Holy cow, it’s April already! Seriously WTF time is slipping by so fast these days, it’s really kind of freaking me out…
Anyways, I thought I’d continue on from last month’s theme by showcasing the second of my Quebecois-inspired episodes, Quebec Love Part II. Dig it.
Episode 27: Quebec Love II
Exploring themes of Quebec’s place in North America, the importance of the French language, and the links between progressive rock and modern nationhood. Les Sinners, Michele Lalonde’s “Speak White”, L’Infonie, Franck Dervieux, etc.
(Aired April 11/10)
Ever since I became involved in radio I’ve been interested in the sounds of voices. Its always strange hearing your own voice played back to you, just as it’s weird (at least, for me) to see a photograph, for the first time, of someone I’ve been listening to on the radio. The photographs NEVER correspond to the image of the person I’ve built up in my head, an image based solely on their voice.
Voices have power, but some more than others. And, it turns out, deeper voices have the most power of all.
This isn’t too much of a surprise, really, if you think about it. Darth Vader was voiced by James Earl Jones. God was voiced by Morgan Freeman. Both of these actors were also given advertising contracts to be the voice of powerful business interests: Jones represented testosterone-tank Hummers in their first commercials, while Freeman’s voice has pitched for credit-card giant Visa. What’s more, Morgan Freeman’s voice has become so iconic (and, apparently, inherently trustworthy and authoritative) that Republicans in North Carolina hired a Freeman-sound-alike to voice some of their anti-Democrat attack ads.
Its a simple equation: deep, manly voices = authority, strength, and confidence.
This is a pretty sad state of affairs, and has obvious links to misogyny. When women are denigrated in our society, it is ‘natural’ that feminine voices are denigrated too.
In my PhD research I have read a great deal about Second Wave Feminism, and one of the most intriguing aspects of this movement is the way that women were perceived and dismissed by males. Once women began raising their voices against the idea that they should be quiet and submissive, males began mocking the sound of the female voice. Over and over again in newspaper articles from the late 1960s and early 1970s feminists are made to seem hysterical in headlines that depict women protestors as “screaming”, “noisy” “harpies”, with “shrill” and “strident” voices. In one article from the Montréal Gazette (dated 1970), the local women’s liberation movement is described as “stunning its opponents with sound waves in the style of Lucy Van Pelt of Peanuts.” ” Screaming abuse and the like,” the article continues, “are the tractics of social misfits, the drop-outs, the malcontents.”
In the film The Iron Lady, Margaret Thatcher, played on screen by Meryl Streep, meets with an adviser named Gordon Reece, a former journalist and TV producer.
It’s 1975, the year Thatcher became the leader of the Opposition, and Reece wants to alter the image of the candidate he believes could become Britain’s first female prime minister.
“You look and sound like a privileged Conservative wife and we’ve already got her vote,” he says. “But the main thing is your voice. It’s too high. It has no authority. People don’t want to be harangued by a woman or hectored. Persuaded, yes.”
Thatcher’s admirers were generally not pleased with Hollywood’s rendition of the Baroness. But the deliberate modulation of Thatcher’s voice is documented in Charles Moore’s biography, and the story is better in real life.
Moore describes how voice lessons at Britain’s National Theatre deepened Thatcher’s tone. “Soon the hectoring tones of the housewife gave way to softer notes and a smoothness that seldom cracked, except under extreme provocation on the floor of the House of Commons.”
(The agent who’d arranged the sessions between the theatre’s coaches and the leader of the Opposition was the great actor Laurence Olivier whose own voice could probably have cut glass.)
The adjustments to Thatcher’s voice may have been a response to the sexism of the time, or to address the class bigotry that dogged Thatcher earlier in her career.
But the Iron Lady’s handlers had unwittingly stumbled onto a democratic advantage that is only now being proven scientifically: lower voices get more votes.
The article goes on to describe the research of Cara Tigue, a PhD student in psychology at McMaster University. Tigue’s research suggests that voters are influenced by the sound of political candidate’s voices. And, surprise surprise, voters have more confidence in candidates with deep, low voices.
A voice modulator circuit diagram.
Tigue’s method involved having test subjects listen to recordings of male voices – some manipulated to sound deeper – and give their impressions of those voices.
So what qualities did these listeners attribute to lower voices?
