Cyber Suburbia, 19. Feb 2007_  I can't remember the exact year any more, but it was in a different time. The World Wide Web was not even a twinkle in the eye of Tim Berners-Lee. It was the era of the big Saturday night show on public television -- family entertainment: a familiar and comfortable diet. Johnny Cash was on the show that evening. I knew him from the radio and my father's record collection -- even for a pre-adolescent, easy-to-please child, nothing much to look forward to. I expected professionally-delivered entertainment, country music without after- or side-effects. Then the 'Man In Black' came on, visibly shaken -- any child could see that. He stepped up to the microphone and didn't sing at first but talked about his concerns for his wife, who was undergoing critical surgery right at that moment, thousands of miles away. He spoke of his fear and of his hope, as if there was no audience, but nonetheless fully conscious of the situation. He spoke as if to friends, covering up nothing. Then for June Carter-Cash he sang Ring Of Fire, like I had never before heard anyone singing. He sang with everything he could give, but also with everything that he was, and both merged in each note. In retrospect, this was probably the first moment in which I suspected that music could be something other than what poured out of the radio, that it had something to do with life and that it could create connections between human beings.

Nashville's music machine almost banished Cash into artistic irrelevance by forcing him to work under its influence for decades. It was his and our luck that in his later years, rock and rap producer Rick Rubin finally gave him the opportunity, in The American Recordings, to show what he could accomplish.

 

Today there are more television programs than anyone could possibly care about. And there is YouTube. The website with skateboard accidents, Mentos and Diet-Coke clips and teenagers dancing to Shakira. Just as with books, movies or music CDs, most of YouTube is baloney. And as with everything else, you must search to find anything interesting. You can find nice things though, weird stuff, smaller and larger inspirations, which a few years ago would not have been possible.

And then suddenly, in the midst of this media flurry, there is a young woman singing as you'd hardly believe anyone nowadays could. All around, it grows quiet, as if the usual winter snow had finally started to fall outside. But it's what you've discovered here that makes everything else seem a little dislocated. Ysabellabrave is the username on the video. If you're polite, you can call her by her first name, MaryAnne. She sings blues, jazz and gospel, songs from musicals, rock, pop and film music -- cutting right across the American songbook. And for each genre she finds a genuine style, full of ease and depth, effortless.

The music industry has come far. There are CDs, SuperAudio CDs and Dolby 5.1 (TM). There is enough sound engineering technology around to let a goose with a sore throat sound like Maria Callas. A blessing, at least for today's crowd, who couldn't tell a triangle from a piano to save their lives. Real musicians get increasingly crushed under this technology. Bob Dylan deplored it some months ago in an interview and complained about his trouble overcoming the weight of technicalities in order to get into the music again.

Ysabellabrave got herself a digital camera with video capability and an integrated microphone, a desk lamp and a bunch of karaoke CDs. Her songs are usually done in one take, and never post-processed. She sings live-to-tape, and that's sufficient to let something completely marvellous take place in each recording. Ysabellabrave's YouTube channel has been subscribed by over 16,000 viewers, some of her (so far) 58 videos have been viewed more than half a million times. In the meantime even the old media has noticed that something is happening here. In Germany the Süddeutsche Zeitung, in its Clip-Kritik, aimed its culture-theory heavy artillery at this phenomenon, trying to grasp it. Not with great success, due to sleazy research and a superficial interpretation of Barthes.

But it's quite simple: MaryAnne sings, with everything she can give, but also with everything that she is, and both merge in each note. If she's feeling dramatic or playful or sensual, she shows it; if tears come to her eyes, she allows them -- no gimmicks. If you feel critical, you can plug your Hi-Fi headphones into the computer, close your eyes and listen, through the restrictions of a pinhead-size microphone and the minimal bit rate of YouTube, listen to the detail of her expression, the phrasing that escapes the strait-jacket of the karaoke backing-tracks, listen to an interpretation shaped by experience and honesty. You hear something, which you've missed for a long time -- a feeling of life, a feeling of meaning, coupled with an amazing talent. The ability to make music without a safety net or smoke and mirrors. And only occasionally, you catch yourself wanting to hear all of this recorded with a good studio microphone. MaryAnne knows better: "Don't you think it's amazing, that I'm singing into this silly camera with a desk lamp and it's going through all these wires and computers, and you still feel what I'm feeling and you still get what I'm trying to do?"

Meanwhile the latest superstar-zombie of the week is on parade, without the faintest idea what he's singing or why, or what he's supposed to do if the post-processing computers fail. Polished banalities at best. Pure high-fidelity gloss, guaranteed noise-free, streamlined and teflon-coated for a public as disinterested in music as in everything else, marketed by a revolting media machine.

Does anybody care about them?

 

But couldn't both the music and the business be one? Or would that be the end of yearning and the end of the world?

Anyway, I'm already freeing up some space on the CD shelf next to the complete American Recordings, hoping for the future and a producer of the calibre of Rick Rubin. Until then there's YouTube: an Ysabellabrave song is playing in the browser and I sense again the possibilities of music and what we need it for. _//
 

(Translation: Damian Glasfurd-Brown / Frank Madro)