performing hokum blues and vaudeville folk music. Based in the United States, I recorded my most recent album “Busker’s Blues” in a cabin in a remote part of Manitoba, Canada. Armed only with a mic, a guitar and a week in the woods, the following is a journal kept by me while recording…
Narth said that one day the machine asked him a question: “why do you trust anything I tell you?” He said that at first he was pretty taken aback, I think I would have been too. As he went about his day, he said that the question was always there, in the back of his mind, a distant orbit. Eventually, he returned to the machine, to try and understand why it had asked him that question.
by Lee Brickley
Are you sick and tired of war, inequality, racism, and injustice? Me too, and that’s why I write revolutionary protest songs. I wish I knew how to do more, but for now, I’m trying to make people think with my music because that’s what I do best.