“They said they were more dominant, they were more trustworthy. We asked people which voice would you prefer to vote for and overall people chose the lower pitched voices more often.
“We only had one trait that was associated with a higher pitched voice and that was the likelihood of being involved in a government scandal.”
[...]
In past studies, researchers have measured voter preference in relation to the physical attractiveness of a candidate and the quality of a voice as well. Both of those have been found to play a role.
Tigue’s is the first study to try to measure the relationship between voter intention and the pitch of a candidate’s voice.
For voters with their own strong ideas, the underlying perceptions surrounding a deep voice probably won’t affect them very much.
But the scenario changes when some sort of threat is introduced.
“The relationship between voice pitch and dominance would more strongly influence voting behaviour in the wartime scenario than in the general national election scenario,” Tigue’s study says.
In other words, in a flight or fight situation, we imagine the guy with the deeper voice will probably stand his ground. He may not of course, he may be an utter coward.
The article goes on to ask whether this voice-based bias might be behind the barriers faced by women in politics. While I’m sure this is probably a factor, I think the issue is more accurately linked to the point I made earlier: that our society can be deeply misogynist. People trust women less than they do men. People assume women are less authoritative, confident, and even less rational than men. The sound of women’s voices (or high voices in general, regardless of the biological sex of the physical body it emanates from) conjures these deep cultural biases.
While Tigue’s study was focused on men, she did point towards a similar study, done in Miami, that focused on women. This research found that ”women with lower-pitched voices earned roughly 20 per cent more votes than higher-pitched females.” In addition, women with higher-pitched voices were deemed more attractive than their husky-voiced counterparts. Clearly it sucks to be a mannish-sounding woman in the dating world. (That is, in the heterosexual dating world at least. Gender and voice gets considerably more complicated in the queer/trans community. Maybe I’ll post something on this at a later date. Right now this post is getting a bit long in the tooth…).
All of this to make my one general point: that the way we hear is deeply gendered. Voices (like sounds in general) are essentially neutral. It is our perception of these voices/sounds, which are based on our social and cultural contexts, that judges them strong or weak, attractive or unattractive.
So the next time you’re talking to someone and you think “hey, I like the sound of their voice,” listen more deeply. You might be surprised to discover that you’re preferences may be more cultural than they are personal…
Okay okay. So, way back in January when I first blogged about Quebec’s churchbells I promised that more on this subject was on its way. Now, somehow, it’s already the end of March. (Ack!). So, I guess it’s time I fulfilled that promise, especially since that original bell post has proved to be one of the more popular posts on this blog. (Thanks, Kaleidolings!).
We’ll start in France, a predominantly Catholic country – that is, at least until the French Revolution of 1789, which deposed Louis XIV and replaced the power of the King and the Church with a secular democratic republican system. Much like Quebec, France’s countryside prior to the Revolution would have been defined by a soundscape replete with the sound of churchbells, in small villages throughout the countryside as much as in big cities like Paris. But since one of the primary aims of the Revolution was to secularize and rationalize French society, this required a concerted effort to undermine the power of the Church. One of the most potent symbols of the Church’s power being the sound of the church bell, these items quickly became a target.
In November of 1789, the revolutionary government issued Decree No. 2, which put all ecclesiastical property in the possession of the state. Over the next three years, according to Mathieu, over 100,000 bells were removed, and were melted down into coins or cannons. I think this is a particularly revealing action: coins and cannons symbolize two priorities of Revolutionary France: economics and militarism. Other bells that were removed were simply smashed or broken, a sad fate for such beautiful artifacts. Some of the bells that were not removed or destroyed were put into the service of the Revolution, such as la cloche des heures de Sumène (Gard). There were also a few bells made in secret during this period, but these were mostly small, artisanal items, certainly not the large bronze behemoths cast in state foundries.
Fast forward to 1989, the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution. As part of the celebrations some bells were cast or re-cast in remembrance. One, in particular, was inscribed « Je chante la mémoire de mes sœurs disparues » (“I sing to the memory of my disappeared sisters”). Another, « 1789-1989 je sonnerai le souvenir de mes sœurs. » (“1789-1989 I ring the memory of my sisters”).
