Feminist Sonic Futures!

A sonic piece with guitar performed by Chooch and vocals by Christine Alcindor. Chooch sampled Christine's lived experiences from a 25 minute interview conducted between the two. Enjoy:)

This episode of "Feminist Sonic Futures" explores the convergence of queer elements in Peking Opera and feminist themes in Chinese rap, focusing on Vava's song "My New Cloth." It discusses the decontextualization and recontextualization of traditional elements in modern music, comparing this with similar practices in American hip-hop. The episode also delves into issues of cultural appropriation and the complexities of sampling in music, drawing parallels with AI technology and its impact on artistic ownership. It touches on the challenges faced by female artists in a male-dominated industry and the expectations placed on them, using Vava's experiences as a case study. The script references various scholars and articles, including Salamishah Tillet's discussions on Kanye West's sampling of Nina Simone, Lauren Michele Jackson's views on cultural appropriation, Kevin Quashie's insights into the expressiveness and interiority of artists, and Prof. Lumumba-Kasongo's critiques on deepfakes of Black rappers. The episode concludes with reflections on the future of women in the music industry and the ethical considerations surrounding sampling practices. Music Sources: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkmAnUfNP3w&t=871s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aknkofx2bHg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3dCODJ-YVk

This podcast discusses how podcasts have given a space to ‘alpha male podcasts’ and how they are changing the ways we view masculinity as a whole. We start out by discussing the idea of a manosphere or this world full of men’s rights activists, men’s lifestyle podcasters, and masculinity coaches that push podcasts describing the type of man one needs to be. Through Keir Keightley’s lens in “'Turn It down!' She Shrieked: Gender, Domestic Space, and High Fidelity”, we talk about why meninist podcasters are gaining so much traction and why this forum allows these discussions to propagate. We then use Eliot Bates and Samantha Bennett’s work “Look at all those big knobs! Online audio technology discourse and sexy gear fetishes” to discuss the idea of hegemonic masculine space and how objectified women are in these spaces. Wrapping everything up, we discuss how podcasts allow for controlling sound, controlling a conversation, and ultimately controlling what it means to be a man by discussing Louise Meintjes’ work on controlling sound in “The Recording Studio as Fetish.”

In this episode I explore the relationship between sound and identity and how this relates to ideas of lineage, home, and belonging. I will draw on Art Blake’s “Finding My Voice while Listening to John Cage” and Kevin Quashie’s “Sovereignty of the Quiet” to understand how sound shapes gender and racial identities. I will also look to Madeleine Campbell’s interview “TRNSGNDR VHS on Reexamining her Creative Practices and Facing off” to understand the limitations of sonic community formation based on self expression. Finally, I will discuss Roshanak Kheshti’s “Pocodisco: The Sonic Performativity Of Grief, Grievance, and Joy in Diaspora” to understand potential possibilities for sonic communities based on shared identities. Using these thinkers, I will discuss how various people use sound to either gain a better understanding of themselves or to connect with their home or lineage, as well as how social forces shape sonic expressions of identity.

In this episode, we delve into the topic of live coding through a cyber feminist lens. Through looking at the namesake paper by Joanne Armitage and Helen Thornham, this episode aims to broaden the listener’s understanding of what it means to live code and how normative masculinity permeates its world.

Let's talk about prenatal sound systems and the relationship between neoliberal capitalism, eugenics, and the sonic environment. We will discuss the nature of prenatal sound systems and the histories that led to their development.

In today's episode, we're discussing Elena Krell's experiences with Joe Steven's and analyzing Stevens' experiences as a white, middle-upper-class, transmasc, disabled Americana folk singer through the lens of noise and voice.

What is "sound"? For many, it is an auditory experience. But for Christian Sun Kim, a deaf artist, it's a visual, a vibration, a concept, and a form of cultural capital. By redistributing its value among the senses, she neutralizes its authority and allows for a shared experience of sound that includes the deaf optic. The episode introduces the idea of "deaf optic" and reflects on the narrow binary and power imbalance in the world of sonic.

In this episode, Mia talks about the article "Look at all those big knobs! Online audio technology and sexy gear fetishes" by Elliot Bates and Samantha Bennett (2022) which analyzes a toxic culture surrounding audio gear, objectophilia, fetishization, connoisseurship, and much more.

In this episode, I will be exploring the first chapter Kevin Quashie's The Sovereignty of Quiet. I'll investigate how Quashie complicates the traditional ideas used to explain Black experiences while he formulates his own: quiet!

