Into Orbit : Sångimprovisation och innerlighet i samtida soulmusik

Sammanfattning: This thesis Into Orbit - Vocal improvisation and inwardness in contemporary soul music examines vocal improvisation in contemporary soul music and its inwardness. This is done by analysing three performances of improvisation by three different soul singers – namely Jazmine Sullivan, Avery Wilson and Alex Isley. Inwardness in this thesis means the feeling, the rapture, and the spirituality in a secular sense. Soul is founded upon the musical elements drawn from gospel. The rapture found in gospel remained similar in soul. With an ethnomusicological perspective, this thesis uses the concepts of black interior coined by poet Elizabeth Alexander and further the interior safe space by sociologists Tennille N. Allen och Antonia Randolph. Along with the understanding of commonly occurring elements, these concepts of the interior are then applied to understand the expression of interior safe space of the three vocal improvisations. In the improvisations there is expression of longing for love and simultaneously loving through the improvisation. With the improvisation as an expression of their interior safe space, they are artistically free. This also means they are free to love despite the presence of love in the real world or not.