“Men Don’t Sing Soprano”

Flaming? ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 70-86
Author(s):  
Alisha Lola Jones
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Live Performance ◽  
Gender Binary ◽  
Vocal Qualities ◽  
Gospel Singing ◽  
A Site

Male soprano sound in gospel choral participation has come to be a locus for scrutiny, representing a site for the vocalized performance of identity. Drawing on a case study of African-American countertenor Patrick Dailey and an ethnography of his live performance, chapter 2 observes a black countertenor’s embodiment of gendered sound and the peculiar vocal qualities that are socioculturally perceived to signify a man’s queer potential. African-American gospel singing challenges the gender binary framework that the American public expects of men as singing low and women as singing high. Dailey’s performance engages African-American audiences through various types of cultural familiarity to portray competency as a worship leader and trained artist.

Singing High

2019 ◽  
pp. 34-51
Author(s):  
Alisha Lola Jones
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Sacred Music ◽  
Art Music ◽  
Cultural Performance ◽  
Dual Processes ◽  
Live Performance ◽  
African American Churches ◽  
Western Art ◽  
American Churches

Drawing on a case study of African American countertenor Patrick Dailey and an ethnography of his live performance, this chapter is an ethnomusicological assessment of his social and theological navigation of gendered vocal sound. African American gospel singing challenges the binary gender framework that the American public expects, with men singing low and women singing high. As a man who sings high, Dailey has to demonstrate performance competence in African American worship. Dailey deftly negotiates the tensions and intersections between these dual processes of musical performance. He does so with an aspiration to deliver a presentation that is what he refers to as “anointed”: music that is from and for God. Dailey’s performance also engages African American audiences’ various types of cultural familiarity to portray competency as a worship leader and trained artist. Thus, while making a mark in sacred music history, more generally, Patrick Dailey’s performance reveals the subtle ways Western art music conventions of classifying vocalists are utilized and revised in the interpretation of cross-cultural performance in African American churches.

CONTEXTUALIZING PALIMPSEST OF COLLECTIVE MEMORY IN AN URBAN HERITAGE SITE: Case Study of Chahar Bagh, Shiraz - Iran

2015 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 218 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leila Mahmoudi Farahani ◽  
Marzieh Setayesh ◽  
Leila Shokrollahi
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Active Part ◽  
Collective Memories ◽  
Cultural Life ◽  
Urban Heritage ◽  
Heritage Site ◽  
Historical Sites ◽  
A Site ◽  
Historical Centre

A landscape or site, which has been inhabited for long, consists of layers of history. This history is sometimes reserved in forms of small physical remnants, monuments, memorials, names or collective memories of destruction and reconstruction. In this sense, a site/landscape can be presumed as what Derrida refers to as a “palimpsest”. A palimpsest whose character is identified in a duality between the existing layers of meaning accumulated through time, and the act of erasing them to make room for the new to appear. In this study, the spatial collective memory of the Chahar Bagh site which is located in the historical centre of Shiraz will be investigated as a contextualized palimpsest, with various projects adjacent one another; each conceptualized and constructed within various historical settings; while the site as a heritage is still an active part of the city’s cultural life. Through analysing the different layers of meaning corresponding to these adjacent projects, a number of principals for reading the complexities of similar historical sites can be driven.

An Example to Us All: Child Development and Identity Construction in Early 20th-Century Playgrounds

10.1068/a3237 ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 599-616 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth A Gagen
Keyword(s):  
Child Development ◽  
Public Space ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
Development Theory ◽  
Gender Identities ◽  
Construction Of Identity ◽  
A Site ◽  
Us Cities

At the turn of the 20th century, children's play came under new and heightened scrutiny by urban reformers. As conditions in US cities threatened traditional notions of order, reformers sought new ways to direct urban-social development. In this paper I explore playground reform as an institutional response that aimed to produce and promote ideal gender identities in children. Supervised summer playgrounds were established across the United States as a means of drawing children off the street and into a corrective environment. Drawing from literature published by the Playground Association of America and a case study of playground management in Cambridge, MA, I explore playground training as a means of constructing gender identities in and through public space. Playground reformers asserted, drawing from child development theory, that the child's body was a conduit through which ‘inner’ identity surfaced. The child's body became a site through which gender identities could be both monitored and produced, compelling reformers to locate playgrounds in public, visible settings. Reformers' conviction that exposing girls to public vision threatened their development motivated a series of spatial restrictions. Whereas boys were unambiguously displayed to public audiences, girls' playgrounds were organised to accommodate this fear. Playground reformers' shrewd spatial tactics exemplify the ways in which institutional authorities conceive of and deploy space toward the construction of identity.

scholarly journals Vera Lynn on Screen: Popular Music and the ‘People's War’

2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 245-270 ◽  
Author(s):  
KATE GUTHRIE
Keyword(s):  
Popular Music ◽  
Art Music ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
A Site ◽  
Second World

AbstractBy the outbreak of the Second World War in Britain, critics had spent several decades negotiating the supposed distinctions between highbrow and lowbrow culture, as recent scholarship has shown. What has received comparatively little attention is how the demands of wartime living changed the stakes of the debate. This article addresses this lacuna, exploring how war invited a reassessment of the relative merits of art and popular music. Perhaps the most iconic British singer of the period, Vera Lynn provides a case study. Focusing on her first film vehicle,We'll Meet Again(1942), I explore how Lynn's character mediated the highbrow/lowbrow conflict – for example, by presenting popular music as a site of community, while disparaging art music for its minority appeal. In so doing, I argue, the film not only promoted Lynn's star persona, but also intervened in a broader debate about the value of entertainment for a nation at war.

Embodied interactions: Towards an exploration of the expressive and narrative potential of performance costume through wearable technologies

Scene ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 179-196 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sofia Pantouvaki
Keyword(s):  
Smart Materials ◽  
Costume Design ◽  
The Body ◽  
Wearable Electronics ◽  
Live Performance ◽  
Wearable Technologies ◽  
Opening Ceremony ◽  
Interactive Interfaces ◽  
Specific Fragment

The use of smart materials and wearable electronics has rapidly expanded in the field of fashion, introducing new interactive qualities of surfaces, materials and garments. In fashion garments, the performative environment functions as an abstract site for experimentation, expression and communication of the wearer through the intelligent garment. However, there is still limited use of embodied technologies in the field of performance costume for text-based and music-based performance, with the exception of integrated lighting technologies, currently broadly used in musical performance. This article provides a critical review of specific examples of technology-led garments in live performance, and uses a specific fragment from the Athens 2004 Olympic Games Opening Ceremony as a case study to highlight how technologies embedded in costume can create interactive interfaces between the body of the performer and the environment – the space, the other performers, the audience – becoming a transmitter and receiver of emotions, experiences and meanings in innovative ways. By analysing this case, as well as by posing questions, this article aims at generating a discourse on the expressive and narrative potential of the use of intelligent materials and embodied technologies within the creative practice of costume design.

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