Nina Sun Eidsheim, The Race of Sound

The question of how to de-essentialize the concept of the voice may seem a theoretical exercise, but Nina Sun Eidsheim shows in her book The Race of Sound its important political stakes, offering both an analysis of racialized receptions of voices and a theory of voice and listening, with case studies coming from such wide-ranging fields as opera, jazz and voice synthesis software.The book starts with elaborate ontological, epistemological and methodological considerations -in line with the author's concern that misconceptions about voice perpetuate racialized notions of voice."[I]f we think about this problem simply through questions around race, and avoid examining basic understandings of voice, we will fail to get to the root of how categories, including race, are constructed through vocal timbre" (p.40).Central in Eidsheim's theoretical framework are "three correctives" and her notions of "listening to listening", "figure of sound", "the practice of the pause" and "critical performance practice".The theoretical considerations and concepts exposed in the introduction come back throughout the book and acquire depth in the case studies

Acoustics · Active listening · Art · Musical · Sociology · Timbre · Visual arts · Communication · Diverse Musicological Studies · Gender Studies · Music History and Culture · Musicology and Musical Analysis