This podcast is based on the article “Sizing up record collections: Gender and Connoisseurship in Rock Music Culture” by Will Straw. It talks about the lack of women record collectors and how this hobby came to be so gendered. We discuss the how men are involved in validating subjects along with the popular notion that women don't have hobbies. We also broach the subject of fashion as a form of collection and hipness as a tool for gatekeeping, tying all of that back into the gender inequality that commonly exists in rock music.

In this episode, I explore gender expression and performance in its relationship to a stable sense of identity. I mainly use Jay Szpilka's text "'Yr beast': gender parrhesia and punk trans womanhoods" as the backbone of this episode.

Podcast discussing some history of synthesis with an STS lens.

Hello everyone! My name is Ariana Zwern and I am a student in MUSC 1240S! This is Episode 15 Season 2 of our podcast Feminist Sonic Futures. In this episode, I discuss the genesis of sound through vibration and the possibilities for assistive technologies made legible by attending to this process. I argue that when we scrape what we think we know about sound and consider how it operates at a physical level - as vibrations - we discover new possibilities for constructing and interpreting soundscapes that can uplift the disabled and improve their quality of life through technologies that seek adaptive rather than curative responses to disability.  I first briefly discuss the production of sound through vibration. Then I discuss the ways that sound can be made accessible to the deaf using technologies that represent or transmit vibrations in novel ways. In particular, I discuss the work of Christine Sun Kim and the application of similar ideas to the development of Vibrotextile™.  Finally, I discuss how vibration can likewise be used to help the blind to safely engage their surroundings through technology such as STRAP and SUNU, and the implications of VR technology for improving the immersive capacity of this equipment. In this episode, I engage the following academic sources:  1. Siting Sound: Redistributing the Senses in Christine Sun Kim, by Michael Davidson 2. Sound and Player Immersion in Digital Games by Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard 3. Virtual Reality, Disability, and Futurity Cripping Technologies in Half-Life: Alyx by Adan Jerreat-Poole I also reference, include clips from, and/or quote the following sources: 1. Batman Technology: Using Sonar for Human Navigation https://lighthouseguild.org/sonar-and-lidar-technologies-for-obstacle-detection/ 2. Echolocation could help blind people learn to navigate like bats https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/feb/28/echolocation-could-help-blind-people-learn-to-navigate-like-bats 3. Mandy Harvey - A Music: Not Impossible Help One, Help Many Story https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dz_uyHnaBOE 4. Not Impossible Labs, Zappos Hope to Make Concerts More Accessible for the Deaf — and Cooler for Everyone https://www.billboard.com/music/music-news/not-impossible-labs-live-music-deaf-8476553/ 5. Brains of deaf people rewire to ‘hear’ music https://www.washington.edu/news/2001/11/27/brains-of-deaf-people-rewire-to-hear-music/ 6. Music: Not Impossible Provides a Glimpse Into the Future of Music https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/music-not-impossible-provides-a-glimpse-into-the-future-of-music-300718746.html 7. Vibrating suit allows deaf people to 'feel' music https://www.cnn.com/style/article/chase-burton-vibrating-suit-spc-intl/index.html 8. Music Not Impossible Website  https://www.notimpossible.com/projects/music-not-impossible

"Reaching for Gladys" is a short sound piece engaging with details, themes, and speculations about the life of Gladys Bentley. Gladys Bentley was a prominent blues composer, pianist, and vocalist from the early 20th century. She rose to fame in Harlem during the Harlem Renaissance and was well known for performing in formal menswear and parodying famous standards with hypersexual lyrics.  At the height of her career, Bentley was open about her queerness and openly pursued relationships with women.  In 1952, after a long period of inactivity, Bentley released an autobiographical piece with Ebony Magazine titled "I am a Woman Again." In the article, Bentley condemns her past identity and reports that, after falling in love with a man and seeking hormonal therapy, she is finally living a "normal" life. While some sources suggest that Bentley released the article in an attempt to revive her career, the finer details of her life behind the article are largely unknown.  This sound piece approaches Gladys in reverse chronological order, starting with quotes from her Ebony article, and ending with one of her earlier recordings of "How Much Can I Stand." In addition to original musical interpretations of Bentley's "How Much Can I Stand," I've also included bits of my own personal perspective on her life and the tradition of the blues. 

