COMM620/Queering the Voice

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Contents 1 Open Questions 1.1 Barthes 1.2 Other singers 1.2.1 References 1.3 Wald 1.3.1 Todo 2 Connor, ventril 2.1 Todo 3 Auto tune disruptions

Open Questions

Barthes

Pheno/Geno division:

• Pheno-song is about signals
• Geno-song is about signs
• Am I having confusion about the nature of semiotics? Is semiotic necessarily distinct from language?
• He uses "expression" to mean Information Transfer
  • Not my typical understanding of this term
• Implies that the geno-type is somehow extra-cultural. Impossible?

Signifying: pre-lingual, emotional

• not communicative, expressive
• not transfer of language-bound meanings, information
• behavior

Signification, Tyranny of:

• Process of making language-bound meaning of signifiers
• e.g. interpreting lyrics
• Structure of signs(signifier, signified)

Positive censorship of mass culture:

• Is this relevant in a time of widespread access to production, distribution tools?
• Barthes criticizes the lack of emotion, the culture of listening but
  • doesn't account for the practical use value of a recording. to sing along, to color a room, to bring one's own emotional state to bear
  • feature, not a bug

F-D:

• Not feeling this lung/throat distinction
  • Lung is embodiment, materiality, rattle, life, death
  • Throat is constraint, weak point, culturally bound
• Also, soul/enjoyment seems a misfire

Why title the chapter "Rasch"?

Other singers

• Matti Salminen, opera, Finnish bass
• Nicolai Ghiaurov, opera, Bulgarian bass
• Boris Christoff, opera, Bulgarian bass

References

• When in B's career?
  • 1977, toward the very end (1980), published posthumously in english (1985).

• Charles Panzéra
  • Charles Panzéra - L'Invitation Au Voyage (1932)
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Panz%C3%A9ra

• Fischer-Dieskau
  • Fischer-Dieskau sings Gute Nacht from Schubert's Winterreise, 1966
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietrich_Fischer-Dieskau
  • "Notable for exceptional rhythmic sense and incisive diction"

• "German lied"
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lied
  • "songs composed to a German poem of reasonably high literary aspirations, most notably during the nineteenth century"
  • Shubert, Schumann

• "French mélodie"
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%A9lodie
  • "French equivalent of the German Lied"
  • Barthes mentions these composers:
    • Gabriel Fauré, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faur%C3%A9
    • Henri Duparc, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duparc
    • Achille-Claude Debussy, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debussy

• Two sung deaths
  • Boris Godunov, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Godunov_%28opera%29
    • Modest Mussorgsky, composer, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modest_Mussorgsky

• • Pelléas et Mélisande
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pell%C3%A9as_et_M%C3%A9lisande_%28opera%29#Act_5
  • Claude Debussy, composer

• Robert Schumann, "Kreisleriana"
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kreisleriana

• Connect intermezzo to the break?
• Émile Benveniste, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89mile_Benveniste

Wald

• How different from teenyboppers in any other time + place?
  • Following grunge, gangsta realness?
  • Deaths of Cobain, Pac/BIG; rape of Woodstock 96: Altamont 2.0?
• Teenybopper ascendence accompanies Bad Boy / No Limit / bling / ghetto fab

Written before Lance Bass came out

• How did discourse around his coming out support this thesis?

Many examples are grounded in rock. Missing instructive phenomena elsewhere in pop (country, hip hop)?

• How generalizable is the "good"/"bad" hierarchy of rock critics?
• How does sellout, under/overground, high/low distinction operate differently in 90s hip-hop?
  • I used to love HER, 1994

Overemphasis on lyrics in analyzing recordings, re: Barthes and grain (10)

Teenyboppers are expressing desire for a masculinity that hetero men have rejected

• Did grown up teenyboppers lead to metrosexuals?

Must talk about Karaoke

Todo

• Clips from Glee boyband episode?
• Backstreet clips, images
• Clips of karaoke
• Clips of drag shows
• Maglin, Nin Bauer and Perry, Donna, eds. _'Bad Girls'/'Good Girls': Women, Sex, and Power in the Nineties_. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996.
• Hall, Stuart. (1996) "What Is This 'Black' in Black Popular Culture?" _Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies_. Eds. David Morley and Kuan-Hsing Chen. New York: Routledge, 1996.
• Waksman, Steve. Instruments of Desire: The Electric Guitar and the shaping of Music Experience. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1999.
• Walser, Robert. Running With the Devil: Power, Gender, and Madness in Heavy Metal Music. Hanover, NH: Wesleyan UUniv Press, 1993.

Connor, ventril

Cybernetic reading of voicing? (8)

• Feedback loop

Hearing registers a new sound, eye asks, "From where?"

• The opposite is not so true (in humans, but perhaps the ordering of senses is different in animals?
• Dog doesn't "see" until he smells?

Todo

Radio ventriloquists (22)

• Edgar Bergen
• Peter Brought

Auto tune disruptions

1. Physical feats diminished (Mariah fireworks, virtuosity)
2. Lowering the bar to entry (same as above?)
3. Authenticity, unique, character
4. Not a record of an event but a techno-industrial product

How is virtuosity used?

• Spectrum? or Threshold?
• Domain specific
• Degree of technical skill
• Exceptional? Extreme?
• Is this confusing?
• Is there a better word?
• See: Wikipedia page, fluctuation in meaning?
  • Is this a swing back toward an earlier usage?
• Is it necessarily metaphorical outside of the "high" western classical domain?