Music and Voice:
An Annotated Bibliography
Luca Gambirasio, Lily Cresswell, and Eva Yang
Introduction
Although voice in music is commonly associated with singing, it is just one part of this complex subject. The voice is the most personal and intimate instrument that humans have, and it makes sense that in common speech “to give voice” is a way of making something heard or audible that has not been before; often something deeply personal. Furthermore, in performance studies, scholars often analyze the voice as the embodied act of expression of one’s social condition and status, and as a way that people reach out to the world from within. Voice is a multivalent concept and hardly classifiable in a singular way. This is the main thread that we have followed in this bibliography, even though we have tackled the issue from various perspectives. This intrinsic duality of voice is described by Benson, Stover, and Snyder (2020) in their analysis of how actors use contrasting voices to perform different characters, thereby complicating issues around vocal categorization (Edwards, 2014).
The performative power of voice has long been intertwined with gender studies, and ethnomusicologists working at the intersection of these fields demonstrate that voice is an effective tool for empowerment and emancipation. Marlene Schäfers (2018), for example, focuses on how women performers within a Kurdish community in eastern Turkey, who represent a gender and ethnic minority who have often been silenced, have used their voices to create a sonic space in which they can exist. Lalita Du Perron (2002) considers the female voice of the Ṭhumrī genre in northern India, as well as the contrast between the erotic content of the lyrics and a patriarchal model of society that marks the expression of female sexuality as inappropirate. In a case study in Iceland, Robert Faulkner (2011) explores how some performers have tried to create a form of art that contrasts with stereotypical images of masculinity and national expression.
Scholars demonstrate that voice is also critical to articulating a sense of belonging, especially when singing is understood as a ritual practice to create or re-enact the status of a community. Fulvia Caruso (2021) explores these delicate dynamics in a refugee center in Northern Italy through a series of music workshops aimed to address the contrasting cultures and languages that dwell in such liminal spaces, while Leila Qashu (2019) describes a singing ritual in Ethiopia that is used as a conflict resolution practice to restore the community laws. Finally, Patrick Eisenlohr (2018) demonstrates how voice expresses collective faith, and Joshua Pilzer (2021) offers a musical analysis of speech to show how trauma is embodied and sounded out.
Annotated Bibliography
Benson, Elizabeth Ann, James Stover, and Tara Snyder. 2020. “Dual Roles, Dual Voices: Analyzing Vocal Function in Hamilton: An American Musical through the Estill Voice Model.” Voice and Speech Review 14 (1): 28–44.
In this article, Benson, Stover, and Snyder explore the hugely popular musical Hamilton from a fresh perspective. They examine eight characters in the play that are depicted by four actors, developing a concept that they call dual vocality. The actors transform both their roles and their voices after intermission: Peggy is played by the same actress as Maria Reynolds, Lafayette by the same actor as Thomas Jefferson, etc. While there is surely a wealth of analysis to be done on these dualities from a theatrical standpoint, the authors instead focus on the vocal aspects that enable the actors to perform their respective roles with such contrast.
This article delves into the anatomical structures of the vocal tract in order to understand how actors are able to achieve such differing tones across the two characters, obtaining the illusion of eight separate actors. The authors note the role of make-up, costume, and hairstyle in this performative function, however, this vocal analysis offers an added dimension of complexity when considering these characters’ transformations. Using methods of mapping to compare the vocal structures between the first and second roles of the respective actors, the authors provide a rich investigation into the contemporary phenomenon that is Hamilton. This article is of particular interest for those who wish to understand the relationship between scientific and/or biological dimensions of the voice and social theory, allowing for a comprehensive understanding of the topic within the frame of a relevant case study.
Caruso, Fulvia. 2021. “Voicing New Belongings: Composing Multilingual Songs in Italy’s Refugee Reception Centers.” In Music and Encounter at the Mediterranean Crossroads: A Sea of Voices, edited by Ruth F. Davis and Brian Oberlander, 20–38. New York: Routledge.
In this book chapter, Fulvia Caruso provides a detailed socio-musical analysis of the refugee crisis in Italy in the 2010s. The fieldwork on which it is based took place in a refugee center in Piacenza from 2015–2017. Refugees in such centers are often forced to share an overcrowded environment with people belonging to diverse communities and nationalities, and they are subject to confining laws while the slow Italian bureaucracy processes their refugee status applications. Caruso, aided by ethnomusicology students from the University of Pavia, describes in detail a series of participatory music-making workshops that were conducted in this refugee center to observe how the reality of this environment combined with multiculturalism affects the refugees’ musical experience.
