The Musical Whistle as a Queer Space
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3989/anuariomusical.2022.77.10Keywords:
Musical whistle, queer space, voice, identity construction, listen, body, sexuality, Molly Lewis, Laura Pergolizzi (LP)Abstract
This article argues for the use of the musical whistle as a queer space, as it problematizes the margins established for a gender classification based on timbre or tessitura as occurs with voice. To understand the peculiarity of the whistle in relation to the body that produces it, we propose two levels of listening. On the one hand, an acousmatic hearing of the whistle offers us misplaced possibilities in relation to the body and gender that are difficult to categorize in those margins. On the other hand, an audiovisual listening questions us about the possible paradoxes and corporeal-sonic contradictions that put into play sexist cultural discourses in relation to the musical whistle. We will use a theoretical framework based on queer studies to analyze concepts in relation to the voice —grain of the voice, the sonic body, the saphonic voice— and that may well be applicable to the study of the musical whistle around the construction of identity, and gender. The objective will be to understand how gender and sexuality interfere in the listening and production of music, even when the sound (timbre) with which the whistle is constructed offers possibilities of bodily and/or sexual escape; or, on the contrary, it can accentuate and problematize them by being incarnated visually.
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