The Race of Sound

In The Race of Sound Nina Sun Eidsheim traces the ways in which sonic attributes that might seem natural, such as the voice and its qualities, are socially produced. Eidsheim illustrates how listeners measure race through sound and locate racial subjectivities in vocal timbre—the color or tone of a voice. Eidsheim examines singers Marian Anderson, Billie Holiday, and Jimmy Scott as well as the vocal synthesis technology Vocaloid to show how listeners carry a series of assumptions about the nature of the voice and to whom it belongs. Outlining how the voice is linked to ideas of racial essentialism and authenticity, Eidsheim untangles the relationship between race, gender, vocal technique, and timbre while addressing an undertheorized space of racial and ethnic performance. In so doing, she advances our knowledge of the cultural-historical formation of the timbral politics of difference and the ways that comprehending voice remains central to understanding human experience, all the while advocating for a form of listening that would allow us to hear singers in a self-reflexive, denaturalized way

The Power of Listening to Voices: An Interview with Nina Sun Eidsheim

On Thursday, May 20th 2021, Nina Sun Eidsheim delivered a keynote address as part of the 2021 Listening, Sound, Agency symposium. Titled “Re-writing Algorithms for Just Recognition: From Digital Aural Redlining to Accent Activism,” she argued that “voice- and listening technologies carry and reproduce the same social bias, discrimination, and racism […] as Kodak film and HP cameras [which] were calibrated for white skin colour.” Elaborating on this important research, Nina generously answered some questions about her current projects and interests, providing poignant backstory to her keynote, and inviting all readers to events at her UCLA PEER Lab in the next weeks and months

Voice as a technology of selfhood : towards an analysis of racialized timbre and vocal performance

In this dissertation I examine the production of race through sound in general and vocal timbre in particular, and investigate how the construction of the black voice-- against the backdrop of the normative white--in opera, spirituals, and popular music reflects deeply-held American ideas about race. Which processes have contributed to the racialized perception and reification of timbre? What are some of the social and political processes embedded in the cultural capital possessed by certain vocal timbres in specific cultural contexts and various historical periods? I trace modern vocal pedagogy to its origin in colonial ideology, and the concept of a classical African-American vocal timbre from Marian Anderson to the spiritual in the abolitionist era. Investigating the vocal synthesis software Vocaloid, I uncover the macro politics of race and gender as they are materialized in the micro politics of sound: dominant race and gender relations are reproduced through electronic music products and tools. My study of the ways in which producers have framed the African-American jazz and ballad singer Jimmy Scott--as, most saliently, a woman, and as symbolizing death--offers insights into how nonconforming African-American masculinities are desired and consumed. This dissertation ultimately investigates the performative and corporeal aspects of the singing voice, considering these phenomena in terms which involve both performers and audiences. As a consequence, I have shifted the focus of inquiry from the sound of singing--which I term timbre sonic--to the physical act of forming that sound--timbre corporeal--and proposed an investigation of the choreography of vocal timbr

Desktop Simulation: Towards a New Strategy for Arts Technology Education

For arts departments in many institutions, technology education entails prohibitive equipment costs, maintenance requirements and administrative demands. There are also inherent pedagogical challenges: for example, recording studio classes where, due to space and time constraints, only a few students in what might be a large class can properly observe and try out the procedures. These and other practical and pedagogical considerations when teaching using hardware may suggest that conventional studios may not provide the best learning environment. In this paper I suggest that desktop simulation may not only help to solve the aforementioned problems, but can contribute to the creation of a cooperative learning environment

From “Mama” to 0s and 1s : voicing and listening in the time of Covid

Prof. Nina Sun Eidsheim is from the Department of Musicology, UCLA, and University of California Humanities Research Institute. Entering academia as a singer, I’ve examined voice, race, and sound from a material and practice-based perspective. I’ve argued that a given voice is not “personal” or “singular,” but collective. That is, each person’s voice is made up of both the sound of their evolving material body and the sound of the socio-cultural pressures under which it was formed, and performs. To a large extent, these pressures are so strong that it is inconceivable for most people to flout them; repercussions include not being recognized, and even being shunned, by a community to which they wish to belong. For some, this can be a matter of life and death. Each vocal community’s listening pedagogy is like a panopticon ear. The panoptican ear coopts the sensorium and is programmed into technology. Referring to examples from the work of actor and play write, Anna Deveare Smith, I will to draw lines from a voice communities’ vocal technique, via the essentializing of the vocal sounds and style, to “confirmation” and amplification through listening pedagogy, including in code. As a small start, in this conversation, I propose concrete measures to turn the skill of the panoptican ear—a skill we all have without necessarily knowing we have it—from an instrument invested in whiteness to a sharp antiracist tool. This talk was originally presented at the online research training workshop Digital Humanities, Pandemic Futures on 23 Oct 2020, co-organised by Centre for Cultural Research and Development, Lingnan University, and the University of California Humanities Research Institute