Caruso presents the voice both literally and metaphorically. The aim of the workshops are not only to create “new refugee music,” but also to help the refugees to perform their hardship via participatory musical activities. Singing becomes a way to communicate the struggle of unemployment, for example, or how hard it is to settle in a country with notable cultural differences. Referring to the refugee centers as liminal spaces, the author focuses on using participatory musical activities to address the multilingualism that occurred in such an environment. The refugees’ limbo described here is in fact a place where various West African languages were spoken, as well as French as lingua franca, and ultimately Italian as the language of the hosting country. The musical workshops are aimed to facilitate the interaction between these contrasting languages and related socio-musical cultures and to facilitate the expression of traumatic emotions, giving voice to their refugee status.
Edwards, Darryl. 2014. “Was Johnny Cash a Tenor? Classifying Voice Types.” Canadian Music Educator 55 (3): 48–49.
Working from the perspective of voice classification and vocal types, Edwards begins this article with his own perspective on vocal categories. Edwards is the Artistic Director for the Center for Opera Studies in Italy, as well as a vocal trainer and tenor. In this piece, he outlines definitions, categorizations, and useful resources for those wishing to understand the concept of the voice more theoretically. In addition to this discussion, Edwards enters into a broader reflection on vocal categorization through drawing on his childhood memories of listening to country singer Johnny Cash. Despite the title of the essay, the aim of this text is not to put Cash into a vocal category as such, but rather to pose the question as a starting point for deeper theorization of the voice and its performance. When approaching this question, Edwards states: “Answer that, and you will have taken a step into the area that is the sometimes black and white, sometimes gray, but always fascinating adventure of classifying voices!” The answer may not be definitive, but the journey Edwards takes us on is certainly enjoyable. This essay offers an interesting take by thinking about the voices of students and vocal classification through one’s own personal experience.
Eisenlohr, Patrick. 2018. “Suggestions of Movement: Voice and Sonic Atmospheres in Mauritian Muslim Devotional Practices.” Cultural Anthropology 33 (1): 32-57.
In this article, anthropologist Patrick Eisenlohr highlights the increasing importance given to voice studies within the field of cultural anthropology. The author is concerned with the recitation of na’t, a form of devotional poetry usually sung in Urdu in honor of the Prophet Muhammad, which is very popular in South Asia and the South Asian Diasporas. Eisenlohr specifically focuses on this poetic genre as performed by Mauritian Muslims by drawing on Bakhtin’s framing of polyphony, observing the ways in which reciters combine their personal agency with those of inspired poets.
Eisenlohr draws on the neo-phenomenological concept of “atmospheres” as a theory of embodiment and sensorial perception. Atmospheres are considered an aesthetic phenomenon that occurs in-between subjects and objects, producers and receivers. The author discusses the concept’s application in vocal and sound studies to understand the effect of na’t on listeners in Islamic/religious settings. The atmospheres produced have tangible effects that envelop and affect the listeners’ bodies, as well as their sense of being in space. The author aims to contrast sonic affect theories with the use of an analytic theory of atmospheres in order to exemplify the somatic effect of this vocal genre, and to demonstrate that both the sonic and the discursive dimension of vocality depend on a specific historical and sociocultural world.
Faulkner, Robert. 2011. “Icelandic Men and Their Identity in Songs and Singing.” In Learning, Teaching, and Musical Identity: Voices across Cultures, edited by Lucy Green, 210–226. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
In this chapter, Faulkner explores the relationship between vocal practice and gender expression. Aiming to dispel the notion of male singers compromising their ‘masculine’ identities when engaging in certain forms of artistic expression in Iceland, this chapter uses ethnographic methods of exploration to compare two contrasting all-male singing groups, Stupid Bastards and Accent. Faulkner justifies his case-study choices through explaining how integral male vocal performance was to national identity after Iceland’s independence from Denmark in 1944. This text not only explores self-identity, but also identity in the broader context of the nation, with attention paid to the cultural traditions of Iceland as well as the more specific experiences of the individual.
What brings this chapter to life is the addition of excerpts of interviews with the vocalists, which Faulkner places in the text to concretely illustrate his investigation and keep the individuals’ stories ever present for the reader. One member of Stupid Bastards, Oddur, speaks of the interstices of combining his desire to be a priest with his singing practices. He suggests the separation of these two identities by referring to himself in third person when describing his passion: “Being Oddur is singing, acting, feeling, and meeting people.” In this chapter, Faulkner achieves an exploration that is both micro and macro in its scope, offering a rich narrative of these two Icelandic all-male groups to explore wider issues around gendered forms of expression and national identity through the voice.
