velarized /l/ and Billy Holiday

[Tom Zurinskas]

For the back of the tongue to go up to the velum area shuts off airflow to the mouth and reroutes it to the nose, like velar n in "sing".  So how could there be a velar l?

Tom Zurinskas, USA - CT20, TN3, NJ33, FL5+ 
see truespel.com


 
> Date: Thu, 5 Mar 2009 22:06:02 -0500
> From: hfwstahlke at GMAIL.COM
> Subject: velarized /l/ and Billy Holiday
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> 
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster: Herb Stahlke <hfwstahlke at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject: velarized /l/ and Billy Holiday
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> This afternoon I was listening to a recording of Billy Holiday singing
> "Crazy he calls me." In the line "The impossible will take a little
> while" she has a schwa before the final /l/ of "impossible" and I
> don't hear any distinctive velarization of the /l/. There are several
> other post-vocalic /l/s in the song, and they don't show much
> velarization either. Post-vocalic /l/ is a consistent problem for
> American English singers, since the raising of the back of the tongue
> towards the velum constricts the oral cavity and reduces the overall
> resonance of the syllable coda. Some voice teachers and choral
> conductors will spend time training their singers to use only a
> non-velarized /l/, as a number European languages widely represented
> in the vocal and choral literature do. My CD of Billy is, of course,
> a copy, and I don't know how good the master was. It's entirely
> possible that the fidelity is not good enough to support much in the
> way of diction comments, but my impression is otherwise. Billy's
> diction is superb. Every word she sings is clear, even on a copy of a
> copy of a 1949 recording. Billy had little or no formal vocal
> training, so the fact that she doesn't velarize /l/ much, if at all,
> wouldn't be the result of vocal training. Is it a feature of her
> variety of AAE? Is it idiosyncratic to her distinctive vocal style?
> 
> Herb
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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