Vox Populi, Vox Divo

Chapter 2 examines a specific site of multivocality, a type of singing performance designated as “popera” or vocal “classical crossover.” Identifying the various aesthetic characteristics and preferred repertories of popera, the chapter integrates the experiences of several (mostly tenor) participants in well-known crossover productions and groups. Popera, in the end, is sold as a neoliberal expansion of consumer choice by virtue of conflation, courting the tastes of pop fans and opera fans alike in one place. And it provides an acoustic space for the reunion of classical and popular musics and their social registers, and for the negotiation of alterity.

Voice Control

Chapter 7 discusses gendered political and personal implications of voice loss. It examines the loss of voice through and mediated by technology. First, it traces a history in American cinema and the shifting sociopolitical landscapes in which it has projected its visions and auditions, where the transformation of voices—especially women’s— can be heard clearly. The singing voice in cinema has moved from symbolizing the vulnerability of identity and its susceptibility to manipulation, to embodying the affirmation of identity as a site of individual agency. Outside of cinema, voice loss in singers is subject to discourses no less suffused with ideas about identity and agency. Second, the chapter explores the loss of voice that one singer experienced by selling her voice to a digital sampling library.

The Journey

Chapter 6 discusses the ways in which four transgender singers understand their relationships with voice in extremely individual ways, and how shifts in vocality impact their senses of identity. Each singer who chooses transition—medically assisted or not—lives the process uniquely. Vocality has served different functions and generated different meanings for each of these singers, whose experiences collectively underline the idea of “transition” as an ongoing journey rather than a destination. This chapter presents the multivocal nature of transvocality not as merely double-voicednessand not inevitably about leaving one voice and one identity entirely behind for a newer, “truer” one. Instead, it is a space in which a fluid continuum of selfness, embodied and performed, vibrates differently in every throat.

Spiritual Multivocality

Chapter 5 deals with movements among styles of sacred and secular singing, focusing on the experiences of musicians who have performed across multiple religious contexts. The role of vocality in religious conversion is explored, in the experience of a singer and convert to Judaism. Other aspects of the chapter focus on the concept of intent in spiritual singing practices and the crossing of borders in the neoliberal religious marketplace. The late twentieth-century’s and early twenty-first century’s individualist, even consumerist approach to religion reflects a widespread economic framing of religion, associated with the neoliberal doctrine that also began to flourish then.

Two Voices

Chapter 4 discusses the work of d/Deaf singers and their fraught relationships with voice, signing, and both Hearing and Deaf cultures. This chapter highlights the problems of defining Deafness through a negative relationship with voice, and contends that d/Deaf singers’ work in voice and sign constitutes a form not only of multilinguality but also of multivocality. Furthermore, it suggests the need for an extended definition of multivocality to include other embodied modes of communication—if multivocality functions as a strategy for identity building, such a strategy need not be solely a sonic one. Other embodied forms of communication, such as signing, must also be considered as integral, and even, sometimes, integrated.

Voice and Disjuncture in Celebrity Impersonation

Las Vegas is a reflection of neoliberal globalization—not only in its collection and display of global imagery but also in its shift from mob-dependent finances to late 20th-century corporate capitalism (Ventura 2012: 46). The topography of the world captured in a souvenir snow globe, the city offers visitors a set of intertwined performative layers, a collection of façades and masquerades that shape the city’s distinctive character. Theatrical transvestism in Vegas has performed and celebrated many permutations of difference (a Black Elvis, a male Barbra Streisand), at once underlining and undermining the fluidity of identity. Chapter 3 details the ways in which such disjunctures between bodies and voices—gendered, disabled, racialized—are manipulated by Vegas celebrity impersonators, and how they paradoxically contribute to the construction of these performers’ own identities.

Introduction

(I am large, I contain multitudes.) —Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself” On a foggy San Francisco day in 2004, I sat in an empty hallway with a fellow conservatory alumna, passing time until auditions began for the fourth season of American Idol. We belted out Appalachian ballads and traded tunes sharing her fiddle, against a sonic background of nervous would-be pop stars warming up. Though our paths had crossed in college, I hadn’t met her until a mutual friend invited her to join us at the auditions—I was tagging along for my dissertation research, taking notes while they sang hurried, cattle-call covers in front of a judging panel. After we left the stadium, she gave me an autographed copy of her just-completed demo album, which she had titled ...

Final Reflections

This last chapter of the book highlights two case studies of multivocality in the political climate following the 2016 presidential election, in the contexts of intersectional feminist activism and youth activism against gun violence. It first discusses Asian American singer-songwriter Connie Lim’s song “Quiet,” and her experience when it was adopted as an anthem of the Women’s March movement in 2017. Then, the chapter investigates the voices of young U.S. musicians in the response to a mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. It examines their experiences writing and performing original songs at school walkouts and protests, as well as their understandings of the singing voice as powerfully agentive.

Lost Voices

Chapter 8 discusses the implications of voice loss. The experience of loss when a professional singing voice is disrupted is entangled not only in the expressive and embodied nature of vocality but also in neoliberalism, in which labor and its value are understood as core components of identity. In a neoliberally grounded music industry, losing a voice can feel like losing one’s value, and like a devastating loss of identity. The chapter focuses on the idea of voice loss as a personal loss of control, through trauma, disability, or illness, and examines the ways in which individual singers negotiate that loss. The author also discusses experiences of chronic illness, including her own, and other singers’ experiences of loss that have impacted their voices.

Finding a Voice

Chapter 1 begins with an investigation of the history and implications of the phrase “find your voice,” its celebration of individualism and auto-essentialism, and its connections to neoliberal culture. The chapter also explores how singers trained in the western classical tradition create and experience multivocality, as well as the explicit and implicit sociocultural meanings they make in the process. Furthermore, it addresses the vital question “What is my voice?,” and the diverse ways in which classically trained singers who practice multivocality answer as they cross genres and singing styles, and as they navigate across difficult geographical, cultural, and musical borders.