Soul with A British Accent

By David E. Thigpen

In the 1960s and '70s, the soul sounds of Detroit and Philadelphia were the glory of American pop. From the funk styles of James Brown to the fervid testifying of Aretha Franklin and Marvin Gaye, soul music was something you could not only hear but also feel: rhythm without blues, emotion without sentimentality. Then in the '80s a few big record companies discovered they could rack up sales by substituting hyperactive beats and overdressed arrangements for soul's honest impact. Subtle vocal stylists gave way to crooners; soul gave way to dance music, marketed mainly to black listeners. Even powerful singers like Whitney Houston were steered into this aesthetic dead end.

But soul wouldn't die. Instead it migrated to the damp environs of Manchester, England, a roughneck working-class stronghold. There, in much the same way that British rockers of the '60s adapted American rock 'n' roll, a new wave of musicians have been revitalizing soul, uncovering new artistic connections and in some cases improving on the American originators. The result, for music fans, is that the soul searching is over.

The godfather of the British soul invasion -- and its finest vocal stylist -- has flaming red dreadlocks and a ruby-embedded front tooth. Manchester's Mick Hucknall, 32, the peppery-tongued lead singer of Simply Red, started a punk band in the early '80s but quickly tired of punk's anger. Sensing a widespread hunger for American soul sounds, he and three Manchester pals formed Simply Red in 1984. Their first No. 1 hit, Holding Back the Years, harked back to the fluid ease of the pure soul classics of the '60s and showcased Hucknall's dapper, crying tenor.

In their fourth and newest album, Stars, they're still at it. But despite his vocal mastery, Hucknall has taken flak from critics who accuse him of ripping off black music. He fires back that the record industry's marketing of music along racial lines reflects something deeper in Americans, to whom he says, "Black music by and for black people, white music by and for white people; that's one of the reasons you have such divisions in your society."

The gorgeous, ripened voice of Lisa Stansfield, 26, embodies the romance and sexiness of soul. Her lyrics are succinct portraits of love, seduction and loss; her sound is ardent but never florid, soft but never sappy. While still barely a teen in her hometown of Rochdale, Stansfield desperately longed to join the nightclub scene of nearby Manchester, which was a bubbling kettle of soul, rock and punk sounds. "But I was underage," she says, "so I'd put tissue paper in my bra and sneak in with my older sister. Of all the music I heard, soul was the most honest."

At 14 she started singing in local pubs, but quit three years later to begin recording with two Rochdale musicians. Her payoff came in 1989 when her debut album, Affection, scored two No. 1 hits on the black charts in America. Her newest disk, Real Love, is her finest yet; the breathy come-ons of Time to Make You Mine are arrestingly seductive, and in Change she shows off the glorious arc of her upper register.

The most visionary of the new wave is Sealhenry Samuel, a.k.a. Seal. The London native, whose parents are Brazilian and Nigerian, took a year-long solo spiritual journey through Nepal, India and Thailand before returning to London on a tail wind of inspiration. Last year Seal, 29, released a namesake album intermingling soul, rock and blues hooks into a strikingly fresh hybrid. He also introduced a novel instrument in soul circles: a solo acoustic guitar, which vividly sets off his yearning, crackling voice. With its shifting rhythms and varied sonic textures, Seal shows that soul can accommodate unorthodox structures and a mystical tinge while still shining through handsomely.

No performer has plumbed the sensual side of soul with more skill than newcomer Ephraim Lewis. When he was a child in the factory town of Wolverhampton, Lewis' parents forbade him to listen to any secular music. His father tried to steer him into the ministry, but Lewis had other plans; he left home as soon as he turned 17. Settling in Sheffield, he bunked with friends and worked through the night in recording studios, listening to records and composing songs. Says Lewis, 24: "I discovered Marvin Gaye, Joni Mitchell and Curtis Mayfield. I just swallowed it all up." As he was writing his debut album, his mother and brother died. Skin, as Lewis titled the album, became a record of his feelings: melancholy and vulnerability. When he sings, "Is my skin just a veil I'm wearing/ Protect me from the world," his languid baritone catches gently, and the beating rhythms wash over a listener like a wave.

How do the British do it? Perhaps by not pigeonholing musicians and by giving them a wider reign in the studio. Says Sade, the British chanteuse whose Diamond Life album in 1984 signaled the British knack for soul: "There's less consumerism in England and more idealism in the record business than in America."