scat singing

 scat singing

In vocal jazz, scat singing is vocal improvisation with random vocables and nonsense syllables or without words at all. Scat singing gives singers the ability to sing improvised melodies and rhythms, to create the equivalent of an instrumental solo using their voice.

Louis Armstrong's 1926 recording of "Heebie Jeebies" was the turning point for the medium and served as an inspiraton to Cab Calloway, Gershwin or Duke Ellington in the late 1920s and the 30s.

Over the years, as jazz music developed and grew in complexity, scat singing did as well. During the bop era (1940s), more highly-developed vocal improvisation surged in popularity and Ella Fitzgerald is considered by many “the best vocal improviser jazz has ever had”.

In the 1960s, traditional scatting gave way to the free-jazz movement, which allowed scat singers to include sounds in their repertoire that had before been considered non-musical, such as screams, cries, and laughter. Free jazz and the influence of world musicians on the medium pushed jazz singing nearer to avant-garde art music.

American singer Al Jarreau, a seven-time Grammy Award winner, is well-known for his scat singing and the ability to imitate conventional guitar, bass and percussive instrumentation.

The medium continues to evolve, and vocal improvisation now often develops independently of changes in instrumental jazz. Vocal improviser Bobby McFerrin’s recent performances have shown that  "wordless singing" has traveled far from the concepts demonstrated by Louis Armstrong ..  fonte