Soul

SORRY. English is not my first language,M-v he tells me. But thatM-Fs hard to believe when listening to Toshi KubotaM-Fs new album, the dreamy, silky Time to Share. The Japanese soul singerM-Fs English is just fine when heM-Fs crooning. He seems to be very fluent in the language of love. A mack daddy with chiseled features, come-to-me eyes and a golden throat. M-tThese days, I like more laidback grooves,M-v he says, calling from his New York home. The artistM-Fs personal manager is also on the line, translating some of my questions in Japanese.

I've been listening patiently, begrudgingly -- hoping somebody, to quote Chaka Khan, will "tell me something good." After Ashanti, with her Post-It-thin vocals and one-stroke music, won a Grammy, after 50 Cent's inane "In Da Club" topped black urban (and mainstream) play lists, after Jaguar Wright's awesome debut Denials, Delusions and Decisions went unnoticed, I said enough is enough. Will R&B ever be interesting again? Or is the music, as writer Nelson George suggested years ago, really dead?

Musiq is sweetly modest. xxHis sound and lyrics reflect that. He's one of the most genuinely soulful artists to emerge in R&B in quite some time. His two albums -- Aijuswanaseing (I Just Wanna Sing) and Juslisen (Just Listen) -- have sold more than a million copies apiece. (The latter debuted at No. 1 last spring.) Then there are the Grammy nominations, the four Billboard Music Awards, the sold-out club dates. In just three years, the 25-year-old Philadelphia native has amassed enough critical and commercial success to inflate anybody's ego. But, please, Musiq has no time for the "star thing."

I just want to set the mood here, get everything relaxed." That's Kyle, Will Downing's impeccably manicured manager. He lights a scented "sensuality" tea candle as the two of you sit in a quiet corner of the empty reception area in D.C.'s Westin Grand Hotel. His client and longtime friend, one of modern R&B's smoothest baritones, is running a little late. But he'll be down soon. As you wait, Kyle offers you a drink and pulls out his sleek laptop, on which he softly plays Downing's silk-and-satin music.

It's a voice from another time, one that could only spring from the greasiest, funkiest wells of the South. The voice belongs to Anthony Hamilton, a Charlotte, N.C., native, and one of the best soul singers to come along in a long time. He was a headliner last night at the African-American Heritage Festival, the annual three-day celebration of music, food and merchandise at Oriole Park at Camden Yards. (Maze and Frankie Beverly were the other headliners on the main stage last night.) Under a kind sun, the aroma of fried fish and funnel cakes riding the occasional cool breezes, Hamilton changed from a modern bluesman to a Southern black preacher, delivering what felt like an exhilarating, hourlong sermon about surviving heartbreak.

Loren Hill and his partners want to build a music "mecca" in the Baltimore-Washington area, and the Oakland Mills village resident's steamy -- and controversial -- hit song, "Freak Like Me," may have been the start of it.The single for rhythm-and-blues singer Adina Howard was a switch from the usually reverent songs that Mr. Hill, 27, and his Shoe Soul Entertainment Group had written before. But it suddenly put them in the limelight.The song rocketed to No. 2 on the R & B singles chart last year, selling 1.8 million copies for Atlanta-based East/West records In his Autumn Crest apartment last week, Mr. Hill sat beneath the framed platinum record he got for the million copies "Freak Like Me" has sold and three framed gold records for more than 500,000 copies of "Do You Wanna Ride" -- which he also wrote for Ms. Howard's debut album -- that have been sold.

These days, when young soul singers set out to work the groove, they seem to take the term literally. They grunt, they holler, they shout, they wail. And when they really want to show their stuff, they dress up the melody with all sorts of acrobatic ululation, as if under the impression that singing was some form of athletic competition.But when Luther Vandross works a groove, he barely breaks a sweat. His singing is so smooth and assured that it appears almost effortless -- as if he could toss off an entire album more easily than most of us could hum a melody.

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. -- They flocked to the racetrack at 6: 45 yesterday on a hot summer morning to watch him in his final dress rehearsal. And they saw the great Cigar make a regal farewell appearance before flying 3,000 miles on another journey into history.Cigar races Saturday in the $1 million Pacific Classic at Del Mar, near San Diego, trying to break Citation's 16-race winning streak. He lost one of his chief rivals during a workout yesterday morning at Del Mar, when Soul of the Matter came back lame with a strained suspensory ligament in the right front leg.Soul of the Matter's trainer, Richard Mandella, said he wasn't certain yet but, "I'm afraid it's the end of his career."

Regardless of one's beliefs, this is the season of hope. This time of year, we each hearken to the same seasonal chord: the dawning of the light and the promise of the New Year. Emily Dickinson (Dickinson, Pocket Poets series, Alfred A. Knopf, 26 pages, $12.50) wrote, "Hope is the thing with feathers, that perches in the soul." In her inimitable way, the poet put her finger right upon it: Hope is perhaps the most elusive of all human traits; it can leave at any moment, fly out from our souls, never to be coaxed back.

Let me begin by confessing that I really enjoy the Maryland State Fair, which in some circles is akin to confessing you really enjoy dabbing a little bootblack under both eyes and picking off toads with a .22.The relentlessly hip may sneer that the 111th edition of the fair, which began its annual 10-day run yesterday in Timonium, now threatens to achieve the quaintness factor of an "I Like Ike" button.Yet these people have never spent 45 minutes, as I did a few years ago, riveted by the action at the Guess Your Age and Weight!