Perhaps like us, sound can’t exist without air :)

On this episode of Feminist Sonic Futures, we'll talk about a 2010s Internet trend referred as the "hilarious black neighbor." This trend saw news interviews of Black people becoming viral, and often being remixed into heavily auto-tuned songs. In this episode, we'll talk about why these videos went viral and how listening comes into play when we think about these videos. We'll also discuss vocal modulation, specifically auto-tune, and how modulation and race interact in this viral phenomenon.  Content Warning: Antoine Dodson's interview recounts a crime that was committed in his home, which includes SA and violence. I do not play the clip in the video, but giving a warning in case you search for the video after this podcast!

Lyrics: They wanna control us There’s this image of The perfect woman, seen As cis and pretty That one’s on my screen She lives a binary Of this that, either or The part that’s primary Is femininity Vapid and unskilled Weak and needing help from A strong man who’s strong-willed More powerful than her She’s been crafted by society But she’s Losing her voice Losing her sound She’s being pushed down to the ground Losing her voice Losing her sound The real her can’t be found But really femininity’s A mask she puts on A performance Uses her grasp of son- ic tools she’s been given She modulates her voice With uptalk and fry She makes this choice By what is proper As a weapon A gendered costume Not losing control Power within blooms She crafts herself to fit society, she’s Using her voice Using her sound She will rise up from the ground Using her voice Using her sound But what real her will be found? They want to control us They want to control me They want to dictate my Gender identity How should I sound? How should I act? The real world beats me down And I fight back (using my) voice Using my sound I’m gonna rise up from the ground Using my voice Using my sound The real me will be found They modulate you! I modulate me! The model formation of Femininity I won’t be controlled I won’t be controlled I won’t be controlled

In this episode of Feminist Sonic Futures, we’ll be discussing the place of pleasure in sound, specifically through a Black cyberfeminist lens by exploring the soundscape of pleasure in Janelle Monaé’s emotion picture and studio album Dirty Computer. We will be listening to the tracks "Make Me Feel," "Dirty Computer (feat. Brian Wilson)," "Screwed (feat. Zoë Kravitz)," "Django Jane," and "Pynk (feat. Grimes)." We’ll be talking through the work of many prominent feminist theorists, grounding in Annie Goh and Marie Thompson’s “Sonic Cyberfeminisms: Introduction,” and primarily engaging with Meina Yates-Richard’s “‘Hell You Talmbout’ Janelle Monae’s Black Cyberfeminist Sonic Aesthetics” and Robin James’ “‘Robo-Diva R&B’: Aesthetics, Politics, and Black Female Robots in Contemporary Popular Music.” Outside of the syllabus, we will be informed by and discussing Hortense Spillers’ "Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: An American Grammar Book,” Joan Morgan’s “Why We Get Off: Moving Towards a Black Feminist Politics of Pleasure,” and adrienne maree brown’s Pleasure Activism. In thinking through theoretical conceptions of embodiment, flesh, and pleasure, I turn to liberatory pleasure politics as a framework for reimagining the Black body as a site of joy and autonomy rather than one of pain and dehumanization. Once we access the site of that pleasure in the body, this podcast explores the question of how that pleasure can be created and reproduced through sonic tools. Hope you enjoy!

In my Final Podcast, my friends and I explore women in sound and the journey of a woman through sound. We discuss modern technology, ethics, obstacles, and much more.

This sonic piece was created by Becca Rosenzweig as apart of the class, MUSC1240S: Feminist Sonic Futures, taught by Dr. Enongo Lumumba-Kasongo. This piece is a mix of ambient sounds, vocal samples, instrumental samples, and effects. This sonic piece is meant to highlight different aspects of the talents, confidence, and beauty from Black female-identifying artists in reference to a number of readings and literature about feminism and sonic practices.  All effects and most of the non-vocal/instrumental samples were mixed by Becca Rosenzweig. Other non-vocal/instrumental samples were downloaded from zapsplat.com. The vocal samples are from the artists: Nina Simone ("Feeling Good", 1965), Missy Elliott ("The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)", 1997), Lizzo ("Truth Hurts", 2017), Beyonce ("***Flawless", 2013), Nicki Minaj (instrumental) ("Feeling Myself", 2014), and H.E.R. ("Focus", 2016).

I interviewed Queen Scott- professor of performance at Berkely in Boston and MC.  We discussed her experience as a woman in the rap industry. We also delved into the art of DJ and the notion of erasure as opposed to accessibility when it comes to female DJ's infiltrating the space. Listen to find out more! 

Hi everyone! My episode touches on the development of GoGo music and its role in the black community. Using Alison Martin's article, I discuss the issues that surround GoGo which include racism, surveillance, and purpose. I reflect on women in GoGo, disagreements about the modernization of GoGo, and much more. 

