Vocal Production and Culture

Préface J'ai écrit ce petit livre pour partager les résultats de mes recherches afin de savoir comment les grands chanteurs ont produit ce magnifique chant qui les a rendus fameux. Il était important pour moi de découvrir leurs secrets dans le but de sauver ma vie de chanteuse. Dans mes recherches, j'ai trouvé bien plus que des réponses techniques. J'en suis arrivée à découvrir des hommes et des femmes consciencieux de partager leurs connaissances et leur enthousiasme à propos d'un chant beau et expressif. C'était un monde où ils étaient libres de discuter sans honte de la beauté et de la signification d'être un artiste. Leurs écrits ont nourri mon esprit de concepts essentiels comme : pourquoi nous chantons et nos responsabilités en tant que chanteur.

Singer-songwriter Björk, the most famous Icelander since explorer Leif Eriksson, has been met with both praise and criticism, almost always directed at her difference – from Westerners, pop musicians, adults, even from humans. Known for her innovative, expressive music and quirky persona, Björk both rebels against conformity and yet is drawn to problematic concepts such as nationalism, multiculturalism, and gender essentialism. 

As star musical guest at the 2004 Summer Olympics Opening Ceremony, she exposed the international audience to Iceland’s feminist nationalist imagery in a message of peace.  Embodying Nordic scholar Eiríkur Magnússon’s 1864 nationalist icon “Iceland as a Mountain Woman,” Björk became Mother Ocean, uniting countries and athletes as stemming from one source, a metaphor made almost material through her dress, which unfurled as she sang, enveloping the entire field of athletes.  Icelandic feminism developed simultaneously with the move for national independence (begun in the late 18th century and eventually achieved in 1944), through an embrace of traditional gender symbolism that made space for maternal perspectives in sovereign, ethical governance.  However, Björk’s Olympics message utilized this legacy not to invest in nationalism but to perform peaceful world unity as a feminist reaction to the aftermath of 9/11/01. 

Her performance draws on a gender difference model unpopular with contemporary critical theory but informed by both Icelandic feminism’s challenging relationship with nationalism as well as the body-politics of the American Vietnam War-era counterculture.  I use this context to analyze Björk’s avant-garde a capella album Medúlla (2004), which contains her Olympic song “Oceania” as well as two songs “Pleasure is All Mine” and “Mouth’s Cradle” ground-breaking for their sensual maternalist aesthetic, which map out a nuanced politics of peace to challenge both terrorism and counter-terrorism.  Themes of motherhood, terror, and mortality are further developed in her subsequent work, the protest album Volta (2007), which features an array of instrumental collaborators (questionably) symbolizing the artist’s sense of humans as “one tribe.” A collaboration with Malian kora virtuoso Toumani Diabate, “Hope,” explores the troubling Western media reactions to a pregnant Palestinian suicide bomber.

Often misunderstood as an elf-like outsider to human experience or a hysterical extension of Iceland’s dramatic landscape, Björk is musically exploring difficult concepts of nationalism, difference feminism, and multiculturalism to address the most challenging and important questions of our time – the significance of identity and the future of humankind in a culture of war.

In the Medieval and Renaissance eras of Western music (400-1600), males (both men and boys) only were allowed to sing in church and on the professional stage due to both patristic and patriarchic reasons.  During this time, a singer typically identified with the part that he sang in the music: soprano, alto, tenor, bass (for example, a soprano was called a soprano because he predominantly sang the soprano line) (Sherr, 1987, p. 453).  However, in the century spanning the 1600s many changes in society and culture created a paradigmatic shift in the personnel used for professional vocal performance by which castrati and women began to infiltrate the church and operatic scenes.1  In the wake of this shift, a new discourse surfaced surrounding singers.  Particularly due to the transfer of previously male-oriented terminology onto women, singers began to identify with and to be identified by the voice itself (and by logical extension, the body) instead of the music, so that, by 1700 a new system of classification had developed to differentiate singers.  The following paper chronicles the development of this vocal discourse and provides a framework to help understand the forces that led to this development and how other domains of influence have contributed to the current state of vocal classification.  Using several texts by Michel Foucault, one can analyze the ways in which the Enlightenment ideologies of medicalization of the body, segmentation/confinement, natural/unnatural, technology of the body, discipline of the body, power/knowledge, and discourse genesis help to explain both the incorporation of the female into vocal discourse and performance as well as marginalize and popularize certain male voices.  Due to capitalism, industrialization, and the ensuing class distinctions, vocal classification propounded upon itself.  Additionally, the bourgeoisie of the 18th and 19th century contributed to the fetishization and commodification of the professional singer.  Finally, the current state of vocal classification and identity is due for another major discursive transformation as a result of both the construction and liberation of sexual identity and the technological advancements in recorded, digitized, virtualized and “cyberized” voices.

