This week, I was really intrigued by the in-class listening activity. I found it challenging to think of music/sound in terms of its function. I found myself thinking, "Well, I can come up with words to apply to the voice I'm hearing, but how do I know if those words are accurate?" I feel like I've been repeating myself a lot on this blog, but consistently the challenge I've faced in this course is the same. I spent a long time studying English--as have many of us, I think. I have spent a relatively small amount of time studying music/critically listening to music. I've spent so much time learning close reading techniques, and now I teach students how to test their theories about a text--I teach them to defend their claims by pointing to specific details in the text they're reading. It's quite hard for me to test or defend my claims about music/sound. For example, when listening to on Billie Holiday's version of Strange Fruit, I had an impression of scraping (I heard scraping?), but I thought to myself, "Why do I say that? Does her voice sound similar to something scraping the ground?" Since I couldn't think of an appropriate way to defend it, I didn't write it down. Now, of course, there are affective terms I can use that I know are dependent on my perception and thus don't exactly need a defense (I think), but just like getting students' affective responses to literature is just a starting point for really getting into the text, the same must be true for music--so goes my line of reasoning. I know there are commonly-agreed-upon rules for listening to music, like "minor chords illicit feelings of sadness or dread, while major chords tend to be cheerier," but I don't feel confident enough in my listening to be able to build a defense of my "reading" of a sonic artifact (song) or a component of one, like a voice. At points, Lordi helped me to see what a "close reading" of a song/voice could look like, but I still feel ill-equipped to DO them. Is anyone else feeling this, and does anyone have suggestions about how to go about doing/defending a critical listening (see, I can sort of replace the word "reading" here!) to a song/voice? What to listen for, specifically, for example?
Thanks, all!
Hannah
P.S.- I found our brief discussion of privilege, appropriation, and power really compelling, and I want to think about the implications in an English classroom. I've been toying with the idea of blogging about this issue for a while, and I haven't figured out just how to frame my question, but look for that in the coming weeks!
I keep going back to Gabrielle’s question of how sight and sound are interacting in Corregidora. We discussed how Ursa’s scar isn’t visible to everyone, but we didn’t focus (too much) on how Ursa’s scar can be heard in her voice. Cat doesn’t stop at saying she wouldn’t notice anything wrong with Ursa’s voice post-incident if she’d never met her, but that she might be moved more because “it sounds like you’ve been through something. Before it was beautiful too, but you sound like you been through more now” (44). Ursa’s voice is scarred, too, but in a way that makes it sound more authentic.
What makes this even more interesting to me is how, as a class, this may have transferred over to the listening exercise we did with the three different renditions of “Strange Fruit.” While certainly Diana Ross’s politics certainly had something to do with how many of us reacted to her version of the song, Amanda noted how light Ross’s voice is in comparison to Billie Holiday and Nina Simone, and one of the descriptions we had of Ross’s voice was that it was hovering over something darker.
This isn’t something limited to “Strange Fruit,” either, or solely an American context. This comparison of voice for authenticity is something that occurs frequently in discussions revolving around Tego Calderón and Ismael Rivera. Calderón, a rapper and reggaetonero, is continually compared to the late Rivera, who was notable for making bomba and plena (Afro Puerto Rican folk music) popular music and singing about race in Puerto Rico. The comparisons are not only due to the fact that Calderón also discusses race in his music and has an appreciation for bomba music. Petra Rivera-Rideau notes that Calderón’s nasal voice and delivery also harken back to Rivera. While this may reflect the fact that Calderón’s parents were huge fans of Rivera and he grew up listening to Rivera’s music, it’s also something that’s frequently brought up to position Calderón as a successor to Rivera. Now, this isn’t the same dynamic as we see in Ursa’s voice, where a Black woman’s voice has to reflect some kind of tragedy or abuse, but it’s interesting nonetheless as to how blackness sounds.
As we continue to talk about the sonic—not just music, but sound itself—I’m wondering how we’re going to navigate how much authenticity gets tied into the voice when it comes to black music(s).
Since our last class I have spent time thinking about Corregidora and the characters of Cat and Jeffy since we didn’t talk about them in class. I’m interested at the role of queerness in the novel, and what space it may be inhabiting in the novel. I kept thinking about how Baldwin is quoted on the back saying that the novel is “the most brutally honest and painful revelation of what has occurred, and is occurring, in the souls of Black men and women.” There’s a lost-ness and searching for place and safety that pervades the novel and perhaps the secondary characters exemplify this all in their own ways.
I also keep thinking about listening for the sonic, and articulating what the sonic does without using adjectives. This idea helps me better understand the sonic quality of writing. Since we can’t necessarily hear writing and thus attribute adjectives to it, perhaps it is easier to tell or describe what it’s doing sonically when we aren’t thinking in terms of adjectives. I would say, then that the writing of Corregidora has a sliding, blurring, and transporting quality to it.