A little discussion of immersion using some spatial audio technologies to express different notions of immersion and space and sound. Best to listen with over the ear headphones - regular earbuds may not pick up some of the spatial features of the audio.  

In this episode, I (she/her) am joined by two friends, Lotus (she/her) and Sabrina (they/them) to eat burritos while talking about etymology and the implications of colonization on sound engineering. We use the reading "The Recording Studio as Fetish" by Louise Meintjes (2012) as a jumping off point. Thank you! 

Podcast discussing Marie Thompson's "'Your Womb, the Perfect Classroom': Prenatal Sound Systems and Uterine Audiophilia." Podcast title quoted from article.

In this episode of Feminist Sonic Futures, we’ll be discussing Robin James’ “‘Robo-Diva R&B’: Aesthetics, Politics, and Black Female Robots in Contemporary Popular Music,” talking about Black techno soundscapes, listening to some Beyoncé, Rihanna, and Janelle Monáe, and exploring where we may be able to locate embodiment in music through a feminist Afro-Futurist lens. Hope you enjoy! This episode contains sound clips from "Get Me Bodied" by Beyoncé, "Good Girl Gone Bad" by Rihanna, "ALIEN SUPERSTAR" by Beyoncé, "Planet Rock" by Afrika Bambaataa & The Soulsonic Force, "Dirty Computer" by Janelle Monáe & Brian Wilson, and "Make Me Feel" by Janelle Monáe.  Here is the link to the video art piece "Black to Techno" mentioned in the episode: https://www.frieze.com/video/jenn-nkiru-black-techno. The speaker featured in the clips played is listed in the credits under "voices", although it is unclear which name is theirs. 

In this episode for Feminist Sonic Futures, Rebecca Rosenzweig discusses Tara Rodgers article, '"What, for me, constitutes life in a sound?" Electronic Sounds as Lively and Differentiated Individuals'. Rodgers explores what it means for a sound to be seen as an individual and analogized to living organisms. This article also seeks to historicize audio production and consumption and its implications in social and cultural settings. This podcast is part of Feminist Sonic Futures, a class at Brown University exploring feminism, sound studies, technology and their intersections. This podcast contains music from "The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)" by Missy Elliott and "Keep Ya Head Up" by Tupac Shakur

In Episode 6 Season 2 of Feminist Sonic Futures, I discuss the experience and production of sound through a deaf optic, by highlighting the work of two deaf creatives: visual artist Christine Sun Kim and musician Mandy Harvey. Both artists work to challenge the primacy of an aural experiences of sound, creatively engaging the visual and tactile elements of the sonic in their work. Listen to learn more about these powerful artists and alternative sonic technologies!

This episode uses Boden Sandstrom’s “Women Mix Engineers and the Power of Sound” as a starting point to discuss how technology is used as an avenue for gender minorities to enter predominantly male music spaces.

Hello! In this episode of Feminist Sonic Futures, I'll be talking about the sampling the music of Nina Simone by many contemporary hip-hop artists. We'll take a look at how different artists invoke and sample Simone, and how her music and her message of sonic black radicalism are transformed, invoked, and updated through the modern sampling of her music. 

On this episode of Feminist Sonic Futures, we discuss Sarah Cohen's analysis of the Liverpool Indie Rock scene, exploring her arguments about gender, "scene," and rock n' roll. The Liverpool indie rock scene provides a perfect backdrop upon which we can further explore the construction of gender and how rock n' roll maintains its "boy's club" ethos.  This episode includes archival audio: Cast performing "Live the Dream" at Top of the Pops, 1992  Space performing "Female of the Species" in studio, 1996 The Lightning Seeds performing "Life of Riley" at the Hillsborough Justice Concert, 1997 

Welcome to Season 2 of Feminist Sonic Futures! In this episode, I discuss (aka ramble about) the salient themes from the paper "Geeks, Meta-Geeks, and Gender Trouble: Activism, Identity, and Low-power FM Radio" by Christina Dunbar-Hester, and tie them all together under the lens of binaries. Such themes include gender (masculine versus feminine), knowledge and skill (versus unknowledgeable and unskilled), political spectrum (left versus right), consumer versus producer, and human versus object (aka user versus artifact). Hope you enjoy!

