Oooh Melisma! Oooh Misery!

There’s a pestilence afoot in our fair land, and it’s infected million-selling vocalists, “American Idol” contestants and singers of “The Star Spangled Banner” at sporting events from sea to shining sea.

And its name is…“melisma”! (Cue scary music.)

The musical term may be a new one on you, but if you’ve heard Mariah Carey, Jennifer Hudson or Beyonce (and, unfortunately, that’s almost unavoidable), you’ve heard melisma.

Derived from the Greek word “melos,” meaning melody, melisma is the intoning of a single syllable between several different notes, usually at the end of a verse. (Think of how singers stretch the word “free” while caterwauling the national anthem as your five-dollar ballpark beer gets warm.)

Melismatic singing was handed down from one ancient religious practice to another, starting with the Greeks’ Eleusinian Mysteries, then on to the Muslims, Hindus, Jews and eventually winding up in Western Europe’s Gregorian chants.

Probably the most iconic rendering of melismatic singing is the Christmas carol “Angels We Have Heard on High,” where the “o” in the word “gloria” goes on longer than I’m sure yours truly ever will. Another extended example is from Handel’s “Messiah,” in which the word “born” in the choral work “For Unto Us a Child is Born,” is trilled for a strangulating 57 notes.

The point of melisma in religious practice is to induce a hypnotic state in the listener. Today, the point seems to be the inducement of a full-bore stupor.

Melisma made its way into America’s pop mainstream through gospel music, introduced by such R&B singers as Sam Cooke, Aretha Franklin and Stevie Wonder, who made their vocal bones in the Baptist church. Adapting the sacred into the secular, these singers used a deft hand with melisma, putting the vocal technique at the service of the heart and soul of the song, not the other way around. The pop singers who currently rule the charts have turned what should be the icing on the cake into the whole damned dessert. No wonder every “American Idolator” strains their chords to emulate these goddesses of gargle, or why lyricists rest on their laurels, safe in the knowledge that the words don’t really matter much because they can barely be understood.

Just like a kid who throws her arms in the air while riding a bike and shrieks, “Look Mom, no hands!” so do today’s divas hope to dazzle with long-suffering syllables and exhibitionist acrobatics.

I think it’s time they put the training wheels back on.