Germany, too, has a rich history when it comes to bells, and today the country is a world leader in bronze casting and bell foundries. Indeed, Michel Rowan, Quebec’s foremost bell-expert (or campanologist), was trained in Germany. Since 1946, over 70,000 bells have been cast or re-cast by foundries in Germany. But Germany’s affinity for these ringing relics did not make the church immune to the kinds of sacrilege seen in Revolutionary France. During the First and Second World Wars, German forces confiscated between 120,000-150,000 bells from churches in Germany, Holland, Belgium and Austria.
François Mathieu claims that the Germans’ motives were not anti-clerical, a statement I find a bit hard to believe, especially given the Nazis’ concerted efforts to undermine the power of the Catholic Church during the 2nd World War. However, while anti-clericalism might have been a factor in the German war-on-bells, the primary motive was military: they needed the bronze for armaments. Sound familiar?
A Canadian bell expert, Percival Price, traveled to Germany towards the end of the war to determine the location of the church bells and to see if any could be recovered. Price returned home with 127 of the casts, after meeting with Nazi art historians. They were later given to the Ottawa Museum of Civilization upon his death…
Freeman [the curator of the exhibit?] discovered the collection at the Museum of Civilization after conducting research into Percival Price and locating a note about the casts in the national archives. The casts are now on loan to Saint Mary’s Art Gallery.
In an interview with The Coast, Freeman described the significance of the bells. ”The bells were melted down to make into munitions to achieve the racist, expansionist aims of the regime,” said Freeman. “These melted church bells are tied to the Holocaust. There was very little resistance from German churches when they came to take the bells away. People generally considered this a sacrifice they were making for the good of Germany.”
Clearly the history of church bells is rich, and potentially rewarding for anyone who chooses to dig a little deeper into the past. My home province of Quebec has a rich history of bells too, with stories I hope to bring you in the not-so-distant future.
On Monday I blogged about the militarization of noise, and the use of sound to dispel and disrupt protest or demonstrations. Today I’ll be talking about some of the same concepts, but on a much smaller scale.
Allow me to introduce two pieces of technology that use sound to police social morality – The Mosquito and the SpeechJammer.
The Mosquito was invented in 2005 by one Howard Stapleton, who got the idea after his young daughter was hassled by some toughs outside their local convenience store.
Stapleton complained to the proprietor of the store who told him that rowdy teenagers had become a real problem for him – they were threatening to his customers and driving his business away. Stapleton wondered if he could apply his experience in the security industry to the situation.
I recently heard a CBC radio interview with Mr. Stapleton, where he recounted a memory from his youth. He’d been invited to tour a factory, and at one point during the tour he became aware of a dreadful buzzing noise. When he asked what the noise was, no one else on the tour could hear it! It turned out that since Stapleton was the youngest on the tour, and his hearing range hadn’t been reduced through the wear-and-tear of daily life, he was capable of hearing frequencies of sound that other (older) people couldn’t!
Pairing this memory with his technical knowhow, Stapleton came up with The Mosquito – a device that emits a high-pitched noise that only youngsters can hear. The sound is irritating (but not painful) – annoying enough to drive people away from the source of the sound. Since then, Stapleton has marketed his product as a security device to prevent youths from gathering in certain locations. Therefore, in theory anyways, it has a general usefulness with regards to reducing so-called “anti-social” behaviour, such as loitering, graffiti, vandalism, drug use, drug distribution, and violence.
But this product is not without its critics:
“The Mosquito has attracted controversy on the basis of human rights. Critics say that it discriminates against young people and infringes their human rights, while supporters argue that making the Mosquito illegal would infringe the human rights of shopkeepers who suffer business losses when “unruly teenagers” drive away their customers.”
In 2008 a children’s rights campaign took the maker of the Mosquito to task, arguing that the device infringed on the rights of young people. If this sort of action was targeted against any other social group, civil libertarians argued, it would provoke uproar. They have a point. Not all youngsters are punks looking for trouble.
So now you know what to do if you’re being bugged by hooligans down at the corner store. But what if you’re being taunted by someone talking trash on the street? Or some bozos being too loud at the library? You ever have the desire to just shoot people like this in the face? Well, turns out there’s a gizmo for that, too.
Enter the SpeechJammer, aka “the gun that shuts you up (without killing you)”.
The science behind this gadget is fairly simple:
The gun listens in with a directional microphone and plays it back to them with a 0.2 second delay. This creates an environment in which one is simply unable to speak. The technical term for this is Delayed Auditory Feedback.
