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Voicing the Technological Body |
49www.jrfm.eu
2016, 2/1, 49–69
Florian Heesch
Voicing the Technological Body
Some Musicological Reflections on Combinations
of Voice and Technology in Popular Music
ABSTRACT
The article deals with interrelations of voice, body and technology in popular music
from a musicological perspective. It is an attempt to outline a systematic approach
to the history of music technology with regard to aesthetic aspects, taking the iden-
tity of the singing subject as a main point of departure for a hermeneutic reading of
popular song. Although the argumentation is based largely on musicological research,
it is also inspired by the notion of presentness as developed by theologian and media
scholar Walter Ong.
The variety of the relationships between voice, body, and technology with regard
to musical representations of identity, in particular gender and race, is systematized
alongside the following cagories: (1) the “absence of the body,” that starts with the
establishment of phonography; (2) “amplified presence,” as a signifier for uses of the
microphone to enhance low sounds in certain manners; and (3) “hybridity,” including
vocal identities that blend human body sounds and technological processing, where-
by special focus is laid on uses of the vocoder and similar technologies.
KEYWORDS
recorded popular song, gender in music, hybrid identities, race in music, presence/
absence, disembodied voices
BIOGRAPHY
Dr. Florian Heesch is professor of popular music and gender studies at the University
of Siegen, Germany. He holds a PhD in musicology from the University of Gothenburg,
Sweden. He published several books and articles on music and Norse mythology, mu-
sic and gender and on diverse aspects of heavy metal studies. His research interests in-
clude intermedia transformations of literature and myths, popular music and religion,
Scandinavian literature and music, and 20th- and 21st-century music history.
JRFM
Journal Religion Film Media, Band 02/01
- Titel
- JRFM
- Untertitel
- Journal Religion Film Media
- Band
- 02/01
- Autoren
- Christian Wessely
- Daria Pezzoli-Olgiati
- Herausgeber
- Uni-Graz
- Verlag
- Schüren Verlag GmbH
- Ort
- Graz
- Datum
- 2016
- Sprache
- englisch
- Lizenz
- CC BY-NC 4.0
- Abmessungen
- 14.8 x 21.0 cm
- Seiten
- 132
- Kategorien
- Zeitschriften JRFM