My Inspirations - Dave P. Brown (aka BoyinaBand)

I have many inspirations for my singing. I have favourite artists, favourite performers and favourite writers.

I am writing about one today who bears little resemblance to my style of music. His name is Dave p. Brown, and online he goes by the name ‘Boyinaband’. He has a YouTube channel with around 400,000 subscribers. He is a records producer whose main style of music is rap. However unlike many rap artists he raps about real-life issues. Some of his more recent songs include: Don’t Stay in School, a rap about how he thinks that the school system in England is relatively ridiculous and doesn’t prepare young people for the real world and how pointless subjects shouldn’t stay in school, not about how people shouldn’t stay in school and Spectrum, a rap with two fellow you tubers about how it can be unsafe to come out as gay in society and that you should wait until you have security and support. He also spends a lot of time researching his songs and in the latter of the two raps I just talked about he got both a lesbian and pansexual opinion. I find this nice because the majority of rappers these days rap simply about drugs, drink and sex, when they could be using their position to make a difference.

Even though our styles of music are in most ways very different I have found that learning some of his raps has really helped with my own vocals. Dave is from the south of the UK and has what Americans would call a ‘British Accent’ and what many people from certain schools where I live would call ‘Posh’. This means that he also has a very articulate voice and superb pronunciation. In both musical theatre and choral singing the pronunciation of words is very important. When preforming on a stage you need your audience to be able to understand what you are saying and what that means, otherwise the plot will be confused and audience lost. In choral music you have to have the same pronunciation as everyone else. This often means having a very open vowel sound (on-ly instead of own-ly etc.) and ensuring finishing constants are placed (d’s on things liked walked and t’s on things like lost) and one of my choirmasters biggest hates th’s not f’s, if more people spoke in this way then though world, or at least Peterborough would be a lot easier to understand!

So being able to say things like ‘and with a little bit of luck I can cover it up’ (Taken from Pointless Fast Rap by BoyinaBand) fast and with correct pronunciation can help more than you would think with all genres of music.

Dave is also a very positive figure as a person. He has long hair, as you can tell from the image and can get quite a lot of abuse in his comments section for this. In April 2014 he wrote a song about it called ‘You look like a Girl’ it started by using some of the many insults he had got for having long hair but throughout the song we see him gain confidence and start to retaliate, finishing with: If I didn't like someone's look, I'd accept it's their choice and just listen to what their message is. It feels like he is saying he is better than them. It also encouraged me, as a girl with short hair I’m quite often asked: are you a boy or a girl? Mostly but kids who think that hair length is the only difference in gender but it can still be quite deprecating. This song told me that I can look however I want to and if people judge me it’s more likely them who has the lesser self-esteem.

This section of my blog is for the ‘be inspired by...’ section of the arts award. To complete my arts award I need to prove that: I take part in an arts activity; be inspired by an artist or arts organisation; experience an event and share my skills. Of course the final stage is to create a portfolio of it. For my portfolio I am writing this blog and I hope this is living up to all the things that I must do!

Songs Mentioned in this Post: Spectrum You Look Like a Girl Pointless Fast Rap Don't Stay In School