Pilzer, Joshua. 2021. “Yi Suyong and the Quiet of ‘Korea’s Hiroshima.’” Ethnomusicology 65 (3):444-470.
Joshua Pilzer presents his study of music in everyday community life in South Korea. The article, while appearing in the journal Ethnomusicology, is also part of the forthcoming book Quietude: a Musical Anthropology of “Korea’s Hiroshima” and explains his particular approach to ethnomusicology. This field, he claims, does not necessarily have to be related to the study of music, but it can be used as a way to comprehend the world musically. Music, Pilzer says, should be intended as an “adverbial quality of perception,” that enables one to encounter and study non-musical phenomena as an ethnomusicologist. In this way, he suggests that scholars take into consideration the characteristics of everyday life from a musical perspective, and to study social life as if it were a musical performance.
In the article Pilzer introduces Yi Suyong, a Korean survivor of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, whose speech and actions are analyzed in musical terms. The author describes the voice of the interviewee in detail, giving notes about the softness and the tone of her voice, and about the rhythm and the pace of her speech, analyzing their embedded musicality. The performativity of the speech is taken into consideration too, as Pilzer frames this analysis in relation to the emotional content of the words, and the mood of the speaker. The author here finds a connection between these musical and vocal characteristics, and the discourse of endurance, restraint, and quietness of a person who grew up under authoritarianism and witnessed a humanitarian disaster.
Qashu, Leila. 2019. “Singing as Justice: Ateetee, an Arsi Oromo Women’s Sung Dispute Resolution Ritual in Ethiopia.” Ethnomusicology 63 (2): 247–78.
Based on both fieldwork studies and musico-poetic analyses, Qashu’s article focuses on the voices of Arsi Oromo community members and their ateetee rituals in Ethiopia. As one of the major ethnic groups in the Horn of Africa, the Oromo make up one-third of Ethiopia's population. While the gender roles are complex and gradually changing, scholars and activists have usually regarded the Arsi Oromo community as “patriarchal, patrilineal, and patrilocal” (250). At the same time, women's ateetee rituals have always been included in customary law, one of the systems to which women turn for support when asserting and defending their rights.
The ateetee ritual, according to Qashu, is a form of justice performed through the embodied act of singing. In this article, Qashu describes two main categories of the rituals: one is a prayer for rain, the other is a dispute resolution mechanism used when a woman experiences abuse, in which a local women's council will sing insults to the abuser and negotiate with the men’s council. Although there might be some preexisting disagreements between the women participating, the ateetee women usually leave their grievances aside for the duration of the ritual. In other words, the ritual unites women to fight together through singing as a force. According to the author, when asked whether the ateetee ritual is effective, many participants state that it functions better than government courts, which can be bureaucratic. Through the tradition of the dispute-resolution process, Qashu argues that the performing arts, speech, and final reconciliations constitute the ritual, and the community members “remember, reiterate, and readjust” the rules of society (270).
Schäfers, Marlene. 2018. “It Used to Be Forbidden: Kurdish Women and the Limits of Gaining Voice.” Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 14 (1): 3–24.
Drawing on her fieldwork with Kurdish women in the city of Van in Eastern Turkey, Schäfers’s article delves into the different spaces of audibility, going beyond the concepts of agency and repression to criticize the convention that regards voice as necessary evidence of empowerment. Using the examples of a concert on International Women’s Day in 2012 and another concert on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women in the same year, she describes the censoring of women’s voices and suggests moving beyond the dichotomy of speech and silence, as well as its use as a shorthand for empowerment and repression.
Schäfers argues that vocal agency is grounded in, but not limited to, the emotions elicited by voices, and that managing affect is a critical field of political struggle. Specifically in the context of the events analyzed in the paper, this pluralism opened a space for the visibility of women singers and provided a venue for the celebration of Kurdish culture. However, it also required the singers to restrict their voices acoustically and semantically in order to avoid violating the limitations of “speakability” established by “transnational women's rights discourses” and the “folklorization of Kurdish culture” (20). In articulating this process of social and cultural navigation by women singers, Schäfers argues that these voices are both repressed and agentive and that they are beyond the binary of audible and silent.