On beat-boxing and gender: Final Project (Peter Choi)

Hi everyone, I’m Siddhanth, and welcome to Nightclubbing. What did you listen to growing up? is a question we don’t ask nearly as much as we should. I want our stories of sound, music, and heritage to be documented as an unofficial pedagogy of joy—a way of history making, a means of which we make sense of the past before charting on increasingly uncertain futures. Give vocabulary, beat, rhythm, groove to an untethering temporality. Make sense of our future nostalgia. The title of the podcast is inspired by the incomparable Grace Jones’ seminal album of the same name. I wanted to start this series as an experiment in joy, a term black-feminist and performance artist Gabrielle Civil coins. A way for us to see how we can make space for joy in a time that seems relatively absent of it. My experiences of growing up in Singapore’s nightlife culture came to my mind as visceral and unmediated moments of joy. It’s the dance music I grew up listening to that foreshadowed my 5am nights in the club. It’s dance music that has brought so much joy to groups on the periphery—a hopeful helplessness. In this time of dissonance, maybe joy is the only thing we can mark as certain. Still, I wonder…. Why should we look for joy when we could be making space for humanity? Joy has felt like a privilege, of late. And for many, joy is a luxury that isn’t remotely affordable. I hope that this project, however momentary, can help make your joy feel justified. This project is one that would not exist without collaboration. We may be isolated, but it is important for me to keep connected. Not only am I collaborating with friends who are interested in the topics we’re diving into, but I am also urging them to collaborate with their family members as a way of connecting with potentially lost lineages of sound and culture. This week we deep-dive into my homeland, India. It is beautiful and complicated and something that can’t be given justice to in one episode. I’ll be splitting up my discussion about India in 3-4 parts over the upcoming weeks. We start in the late 70’s and 80’s, a time of seismic change for India, and the world. The musical developments of the country ran parallel to the socio-political and economic changes that were unfolding in the subcontinent. Today I’m joined with a close friend of mine, Rhythm, a fellow Brown University student. She’s coming in live to us from Baroda, Gujarat.

A conversation with retired recording engineer Anne Wattis about her experience being a woman sound engineer in the 80s.

This podcast discusses many themes in relation to texts we have read during this semester. Technological expertise in relation to gender is a constant thread. I discuss how Oliveros views technology as disruptive to patriarchal systems that dominate many forms of music, focusing on a piece of hers from 1965 called “Bye Bye Butterfly” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wrNL063Gys). I then discuss Oliveros’s feminist writings and subtle changes between her ideas in 1965 and 1998. I end by discussing how technology informs Oliveros’s practice of “deep listening,” both in her own performances and in an attempt to increase accessibility of music composition to everyone, especially women and disabled people.

Autotune, Technology, and Talent

In this episode I, (Salma Mohamed,  along with the help of my friend Devin, question whether or not artists have the moral obligation to speak about pressing political issues, movements, and ideologies. We flesh out the ways artists have failed to fully engage with these matters in their actions and tend to reduce these issues, movements, or ideologies by using them for branding and aesthetic value. We talk about how some artists have been more successful and deliberate in their approaches. From Beyonce and Jay-Z, to Noname and TRNSGNDR/VHS. To all the white artists who don’t bear the burden of such oppressions and therefore, the weight of such conversations. We try our best to answer these questions. And honestly, we were left with more questions. More thoughts are left to detangle even after this. Sources Referenced: Janelle Hobson’s Our Beyoncés, Ourselves: Celebrity Feminism TRNSGNDR VHS interview <https://www.womeninsound.com/issue-5/trnsgndr-vhs> Noname Tweets<https://twitter.com/kinematografi/status/1196828395750985728?s=20> Netflix Film, What Happened, Miss Simone?

This is a complicated episode where a lot ideas are tied together, but the main questions are: Who should have access to what? Is it possible to find the right balance of privacy and accessibility?

A discussion of the medical-social binary of deafness and the social implications of technological medical advances in dialogue with Mara Mills’ “Do signals have politics? Inscribing abilities in cochlear implants.”

Black Deaf Feminism: A Discussion of Fairness and Frameworks

On “Robo-Diva R&B:” Aesthetics, Politics, and Black Female Robots in Contemporary Popular Music” by Robin James, agency of Black Women within the music industry, and maintaining humanity in the face of controlling images.

A look at the essay "The Nature/Technology Binary Opposition Dismantled in the Music of Madonna and Björk" through the lens of binary structures and disidentification.

Gillian Flynn, XLR Cables, Madonna, and AR-15s! How do they relate? Well, you have to listen to find out. Hopefully, this analytical–yet heartfelt–look into the past and present will give you a peek into a more equitable feminist sonic future.

This episode examines Keir Keightly's article in Popular Music, "'Turn it down!' She shrieked: Gender, domestic space, and high fidelity"

This is my podcast episode! Sorry its a few minutes late had some confusion with anchor.  

That's it.