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The introductory chapter asserts that voice studies does not make a claim to a given definition of voice, but instead suggests the limits of any one claim. Voice studies offers tools to better detect the values underpinning any definition of voice. It deconstructs not only the performance of the voice, but also the performance of claims to voice. Thus, voice studies asks questions that necessarily connect practices of and inquiries into voice. In our definition, what distinguishes voice studies as a whole from each of the many individual and overlapping strains of scholarship and inquiry that center voice is that it seeks to understand or interact with voice knowledge beyond the potential narrow confine of a defined area of inquiry. By synthesizing the myriad ways voice is conceptualized and researched into the broadest terms, the chapter arrives at six broad modes, or domains, of voice inquiry and explains these in detail. The domains are: (1) prompts; (2) product and performance; (3) material dimension and mechanism; (4) auditory/sensory perception; (5) documentation, narrativization, and collection; and (6) context. These modes are not mutually exclusive; they often overlap, and this is only one of many ways this material could be conceptualized. Ultimately, the chapter seeks to facilitate dialogue and collaboration between voice researchers, and hence facilitate voice studies research. The chapter also offers a brief overview of the voice studies from 1990 to the present, and gives brief chapter summaries.

In this chapter, we discuss the dramatic narrative arc of what we call the timbre–race equilibrium, particularly how it unfolds in discourse around the career of singer Bobby Caldwell and during the blind auditions for the televised singing competition The Voice. We outline how audience confusion about Caldwell’s racial identity has served as a reliable source of conversation and so-called clickbait. We also examine two instances in which The Voice employs this narrative arc, with the show’s judges serving as listener-protagonists. These judges model a way of listening for the home audience, enacting what Eidsheim calls “informal listening pedagogy.” In witnessing an effort to repair the rupture that occurs when race and timbre fail to align as expected, the public is entrained into normative—in this case, racialized—listening. In short, these examples model how we train ourselves, through this cyclical narrative arc, to hear timbre as racialized essence.

Jazz singer Jimmy Scott’s ambiguously gendered voice became the stuff of legend and was reviled by some and revered by many. His singular vocal timbre fell in a liminal space between black and white, young and mature, male and female. He first gained a cult following and the respect of other prominent singers because of his unique voice and nuanced vocal stylings. His unusual timbre, however, presented marketing challenges. Scott labored in near obscurity for much of his career; his photograph was not included on his own album covers, and he was often unlisted or misidentified in recording credits with other singers. This chapter explores the motivations behind these problems, including gender, sexuality, and racial politics, and how they impacted the reception of Scott.

Through a consideration of the underwater singing practiced by contemporary American soprano and performance artist Juliana Snapper, this article addresses the inherent relation between materiality and the voice, the sensed and the embodied. I focus on the physical and sensory properties of singers' and listeners' bodies; the space within and the matter through which sound disperses; and how the relation between these aspects plays an integral part in what it feels like to sing, and what it is possible to hear. I aim to demonstrate that a sensory reading of singing and listening may capture dimensions of the voice that are difficult, if not impossible, to account for using conventional analyses of music or standard readings of vocal repertoire. However, a sensory approach to sound does not offer a stable explanation of what sound or music is. Instead each such account unveils a composite manifestation of our understanding of sound at a given moment in time and space.

Marian Anderson’s 1955 Metropolitan Opera debut promised to be a pivotal moment that would create a level playing field for African American singers in U.S. opera. But an examination of Anderson’s career, as well as those of later African American opera stars, reveals that their operatic engagements were often limited to marginalized characters. In attempt to understand this situation, this essay looks to the history of African Americans singing classical music from the mid-nineteenth through early twentieth centuries. Early classical singers’ careers and reception, even certain operatic repertoire, suggest that African American classical voices are heard through a complex filter constituted by perceptions of slaves’ voices, burlesque opera and minstrel shows, resulting in claims that blackness produces peculiar vocal timbres. This article, a case study of listening as a cultural-historical process, posits that perceptual sediments deposited during the abolitionist era continued to shape reception of African American operatic voices throughout later centuries.

This article discusses the ways that experimental music and deaf performance critique the presumed limits of hearing, voice, silence, and speech. It analyzes artist and scholar Brandon LaBelle’s rendition of John Cage’s Lecture on Nothing , which features an audio recording of the text read by a deaf person, and bass baritone Nicholas Isherwood’s rendition of Maurizio Kagel’s Phonophonie , which mobilizes seemingly far-fetched personas by means of voice. Through the analyses of these works, the article contests the normative attributions for hearing, voice, silence, and speech.

For arts departments in many institutions, technology education entails prohibitive equipment costs, maintenance requirements and administrative demands. There are also inherent pedagogical challenges: for example, recording studio classes where, due to space and time constraints, only a few students in what might be a large class can properly observe and try out the procedures. These and other practical and pedagogical considerations when teaching using hardware may suggest that conventional studios may not provide the best learning environment. In this paper I suggest that desktop simulation may not only help to solve the aforementioned problems, but can contribute to the creation of a cooperative learning environment.