This means that the device works without causing any physical discomfort – which is more than can be said for the Mosquito, or the more industrial sonic weapons such as the LRAD sound cannon used by police forces.
But what are the implications of this device for freedom of speech? What does it mean when you can just shut down (or shut up) anyone who is voicing opinions you’d rather not listen to? What if this person, or people, are persistent? What if they have legitimate criticisms, grievances, or concerns?
Kurihara and Tsukada [two of the Japanese inventors] make no claims about the commercial potential of their device but list various aplications. They say it could be used to maintain silence in public libraries and to “facilitate discussion” in group meetings. “We have to establish and obey rules for proper turn-taking when speaking,” they say.
That has important implications. “There are still many cases in which the negative aspects of speech become a barrier to the peaceful resolution of conflicts, ” they point out.
Clearly, speech jamming has a significant future role in contributing to world peace and should obviously be installed at the United Nations with immediate effect.
Suffocating sound shields, Batman! The militarization of noise continues…
I’ve written in this blog before about this issue, specifically the use of Long Range Accoustical Devices (LRADs), otherwise known as sound-cannons. These sonic weapons are designed to emit a specific frequency, that is at once tremendously loud and annoying (also damaging to human hearing), for the purpose of dispersing crowds and incapacitating protestors. This kind of weapon, in my opinion, treads dangerously close to a denial of the fundamental democratic right to freedom of speech and freedom of assembly, but this is a topic I won’t go into detail about today (if you like you can read a bit more about this here).
LRAD’s were used against G-20 protestors in Pittsburgh, and Toronto hastily pushed through legislation making these weapons available to police in advance of the 2010 G-20 debacle there. More recently there were reports that the NYPD had deployed a sound cannon against Occupy Wallstreeters during the ‘clean-up’ there last fall.
The new shield described by Raytheon produces a low-frequency sound which resonates with the respiratory tract, making it hard to breathe. According to the patent, the intensity could be increased from causing discomfort to the point where targets become “temporarily incapacitated”.
Acoustic devices haven’t seen wide adoption because their range is limited to a few tens of metres. The patent gets around this by introducing a “cohort mode” in which many shields are wirelessly networked so their output covers a wide area, like Roman legionaries locking their shields together. One shield acts as a master which controls the others, so that the acoustic beams combine effectively.
Raytheon declined to comment on the work.
“We do not have sufficient technical detail yet to determine if there are any hidden medical implications,” says Steve Wright of Leeds Metropolitan University in the UK. “These are always a concern because of the risk to sensitive bodily functions such as hearing, or even inducing panic attacks in asthmatics.”
The biggest danger, he warns, is that the technology would be used for political control. “If authorities in Egypt or Syria had this, would they use it for dispersal or to shove crowds into potentially lethal harm’s way?”
Isn’t it interesting how they deflect concerns about using this device for political control? Yes, such technologies might be useful to autocratic regimes such as the one in Syria. But what about right here in North America? Surely this kind of weapon is ideal for crowd control in our Western context, where images of bleeding protestors probably wouldn’t go over too well on the evening news. Much better to have a weapon that acts without the dangers of violent confrontation. I mean, the technology is being patented by an American defense firm, for crying out loud – I’m not so sure that concern for those on the receiving end of these sonic weapons was a high priority here.
The patent points out that the sound waves being generated are actually not that powerful, so while protestors might collapse from a lack of oxygen reaching their brains, their eardrums won’t be damaged in the process. Phew!
(Gizmodo.com)
Hmm, potential brain damage from lack of oxygen? Panic attacks or asthma attacks? Hell, if some space-age riot-gear-gadget was pointed at me, and I suddenly found myself unable to breathe, I’d probably have a heart attack too.
Which of course would play right into the police state’s hands.
It’s something we’ve all experienced, from the constant hum of traffic noise in the cities, to the scream of airplane engines over the suburbs, to the racket generated by a neighbour’s gas-powered leaf-blower.
29 % : Mechanical equipment such as industrial air-conditioning or heating units.
27 % : Construction sites.
24 % : Outdoor events such as concerts or festivals.
14 % : People blasting loud music.
6 % : Other.
Its a well-established fact that noise pollution is unpleasant. It definitely causes people stress, and health officials are well aware that constant exposure to noise contributes to numerous negative health conditions such as chronic anxiety, irritability, sleeplessness, lack of concentration, depression, high blood pressure, and of course hearing impairment. Fun!
