MUS1141H: Ethnomusicology of Voice

This seminar explores the manifold meanings and practices of "voice" from ethnomusicological and anthropological perspectives. We consider how different voices have been created and evolved over time — polite, urbane, mature, feminine, masculine, modern, ethnonational voices, country voices, and so on — under the influence of listeners, technology, political economy, and the environment. How do relations between voice and identity vary across cultures? How do people strategically transformation their voices over time and in everyday life, and to what ends? We investigate the different voices that individuals employ in the course of life — markedly different singing and speaking voices, voices of authority and obsequiousness, voices that announce, childlike voices, voices that speak to children, racialized, gendered, classed voices. We survey ethnographic, historical, and analytical approaches to the voice.

0.50
St. George