Seite - 52 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Band 02/01

52 | Florian Heesch www.jrfm.eu 2016, 2/1, 49–69 American culture women have been accepted as singers rather than as users of tech- nology.8 However, my main concern here is with representations of identity in mu- sic, following hermeneutic approaches to musical aesthetics like those of Moore and McClary.9 I am looking for possible readings of technologically and bodily produced sounds as utterances from certain – or rather, uncertain – subjects whose identities can be constructed within the hermeneutic process.10 A focus is directed at the rela- tionship between the body and central historical developments in the technology of music production. Although this study clearly addresses a musicological question and adopts a musi- cological perspective, it benefits from the concept of presence as developed by theo- logian and media scholar Walter Ong. Ong theorises sound, vocal sound especially, in its relationship to the experience of other subjects in a way that can be fruitful for a hermeneutic approach to the identity of the singer. In this regard, presence is the cru- cial factor: “Sound, bound to the present time by the fact that it exists only at the in- stant when it is going out of existence, advertises presentness. It heightens presence in the sense of the existential relationship of person to person.”11 What is interesting for the purpose of this essay is the notion that vocal sound implies the presence of another subject, a concept that seems to be in sync with Moore’s observation on the general importance of the singer’s identity for song interpretation. Interestingly, Ong stresses the relevance of vocal presence even for recorded voices: “Even the voice of one dead, played from a recording, envelops us with his presence as no picture can.”12 Jonathan Sterne is certainly right when he criticises Ong’s writings on sound as based on universal assumptions for audible experience and on a rather simplistic du- alism of audible and visual cultures.13 However, I consider the concept of presence helpful for an approach to vocal identities. The point is not to essentialise sound in general and the body as producer of vocal sounds in particular as universal or natu- ral qualities. Presence is interesting because it helps to categorise relationships of body and technology that manifest themselves in certain representations of identity in music, and hence also in individually aesthetic ways. I will argue for different types 8 Cf. Dibben 2002, 121. 9 Regarding gender, Dibben (2002, 121) distinguishes representations in music from other musical con- structions of gender identity, like the “typing of musical performance and composition”, “musical taste”, and “remembering and collecting”. 10 It is less important here to decide whether we should talk about representations or performances of identity. Butler’s concept of performativity has been interpreted as more flexible than the concept of representation that is connected to the rather fixed idea of an image (cf. von Hoff 2005). However, performance is so closely connected to the body that it would be rather confusing to subsume all technological transformations of bodily produced voice sounds as well. I prefer to denote the audible hybrid song as a representation of a more or less hybrid identity. 11 Ong 1981, 101; like Young 2015, 20. I think Ong is still relevant for the discussion of sound and voice, even though there are also more recent studies on presence; see for instance the overview Ernst/ Paul 2013. 12 Ong 1981, 101. 13 Sterne 2003, 16–19.