This probably isn’t news to any of you. We all live in a modern industrial society, and along with this comes a plethora of modern industrial noises. (Indeed, that’s why soundproofing was invented. For more about this, check out my blog post on Emily Thompson’s book The Soundscape of Modernity).
Modernity is noisy. Along with all the other kinds of pollution that we’ve created — air pollution, water pollution, soil pollution, light pollution — noise pollution is right there too. But if you think these other kinds of pollution are the only ones having a negative impact on our natural environment, think again.
Scientists have long wondered whether propeller and engine noises from big ships stress whales out. Now, thanks to a poop-sniffing dog and an accidental experiment born of a national tragedy, they may finally have their answer.
Baleen whales use low-frequency sounds to communicate in the ocean. “They’re in an environment where there’s not a lot of light; they’re underwater. They can’t rely on eyesight like we do,” says veterinarian Roz Rolland of the New England Aquarium in Boston. Some studies have found that whales alter their behavior and vocalizations when noise increases, and it stands to reason, she says, that noise pollution would hinder their ability to communicate and cause them stress. But because scientists can’t control the amount of noise in the sea, that’s been very hard to prove.
Researchers couldn’t stop traffic, but the September 2001 terrorist attacks did.
At the time, Rolland was collecting feces of right whales in the Bay of Fundy in Canada so she could try to develop pregnancy tests and other ways to study the animals’ reproduction.
Animals break up their hormones and get rid of the leftovers in their poop, so feces can show whether an animal is pregnant and reveal its levels of stress. Blood samples would do the same, but feces are much easier to collect.
In the first few days after the terrorist attacks, ship traffic in the region decreased dramatically. “There was nobody else there. It was like being on the primal ocean,” Rolland says. The whales seem to have noticed the difference, too. The levels of stress hormones in their feces went down, suggesting that ship noise places whales chronically under strain.
Rolland and colleagues made the finding with the help of an extremely sophisticated poop detector: a dog’s nose. The dog—most often a Rottweiler named Fargo—stood at the prow of a research vessel, sniffing as the boat moved across the water. “You use the dog’s nose as a compass because the dog will always put his nose into the strongest scent,” Rolland says.
[...]
While Rolland’s team was collecting feces, other scientists, including biologist Susan Parks of Syracuse University in New York, were recording sounds in the Bay of Fundy to understand right whale behavior. But it was only in 2009, when Rolland was preparing for a workshop on noise and cetaceans convened by the U.S. Office of Naval Research that she realized she could combine the two data sets. She and her colleagues compared poop and noise measurements collected between 2001 and 2005.
Stress can interfere with the immune system and with reproduction. There are only 475 right whales in the western North Atlantic Ocean, and they have much lower reproduction rates than right whales that summer near Antarctica. Stress caused by noise could be part of the reason, the team reports online today in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
“I’m quite surprised that they saw such a large difference,” says Michael Romero, an endocrinologist at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, who studies stress in birds, Galápagos marine iguanas, and other animals. Some of his research has suggested that animals get used to disturbances over time and have lower stress hormone levels. “It’s a terrific paper. They were able to do something that really it’s difficult to imagine repeating, which is keeping boats silent for a fairly reasonable period of time,” he says.
Since the experiment was unintentional, the scientists couldn’t control it as well as they might have liked. They didn’t have sound levels from before 2001, for example. Still, Rolland says the findings are cause for worry. “The big message is that there’s enough noise in the oceans that we should be concerned,” Rolland says. There may be ways to build quieter ships, but oil and gas exploration, wind farms, and sonar also emit the low-frequency sounds that seem to particularly bother whales. “It’s sort of like dumping all of our solid waste and sewage into the ocean,” she says. “There’s a certain point at which people realize the oceans aren’t limitless and they can’t absorb all this we’re dumping into them, and I think we’re reaching that realization with noise.”
Clearly noise pollution is a problem affecting not only the human inhabitants of this planet, but other species as well. And when noise pollution gets less media attention than other forms of pollution, it sounds like this is a problem that isn’t going to go away any time soon…
So let’s all make an effort to tread a little less loudly on our planet, shall we? Shhh! Don’t stress out the whales!
Wow, time flies. We’re already into the third month of 2012. Can you believe it??