I'm glad you brought up Cat and Jeffy, because I had a hard time figuring out what to make of them and the way Jones depicts them in the novel. Even toward the end, when Jeffy seems fairly confident and self-assured, our protagonist seems to potty her, or regard her with disgust or aversion. Cat is a bit different, harder to pin down. She seems to be perhaps the best listener in the novel--she has a sophisticated vocabulary for talking about Ursa's vocal performance, which could be due to her queerness, but I'm not sure. I'd love to hear more about this!
I'm going to attach my comment in/after with yours because queerness in Corregidora is something that always comes up for me while I'm reading, even as I'm rarely moved enough to discuss it fully (due to lack of coherent response, not lack of interest!). I wish we’d gotten the chance to talk about it in-class.
Though I've read literary critics who've argued for Corregidora as a homophobic text, and others who've argued for a more expansive reading of the book’s lesbian desire/arguable repulsion, I find it difficult to divorce the novel’s illegible relationship with queerness from its illegible relationship with sexuality in general.
During class, Imani attempted to draw attention to the ways the novel braids its most painful moments with its most erotic—how, like with blues music, it uses precisely what can hurt us to draw us in. We find ourselves seduced by the book’s autonomous brutality at the same time that we understand it working upon us. Amanda’s comment that Corregidora admirably “goes there” still typifies this response for me: the “there” the novel traverses is so precise it’s impossible to map, yet one knows when they’ve reached it when what previously qualified as “here” (for Amanda, the everyday experience of a bus ride with other patrons) becomes alienating; even threatening. Somewhere between the praxis of the pain scale doctors use and the theoretical debates about “where” female orgasms “happen” is the effect of Corregidora.
“Where,” then, does that (historically) leave queerness—or, more precisely, lesbian desire? A part of me wonder if it’s not the latter half of that latter phrase that serves as a more significant problematic within the novel. Desire—for history, for sex, for love, for generations, for freedom, for work, for companionship, for the want of nothing—haunts the characters and their relationships with one another. How much of Ursa’s reaction to Cat and Jeffy is due to her apprehension about what they desire and how much is a reaction to the fact that they desire—and, crucially, satisfy their desires—at all?
I really like Hannah observation that Cat is the novel’s best listener, which I’d never considered before, and want to extend her “sophisticated vocabulary for talking about Ursa’s vocal performance” as evidence that she’s the novel’s best reader as well. When Ursa confronts her about Jeffy’s behavior, she’s shocked to find that Cat knew Jeffy was “that way” (another geo-affective orientation/mapping!) and that’s why she initially suggested Jeffy sleep on the floor. Her acute understanding of how both Ursa and Jeffy would behave/react if put in a bed together represents a kind of foresight and sensitivity to the subjectivity of others generally missing from the novel at large. Which makes me wonder: is lesbian desire something Corregidora’s readers “overhear”—around the static of the novel’s elliptical style and the honey-pour of its prose—or is it something we can/must read *for*; something which, in 2016, we’re particularly sensitive to? In other words, is it legible with the right lens or are we always kept away from it because of the structure and orientation(s) of the novel?
None of this resolves the concerns you two mentioned, but it’s what immediately came to mind.
Like many others, I was intrigued by the listening activity from our last class. It was challenging for me to actively put verbs to the way I hear sounds or voices. What always interesting to me, is determining whether we should understand the sounds based on what the artist intends on presenting to us vs. how we interpret the music. Also with Lordi's Black Resonance, it is even more important to see the way that music, but even more the same song, is telling a story across generations. Listening to the 3 Strange Fruit versions, I couldn't stop thinking about Kanye West's use of Strange Fruit in his song Blood on the Leaves. While Billie Holiday, Nina Simone, and Diana Ross are clearly in conversation with each other in their song interpretation, is Kanye in the same conversation as them? Also when a song is in conversation for generations, does the point of it's story or lyrics change? How can we stay true to music, if music even has an ultimate truth. Additionally, can non black women of color sing the song and be in the same conversation that the song is carrying throughout generations? I think for my own work, I am primarily interested in how we are able to carry stories that have unifying elements for those in the black diaspora despite differences in nationality, age, sexuality, class, and other identities. -Candice C. Robinson
Last week's class was interesting to me especially when focusing on the Billie Holiday's Strange Fruit because i love this song. I came across this song by accident. And i remember when i first heard the trumpet it moved me in such a way that it made me feel some type away. I dont know how to explain it, but it brought all types of emotions to my mind. I found it interesting in seeing the way that different artist bring something unique when they perform a song from another artist. For example, Nina Simone's version was nice to listen to.
