Breaking voices : voice, subjectivity and fragmentation in popular music

PhD ThesisFour case studies from 'mainstream' popular music are used to explore the voice as a primary site for the construction of meaning in popular music, both as a vehicle for language and as an 'object' outside of or alongside language. The first chapter argues that the extensive use of overdubbing technology by the Carpenters forms part of their relationship with the 'geno-song', and that the cyborgian voice which emerges from such use of technology disrupts human-centred psychoanalytic models of subjective development. Finally, different recordings of 'Superstar' are analysed to show how different recordings of a song negotiate ideas of 'presence'. The second chapter outlines various sexually queer subjects presented by Madonna, and argues that the process of constant transformation challenges hegemonic Western notions of a unified 'self'. The chapter also argues that musical factors have underpinned her visual transformations, and that her vocality has suggested her maturation as an artist and challenged the ideology of 'voice' as a stable signifier of identity. A chapter on Eminem explores his simultaneous use of three distinct characters to play out different aspects of his own identity, and how his work represents and constructs masculinity. Specifically, the chapter argues that the use of language as a system does not easily parallel the masculinist content of the lyrics, but can instead be aligned with traditionally 'feminine' or feminising modes of writing. Moreover, according to a traditional gendered musical semiotics, the interface between language and music does not underline 'masculinity' in normative ways. The final chapter considers how ideas of 'self' and Other are negotiated in Elvis Impersonation. In particular, a model for understanding vocal impersonation is offered, using Freud's model of the ideal ego and Baudrillard's orders of simulacra. Finally, the chapter explores the representation and construction of masculinities in various examples of Elvis Impersonation.AHR

Instrument, gender and musical style associations in young children

Numerous studies have explored the relationship between musical instruments and their associations with a particular gender. This study focussed on the developing association between gender and musical instruments in young children and further explored the interaction between gender, instrument and musical style. The research was carried out on 65 participants aged three and four years old. Each participant took part in a short musical game which involved matching 14 musical excerpts with photographs of the individuals who might play the instruments represented within each excerpt. The research used a 2 (gender) × 2 (musical style) × 7 (instrument) factoral design in which a ‘feminine’ or ‘masculine’ instrument was featured playing in a ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’ associated style. Our results suggested that prominent gender stereotypes for some instruments do appear to exist in very young children whilst in other instruments, gender associations appear to be also linked to the musical style in which they are represented and possibly the performance context in which they are experienced

Transgender Tribute Bands and the Subversion of Male Rites of Passage through the Performance of Heavy Metal Music

This article looks at how by reversing gender expectations, female musicians are making use of musical texts associated with male artists to subvert and transgress the conventions of male bonding rituals at heavy metal concerts. Critics of tribute bands usually point to their lack of originality and their unashamed exploitation of other artists’ work. Indeed, many feel that this form of entertainment is responsible for limiting creativity and upholding a conservative hegemony of commercially successful popular music. However, this article shows that female tributes to male bands provide exciting opportunities for women to resist dominant cultural discourses, metanarratives and stereotypes, while allowing them to demonstrate their virtuoso music and performance skills. Previous studies of heavy metal music have uncovered the important role that this music and culture plays in providing a right of passage for young men and enforcing patriarchal masculinity. This article shows how female bands such as AC/DShe, The Iron Maidens and Lez Zeppelin use blank parody to disrupt the sacred codes of masculinity through their performance of gender and their enactment of the masculine-coded genre

'Out of Time: Anohni and transgendered/trans age transgression'

The 82-year-old Black Avant-garde artist Lorraine O’Grady stares out of a black screen, she is unclothed bar a pair of silver earrings and choker; her mouth is painted a bright vermilion red. She lip-synchs to Anohni’s single ‘Marrow’ taken from the 2016 album Hopelessness. This ageing Black female artist is Anohni’s avatar, the image that represents her within a popular audio-visual culture, circulating on YouTube. Anohni is a transgender musician whose recent 2016 and 2017 musical work and artistic collaborations emphasise intersectionality and feminism’s relationship with ecology. This chapter uses the music videos for Hopelessness and Paradise as a springboard from which to argue the complexity of transgressive potential in relation to ageing and ‘othered’ femininities. All except one of the videos use a similar method of inserting Anohni’s transgendered voice into the mouths of Black, ageing, non-normative women in what I argue is a strategy of displacement that doubles up the transgressive potential of Anohni’s work. She upsets a singular subjectivity through this process and also, if we think of her voice and its vocalisation as being some how out of sync, in so far as it is displaced, then her work also prioritises a sense of being ‘out of time’. The chapter works primarily with two of Judith Halberstam’s concepts from her 2005 writing on ‘Queer temporality’ where she argues for the concept of a ‘queer time’ that lies beyond the logics of heteronormative and capitalist temporal certitude and trajectory and for the ‘patina of transgression’ (p.19) that transgendered bodies suggest. It formulates how the audio-visual contributions of one transgendered artist ushers into popular culture versions of liminal and flexible subjectivities in relation to gender and age that also encompass race and sexuality. This is a lot to deal with but it uses O’Grady’s work on miscegenation ‘When Margins become Centers’ (CCVA exhibition, 10/2015 – 01/2016) and work on TimeSpace and ageing (May and Thrift, 2001; Moglen, 2008; Baars, 2012; Hawkins, 2016) to ask questions about the transgressive potential of both transgendered voices and of ageing bodies, whose presence is emblematic of a ‘queer time’ (p.4), a kind of temporality that is ‘wilfully eccentric’ (p.1) and subject to a non normative life-course