At the beginning of each month I like to feature an episode of my old radio show (for which this blog is named), and this time around I’m excited to present Episode 26: Quebec Love, an hour-long trip back in time through Quebec’s turbulent mix of rebel teen culture, revolutionary violence, and ‘l’underground’ Québécois of the 1960s.
Featuring some of the best Quebec Yéyé, flashbacks to Expo 67, FLQ terrorism, the brilliant poetry of Raoul Duguay, Robert Charlebois, superstar, and some choice slices of obscure psych from l’underground Québécois. This stuff is all going to be featured in my PhD thesis, so you know I had a blast putting together this show for y’all.
I have. Twice, actually, because the first time was so awesome I needed to fly all the way over the Atlantic Ocean again to see it a second time. Now, Stonehenge might seem a strange topic for a sound-studies blog. But bear with me. It will all make sense in the end. I promise.
When I visited Stonehenge I was awestruck by the mammoth ring of ancient rocks, and I swear I could feel the eerie mystery that surrounds them. Who built the henge, and why, is a question that continues to puzzle archeologists and historians alike. Was it built by Druids? How? And for what purpose? Magical rites? Sacrifices? Burial rituals? No one seems to know for sure.
Now there’s a new theory: that the layout of the giant rocks was designed not for its visual aesthetics, but because it allowed for a unique acoustic phenomenon.
I have a distinctly sonic memory that I connect with my visit to the Henge. There were a number of birds circling ’round and through the ring, cawing and calling to each other as they did so. Their calls echoed in a very eerie and almost percussive way, the sound bouncing between the rocks. It actually made my hair stand on end. Turns out I wasn’t the only person struck by the strange acoustical qualities of the place.
Recently an acoustician by the name of Steven Waller, who works for Rock Art Acoustics USA, presented some thoughts on Stonehenge and sound to the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Waller described an experiment in which blindfolded test subjects walked into a field where two pipers were playing and were asked to report whenever it sounded as though there was a barrier between them and the music. The result was that “they drew structures, archways and openings that are very similar to Stonehenge.”
Waller did not choose pipers for his experiment arbitrarily. He notes that stone circles are traditionally known in Great Britain as “piper stones” and also cites a legend that “Stonehenge was created when two magic pipers led maidens into the field to dance and then turned them to stone.”
Waller is part of the growing science of what is known as “archaeoacoustics,” the study of the ancient utilization and manipulation of unusual sound effects at sacred sites. Another current article on the subject describes recent findings at the Peruvian ceremonial center of Chavín de Huántar.
According to the leader of that study, “At Chavín, we have discovered acoustic evidence for selective sound transmission between the site’s Lanzon monolith and the Circular Plaza: an architectural acoustic filter system that favors sound frequencies of the Chavín pututus [conch-shell trumpets] and human voice.”
The article explains that “central to the purpose of this careful arrangement of sound and architecture and the resulting dynamics is the sensory effect that the sound is designed to have on humans within earshot, which some scholars theorize creates the intended “state of mind” for religious or worshipping purposes.”
In other words, the intention was to use a combination of sound and stone architecture to produce altered states of consciousness. Perhaps that was the function of the carefully chosen and positioned rocks at Stonehenge, as well.
Whoa. Far out! This is cutting-edge stuff, and as a historian interested in sound, I find this kind of acoustics-meets-archaeology research really exciting. Hopefully findings of this kind will continue to pop up in the news every now and then. I’ll definitely keep my ear to the rocks and let you know if I hear anything.
“The Music Box is a small village of ramshackle sculptures huddled together on Piety Street in the Bywater section of the once-flooded 9th Ward. The sculptures are outfitted as musical instruments and are made almost entirely of the remains of the 18th-century Creole cottage that used to sit on this lot.”
The project rose up as a response to the city’s desire to rebuild the neighbourhood – with condos. But residents and New Orleans artists don’t want the history of this place being bulldozed over. So they started putting together the Music Box, which allows curious visitors to make their own music as they interact with each room or each installation inside the building(s).
So check it out – you can listen to the NPR show this comes from, as well as listen to clips of some of the sounds made by “instruments” in the house. The Music Box is an innovative and creative play between architecture, art, and music, and a dramatic demonstration of the lively community of New Orleans – a community that survived the flooding after Katrina and continues to thrive. The musical heritage of this city is old – probably older than the city itself. And by the looks of it, while the hurricane may have destroyed many of the residents homes, it didn’t drown their spirits.