This week, I was really intrigued by the in-class listening activity. I found it challenging to think of music/sound in terms of its function. I found myself thinking, "Well, I can come up with words to apply to the voice I'm hearing, but how do I know if those words are accurate?" I feel like I've been repeating myself a lot on this blog, but consistently the challenge I've faced in this course is the same. I spent a long time studying English--as have many of us, I think. I have spent a relatively small amount of time studying music/critically listening to music. I've spent so much time learning close reading techniques, and now I teach students how to test their theories about a text--I teach them to defend their claims by pointing to specific details in the text they're reading. It's quite hard for me to test or defend my claims about music/sound. For example, when listening to on Billie Holiday's version of Strange Fruit, I had an impression of scraping (I heard scraping?), but I thought to myself, "Why do I say that? Does her voice sound similar to something scraping the ground?" Since I couldn't think of an appropriate way to defend it, I didn't write it down. Now, of course, there are affective terms I can use that I know are dependent on my perception and thus don't exactly need a defense (I think), but just like getting students' affective responses to literature is just a starting point for really getting into the text, the same must be true for music--so goes my line of reasoning. I know there are commonly-agreed-upon rules for listening to music, like "minor chords illicit feelings of sadness or dread, while major chords tend to be cheerier," but I don't feel confident enough in my listening to be able to build a defense of my "reading" of a sonic artifact (song) or a component of one, like a voice. At points, Lordi helped me to see what a "close reading" of a song/voice could look like, but I still feel ill-equipped to DO them. Is anyone else feeling this, and does anyone have suggestions about how to go about doing/defending a critical listening (see, I can sort of replace the word "reading" here!) to a song/voice? What to listen for, specifically, for example?
ReplyDeleteThanks, all!
Hannah
P.S.- I found our brief discussion of privilege, appropriation, and power really compelling, and I want to think about the implications in an English classroom. I've been toying with the idea of blogging about this issue for a while, and I haven't figured out just how to frame my question, but look for that in the coming weeks!
I keep going back to Gabrielle’s question of how sight and sound are interacting in Corregidora. We discussed how Ursa’s scar isn’t visible to everyone, but we didn’t focus (too much) on how Ursa’s scar can be heard in her voice. Cat doesn’t stop at saying she wouldn’t notice anything wrong with Ursa’s voice post-incident if she’d never met her, but that she might be moved more because “it sounds like you’ve been through something. Before it was beautiful too, but you sound like you been through more now” (44). Ursa’s voice is scarred, too, but in a way that makes it sound more authentic.
ReplyDeleteWhat makes this even more interesting to me is how, as a class, this may have transferred over to the listening exercise we did with the three different renditions of “Strange Fruit.” While certainly Diana Ross’s politics certainly had something to do with how many of us reacted to her version of the song, Amanda noted how light Ross’s voice is in comparison to Billie Holiday and Nina Simone, and one of the descriptions we had of Ross’s voice was that it was hovering over something darker.
This isn’t something limited to “Strange Fruit,” either, or solely an American context. This comparison of voice for authenticity is something that occurs frequently in discussions revolving around Tego Calderón and Ismael Rivera. Calderón, a rapper and reggaetonero, is continually compared to the late Rivera, who was notable for making bomba and plena (Afro Puerto Rican folk music) popular music and singing about race in Puerto Rico. The comparisons are not only due to the fact that Calderón also discusses race in his music and has an appreciation for bomba music. Petra Rivera-Rideau notes that Calderón’s nasal voice and delivery also harken back to Rivera. While this may reflect the fact that Calderón’s parents were huge fans of Rivera and he grew up listening to Rivera’s music, it’s also something that’s frequently brought up to position Calderón as a successor to Rivera. Now, this isn’t the same dynamic as we see in Ursa’s voice, where a Black woman’s voice has to reflect some kind of tragedy or abuse, but it’s interesting nonetheless as to how blackness sounds.
As we continue to talk about the sonic—not just music, but sound itself—I’m wondering how we’re going to navigate how much authenticity gets tied into the voice when it comes to black music(s).
Ismael Rivera's "Las caras lindas": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9gsjztx3f8
Tego Calderón's "Chango blanco": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9nq28w82xY
Since our last class I have spent time thinking about Corregidora and the characters of Cat and Jeffy since we didn’t talk about them in class. I’m interested at the role of queerness in the novel, and what space it may be inhabiting in the novel. I kept thinking about how Baldwin is quoted on the back saying that the novel is “the most brutally honest and painful revelation of what has occurred, and is occurring, in the souls of Black men and women.” There’s a lost-ness and searching for place and safety that pervades the novel and perhaps the secondary characters exemplify this all in their own ways.
ReplyDeleteI also keep thinking about listening for the sonic, and articulating what the sonic does without using adjectives. This idea helps me better understand the sonic quality of writing. Since we can’t necessarily hear writing and thus attribute adjectives to it, perhaps it is easier to tell or describe what it’s doing sonically when we aren’t thinking in terms of adjectives. I would say, then that the writing of Corregidora has a sliding, blurring, and transporting quality to it.