Creative production is increasingly dependent on, and almost inseparable from, digital technologies. At the same time, the landscapes of our everyday lives are defined by our relationships to digital and networked cultures more than ever before. VØ1CE: Vocal Aesthetics in Digital Arts and Media, edited by Norie Neumark, Ross Gibson and Theo Van Leeuwen, is a collection of essays dedicated to the mediated voice in digital cultures -both the artistic and the quotidian. This book will appeal to readers with an interest in the many ways that the voice has been shaped by new technologies and concomitantly, how the voice, language and vocalization have also contributed to the shape of digital cultures. Featuring nineteen chapters authored by a multidisciplinary array of scholars and creative practitioners, VØ1CE offers a comprehensive overview of digital technologies and the human/posthuman and embodied/disembodied voice. Divided into four main sections -'Capturing VOICE'; 'Performing VOICE'; 'Reanimating VOICE'; and 'At the Human Limits of VOICE' -this anthology brings together critical perspectives from fields such as philosophy, history, anthropology, musicology, psychology, media and communications, film studies and gaming studies, among others.

Quantification of the elastic properties of the human vocal fold provides invaluable data for researchers deriving mathematical models of phonation, developing tissue engineering therapies, and as normative data for comparison between healthy and scarred tissue. This study measured the shear modulus of excised cadaver vocal folds from 20 subjects. Twenty freshly excised human larynxes were evaluated less than four days post-mortem. They were split along the saggital plane and mounted without tension. Shear modulus was obtained by two different methods. For method 1 cyclical shear stress was applied transversely to the mid-membranous portion of the vocal fold, and shear modulus derived by applying a simple shear model. For method 2 the apparatus was configured as an indentometer, and shear modulus obtained from the stress/strain data by applying an established analytical technique. Method 1 shear model for male larynxes yielded a range from 246 to 3,356 Pa, with a mean value of 1,008 and SD of 380. The range for female larynxes was 286-3,332 Pa, with a mean value of 1,237 and SD of 768. Method 2 indentometer model for male larynxes yielded a range from 552 to 2,741 Pa, with a mean value of 1,000 and SD of 460. The range for female larynxes was 509-1,989 Pa, with a mean value of 1,332 and SD of 428. We have successfully demonstrated two methodologies that are capable of directly measuring the shear modulus of the human vocal fold, without dissecting out the vocal fold cover tissue. The sample size of nine female and 11 male larynxes is too small to validate a general conclusion. The high degree of variability in this small cohort of subjects indicates that factors such as age, health status, and post-mortem delay may be significant; and that there is range of 'normality' for vocal fold tissue.

The concepts of Medieval Christian plainchant and embodiment are not often associated in academic circles.  In the disciplines of ethnomusicology and anthropology of religion, the act of chanting is often interpreted as an attempt at communion with the spiritual world: an embodiment of the metaphysical.  However, scholars have shown that, unlike tribal chant or chant of Far-eastern religions--the origins of which for the most part predate Christ--Medieval Christian plainchant developed by quite different means (although not for different purposes) than that of non-Judeo-Christian traditions.  Besides, the study of the embodiment of religious music should not necessarily limit itself to spiritual matters when other facets of culture are present within religious practice: such as community, gender, and power constructs.  At times, the field of historical musicology can seem limited in regards to techniques of analysis and methodology, but new trends in humanities research--such as embodiment--should not be excepted when considering the music of Western Europe.  In an effort to further understand how the music of early Christian Europe related to its society, one must elicit the assistance of extra-historical disciplines.  In his article, "Embodiment as a Paradigm for Anthropology," Thomas Csordas demonstrates that culture is indelibly etched on our bodies, not only on our brains; he shows that this process of embodiment--or, the point of articulation between person, body, and the outside world--manifests itself in the collective output of the society.  Many ethnomusicologists have appropriated this paradigm in an effort to bridge the gap between Western and non-Western musics.  A consideration of the myriad differences between contemporary Western culture and that of over a century ago makes early Christian and Medieval music likely candidates for similar treatment.  This paper attempts to approximate modern methodology and early Christian plainchant by showing how various aspects of early Christian society are embodied in its music.  The discussion begins with a phenomenological analysis of chant performance in an effort to detail the attributes specific to and inherent within monophonic, collectively-sung, Medieval Christian chant performance.  Two hypotheses will be asserted.  Firstly, the unique manner in which chant is performed represents cultural aspects of the early Christian life, particularly that of monks.  Secondly, the composition of chant throughout the Medieval period was influenced by the politically and patriarchically-influenced, or masculine, elements of notated rhythm and tonality, overshadowing its earlier association with arhythmic structure, a freer tonality, and melismatic--perhaps even ecstatic--feminine attributes.