Check it out, and I’ll see you again in a few days.
Okay, okay. So clearly I’ve been a little lax about the blogging this month.
In my defense, it IS February, the depressingest month of the year. It’s hard to keep the motivation going when it’s cold and dark, and spring seems so very far away…
But it’s not like I’ve been sitting around not doing anything. Work on the PhD dissertation progresses – quite a lot of work, actually, which is another major reason I’ve been neglecting all my beautiful, faithful Kaleidolings. My sincerest apologies to y’all. Somehow I figured site traffic would have dropped off to a trickle during my absence, but to my very great surprise, when I opened up my WordPress Dashboard today I discovered that there have been almost 300 views of this blog in February. *gawk*. This is even more than in January, when I was posting stuff fairly regularly. So THANK YOU for sticking around! I promise not to abandon you again. HUG.
As recompense for my absence I will blog like a crazy-person for the short remainder of the month, offering several neato sound-related links courtesy of fine people who oh-so-gently pointed out to me that even if the Kaleidophone had gone into radio silence, the world (thankfully) did not.
So here we go!
First up, in honour of Black History Month, I thought I’d turn you all on to a remarkable documentary: The Black Power Mixtape: 1967-1975.
Okay so it’s not really a mix-tape. It’s a film. But trust me, it’s plenty rad.
Assembled from footage found in the basement of a Swedish television studio, this film presents clips and interviews from many of the figures central to the American Black Power movement of the 1960s & 1970s. The film footage was the result of material gathered by a Swedish film crew who traveled to America during that turbulent period, determined to document the ‘true nature’ of an American society in the throes of social and cultural revolution.
Alongside historical footage of Stokeley Carmichael, Eldridge Cleaver, Angela Davis, Harry Belafonte, Bobby Seale, Huey P. Newton and others, the film presents authentic images of the ‘other’ America: an America of unemployment, ghettos, drugs, prisons, militant government oppression, violence, and revolutionary rhetoric. These images were in stark contrast to the ‘official’ image of the United States at the time, an image of affluence, suburban nuclear families, white picket fences, and comfortable white-collar office jobs.
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An important element of this film, and one lacking in many of the other documentaries that cover Civil Rights or Black Power subjects, is the emphasis on the international dimension of Black Americans’ struggle for liberation. This means explaining both how U.S. racism played poorly overseas (with scenes of race riots played out on the television screens of US allies as well as providing their communist foes with plenty of anti-American propaganda); and how Black Power philosophy was tied to African national liberation and anti-colonial thought. It is no accident that the Black Panthers maintained an international headquarters in Algers, courtesy of the Algerian government!
It’s a relatively short feature film, clocking in at just over an hour and a half, but it’s crammed full of amazing footage that continues to have revolutionary reverberations. At one point, for example, Talib Kwali relates an incident involving his being questioned by American security forces about the fact he was listening to an old recording of a Carmichael speech — 40 years after the Civil Rights era! Proof that a simple and passive act such as listening can be considered a radically subversive act, especially in today’s hyper-vigilant post-9/11 American security-state.
The soundtrack of this film consists of soul, r&b and funk hits from the era, as well as original music composed by Questlove, of The Roots. I was unable to find a track listing for the soundtrack, which appears to not have been released separately from the film. You’ll have to watch the film (its available on Netflix) to hear the music, but more important are the speeches and commentaries provided throughout. I urge you to check it out – you won’t regret it.
In my PhD research I have read a great deal about Second Wave Feminism, and one of the most intriguing aspects of this movement is the way that women were perceived and dismissed by males. Once women began raising their voices against the idea that they should be quiet and submissive, males began mocking the sound of the female voice. Over and over again in newspaper articles from the late 1960s and early 1970s feminists are made to seem hysterical in headlines that depict women protestors as “screaming”, “noisy” “harpies”, with “shrill” and “strident” voices. In one article from the Montréal Gazette (dated 1970), the local women’s liberation movement is described as “stunning its opponents with sound waves in the style of Lucy Van Pelt of Peanuts.” ” Screaming abuse and the like,” the article continues, “are the tractics of social misfits, the drop-outs, the malcontents.”
At the time, Rolland was collecting feces of right whales in the Bay of Fundy in Canada so she could try to develop pregnancy tests and other ways to study the animals’ reproduction.