Steffan,
DeleteI'm glad you brought up Cat and Jeffy, because I had a hard time figuring out what to make of them and the way Jones depicts them in the novel. Even toward the end, when Jeffy seems fairly confident and self-assured, our protagonist seems to potty her, or regard her with disgust or aversion. Cat is a bit different, harder to pin down. She seems to be perhaps the best listener in the novel--she has a sophisticated vocabulary for talking about Ursa's vocal performance, which could be due to her queerness, but I'm not sure. I'd love to hear more about this!
Hey Steffan & Hannah,
DeleteI'm going to attach my comment in/after with yours because queerness in Corregidora is something that always comes up for me while I'm reading, even as I'm rarely moved enough to discuss it fully (due to lack of coherent response, not lack of interest!). I wish we’d gotten the chance to talk about it in-class.
Though I've read literary critics who've argued for Corregidora as a homophobic text, and others who've argued for a more expansive reading of the book’s lesbian desire/arguable repulsion, I find it difficult to divorce the novel’s illegible relationship with queerness from its illegible relationship with sexuality in general.
During class, Imani attempted to draw attention to the ways the novel braids its most painful moments with its most erotic—how, like with blues music, it uses precisely what can hurt us to draw us in. We find ourselves seduced by the book’s autonomous brutality at the same time that we understand it working upon us. Amanda’s comment that Corregidora admirably “goes there” still typifies this response for me: the “there” the novel traverses is so precise it’s impossible to map, yet one knows when they’ve reached it when what previously qualified as “here” (for Amanda, the everyday experience of a bus ride with other patrons) becomes alienating; even threatening. Somewhere between the praxis of the pain scale doctors use and the theoretical debates about “where” female orgasms “happen” is the effect of Corregidora.
“Where,” then, does that (historically) leave queerness—or, more precisely, lesbian desire? A part of me wonder if it’s not the latter half of that latter phrase that serves as a more significant problematic within the novel. Desire—for history, for sex, for love, for generations, for freedom, for work, for companionship, for the want of nothing—haunts the characters and their relationships with one another. How much of Ursa’s reaction to Cat and Jeffy is due to her apprehension about what they desire and how much is a reaction to the fact that they desire—and, crucially, satisfy their desires—at all?
I really like Hannah observation that Cat is the novel’s best listener, which I’d never considered before, and want to extend her “sophisticated vocabulary for talking about Ursa’s vocal performance” as evidence that she’s the novel’s best reader as well. When Ursa confronts her about Jeffy’s behavior, she’s shocked to find that Cat knew Jeffy was “that way” (another geo-affective orientation/mapping!) and that’s why she initially suggested Jeffy sleep on the floor. Her acute understanding of how both Ursa and Jeffy would behave/react if put in a bed together represents a kind of foresight and sensitivity to the subjectivity of others generally missing from the novel at large. Which makes me wonder: is lesbian desire something Corregidora’s readers “overhear”—around the static of the novel’s elliptical style and the honey-pour of its prose—or is it something we can/must read *for*; something which, in 2016, we’re particularly sensitive to? In other words, is it legible with the right lens or are we always kept away from it because of the structure and orientation(s) of the novel?
None of this resolves the concerns you two mentioned, but it’s what immediately came to mind.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteLike many others, I was intrigued by the listening activity from our last class. It was challenging for me to actively put verbs to the way I hear sounds or voices. What always interesting to me, is determining whether we should understand the sounds based on what the artist intends on presenting to us vs. how we interpret the music. Also with Lordi's Black Resonance, it is even more important to see the way that music, but even more the same song, is telling a story across generations. Listening to the 3 Strange Fruit versions, I couldn't stop thinking about Kanye West's use of Strange Fruit in his song Blood on the Leaves. While Billie Holiday, Nina Simone, and Diana Ross are clearly in conversation with each other in their song interpretation, is Kanye in the same conversation as them? Also when a song is in conversation for generations, does the point of it's story or lyrics change? How can we stay true to music, if music even has an ultimate truth. Additionally, can non black women of color sing the song and be in the same conversation that the song is carrying throughout generations? I think for my own work, I am primarily interested in how we are able to carry stories that have unifying elements for those in the black diaspora despite differences in nationality, age, sexuality, class, and other identities.
ReplyDelete-Candice C. Robinson
ReplyDeleteLast week's class was interesting to me especially when focusing on the Billie Holiday's Strange Fruit because i love this song. I came across this song by accident. And i remember when i first heard the trumpet it moved me in such a way that it made me feel some type away. I dont know how to explain it, but it brought all types of emotions to my mind. I found it interesting in seeing the way that different artist bring something unique when they perform a song from another artist. For example, Nina Simone's version was nice to listen to.