The Race of Sound: Listening, Timbre, and Vocality in African American Music

In The Race of Sound Nina Sun Eidsheim traces the ways in which sonic attributes that might seem natural, such as the voice and its qualities, are socially produced. Eidsheim illustrates how listeners measure race through sound and locate racial subjectivities in vocal timbre—the color or tone of a voice. Eidsheim examines singers Marian Anderson, Billie Holiday, and Jimmy Scott as well as the vocal synthesis technology Vocaloid to show how listeners carry a series of assumptions about the nature of the voice and to whom it belongs. Outlining how the voice is linked to ideas of racial essentialism and authenticity, Eidsheim untangles the relationship between race, gender, vocal technique, and timbre while addressing an undertheorized space of racial and ethnic performance. In so doing, she advances our knowledge of the cultural-historical formation of the timbral politics of difference and the ways that comprehending voice remains central to understanding human experience, all the while advocating for a form of listening that would allow us to hear singers in a self-reflexive, denaturalized way

Desktop Simulation: Towards a New Strategy for Arts Technology Education

For arts departments in many institutions, technology education entails prohibitive equipment costs, maintenance requirements and administrative demands. There are also inherent pedagogical challenges: for example, recording studio classes where, due to space and time constraints, only a few students in what might be a large class can properly observe and try out the procedures. These and other practical and pedagogical considerations when teaching using hardware may suggest that conventional studios may not provide the best learning environment. In this paper I suggest that desktop simulation may not only help to solve the aforementioned problems, but can contribute to the creation of a cooperative learning environment

The Race of Sound

In The Race of Sound Nina Sun Eidsheim traces the ways in which sonic attributes that might seem natural, such as the voice and its qualities, are socially produced. Eidsheim illustrates how listeners measure race through sound and locate racial subjectivities in vocal timbre—the color or tone of a voice. Eidsheim examines singers Marian Anderson, Billie Holiday, and Jimmy Scott as well as the vocal synthesis technology Vocaloid to show how listeners carry a series of assumptions about the nature of the voice and to whom it belongs. Outlining how the voice is linked to ideas of racial essentialism and authenticity, Eidsheim untangles the relationship between race, gender, vocal technique, and timbre while addressing an undertheorized space of racial and ethnic performance. In so doing, she advances our knowledge of the cultural-historical formation of the timbral politics of difference and the ways that comprehending voice remains central to understanding human experience, all the while advocating for a form of listening that would allow us to hear singers in a self-reflexive, denaturalized way

Speak-to-Write from Multiple Perspectives, as Method

One of the practice-based research methods that excites me the most today is to work with writing as a practice, and as a practice-based research method. The technology of writing can be very misleading, especially when that writing is typed using a word processing program. When using this tool, writing looks the same whether it represents a stream of consciousness, a first draft, or a final proof. Because of this, I have found that I hold myself to the standard of the final version, which of course completely freezes me up. If we are always aiming for the final version, there is not much room for thinking, making errors, going sideways and backward and forward again. There is only the guaranteed feeling of failure.In response, graphic designer Juliette Bellocq and I have developed a set of writing exercises that address these two limitations, as I have come to know writing from my training as an academic. In this piece, we share our exercise, 1,000 Ways Home. It is a non-linear process of thinking and writing. It also offers the alchemy of communicating in the presence of another person who pays close attention. We call our process speak-to-write

NOISE-SOUND-MUSIC : a research training workshop : day 1

It is not enough to perceive the world as legible or visible. Instead, we need to understand its audibility. We explore how noise is part of modernity, how noise comes to be reconstituted as sound, and how ‘musical noise’ emerges. Attentive to our location in Hong Kong, and to the contemporary emergence of new forms of political subjectivity relating to voicing and being heard, we want to discuss transitions from cognitive listening to feeling-listening; also issues of silence and silencing. We elaborate the meaning of resonance as referring to points of connection and engagement (Hong Kong in the World), and emphasize the importance of “listening to how we listen”. Day 1: A sound art event at Tai Kwun, curated by Dayang Yraola, and including leading HK sound artists Cheuk Wing Nam (Wing), Dennis Wong (aka Sinned), and Nelson Hiu. The performance is to be followed by a discussion led by Soundpocket founder Yang Yeung and sound theorist/musician Nina Sun Eidsheim