Should a singer who doesn't write their music or play an instrument still be considered a musician?

There’s no such thing as a singer who doesn’t play an instrument. As you acknowledge, the voice is an instrument. Not only that, it’s an instrument that you have to take very special care of because you can’t just replace it. The idea that singers aren’t musicians usually comes from the perception that anyone can do it. But most people sing the way they play violin: badly.

Sure. Look at Bobby McFarrin. He did whole songs without instruments, but used his voice to make it sound like instruments were there.

Eh?? Who thinks singers aren’t musicians? What a strange question.

Saying singers aren’t musicians is like saying human beings aren’t animals—maybe in some contexts the words might get used that way, but that usage doesn’t represent the true categorical relationship.

Yes, but most singers today can not even sing without some geek having to fix it with autotune.
And rappers do not even sing. They just talk.

Yes, so long as they can sing well live, without the benefit of post production.

For example, few years ago, my daughter and I stumbled into a free Demi Lovato concert at a mall. Don’t like her songs or that brand of teeny bopper music (which I’m pretty sure she does not write) — but hot damn can she sing!!
Blew me away.

I never call a singer a musician.

^But you don’t deny that they are musicians, do you? To use the earlier analogy, you probably almost never call a human being an animal, but you don’t deny that humans are animals, strictly speaking.

@ragingloli

Rappers don’t just “talk”. It takes legitimate talent to be a good rapper, they have to keep a consistent flow while paying attention to the beat and without stumbling over their words. It takes practice.

But just like any type of singing (Bob Dylan and Tom Waits) there are types of rapping that doesn’t take as much skill.

^I’d say rap is a either a form of poetry or a maybe sui generis form of performance art, but it is not music. Like theater, cinema, and dance, rap uses music but is not music.

I think it is significant that there is a stronger expectation that rappers write their own material. It is perfectly acceptable for a professional singer to reinterpret old standards, but rappers who merely perform what others have written are looked down upon by other rappers and rap aficionados(?) (or so I’ve heard). That says to me that rap is more of a verbal art than musical one—hence, I’m more inclined to call it poetry than music.

@Zissou

Do you consider Rage Against the Machine to be music? The main vocalist is a rapper, while the band plays groove metal. And rap groups such as A Tribe Called Quest and The Roots incorporate jazz and rock music into their sound.

They can be only if they can read and write music, so, no.

@Zissou I can see why they would be included as musicians, I wouldn’t argue they aren’t, but I just honestly, typically, don’t think of singing as a musical instrument. If I had to write the technical definition of a musician I would include singing, but in every day language I don’t.

A voice teacher taught me that a singer is a musical instrument. Singing is all about locations of the mouth, tongue, and throat, and how air passes through those positions. It seems to me that a person who can play that musical instrument, literally his/her own body, is a musician.

This teacher was amazingly talented; her proudest achievement was having trained someone with 0% hearing how to sing well, simply by teaching the mechanics.

Absolutely! A vocalist is no less a musician than any other instrumentalist. Was Luciano Pavarotti a musician? How about Placido Domingo? Or Maria Callas? OK, if you don’t recognize the classicists, how about Etta James? Barbra Streisand? Adele?

The voice is a legitimate musical instrument. It was my major instrument when I was pursuing a degree in music.

@kripiter “They can be only if they can read and write music, so, no.”

In that case the Beatles weren’t musicians.

@rockfan regarding the groups you mentioned above, I don’t follow them, but how the recording industry classifies an act or how a band markets itself has no bearing on whether a particular vocal expression is music or not. An artist could be both a rapper and a singer, and a work might include both singing and rapping, but I still say that rapping and singing are different. Reciting poetry with musical accompaniment is not singing.

There’s more to rap than just reciting over music, or what not. If you haven’t noticed that these guys use a melodic flow then you ether haven’t heard much or haven’t paid attention.

Hip hop and rap are not synonyms, I thought. Some hip hop artists are musicians, some are strictly rappers. Most of the rap I’ve heard either does not have a melody at all or it alternates between melodic and non-melodic or minimally melodic elements. Rap is not the first thing that comes to mind when you read the phrase “reciting poetry”, but most rap I’ve heard is closer to that than singing. But I don’t follow rap closely. Usually when I hear it, it is involuntary.

@Zissou I never said that rapping is considered singing

@Darth_Algar That’s what it says in the dictionary!

Then in that case the Beatles still weren’t musicians.

@kritiper Which dictionary? Mine defines “musician” as “a person who plays a musical instrument, especially as a profession, or is musically talented.” If you have to read and write music to be a musician, then only composers are musicians. That’s obviously a mistake, so whatever dictionary you are referencing is clearly a bad one (or you have misread it).

“Singing is the act of producing musical sounds with the voice…Singing is music” Wikipedia