Stephan Pennington | Tufts University (original) (raw)
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Papers by Stephan Pennington
Journal of the American Musicological Society, 2013
Oxford University Press eBooks, Jan 8, 2019
There has been a consistent interest in how people perform gender vocally. An under-utilized sour... more There has been a consistent interest in how people perform gender vocally. An under-utilized source of insight into the vocal presentation of self can be found in the passing guides transgender people circulate amongst themselves that analyze how cisgender people perform gender through the voice. This chapter uses transgender passing guides, feminist sociolinguistics, and vocal pedagogy literature to present a consolidated set of tools to analyze the construction of normative gender vocal performance. After presenting these tools, the chapter then uses them to analyze the musical performances of cisgender artists trying to pass as a different gender, cisgender queer artists twisting those vocal norms in order to make themselves audible as queer, and cisgender artists trying to pass as their own gender.
Oxford University Press eBooks, Jan 31, 2014
Feminist Formations, 2011
Women and Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture, 2018
The Oxford Handbook of Music and Queerness, 2019
There has been a consistent interest in how people perform gender vocally. An under-utilized sour... more There has been a consistent interest in how people perform gender vocally. An under-utilized source of insight into the vocal presentation of self can be found in the passing guides transgender people circulate amongst themselves that analyze how cisgender people perform gender through the voice. This chapter uses transgender passing guides, feminist sociolinguistics, and vocal pedagogy literature to present a consolidated set of tools to analyze the construction of normative gender vocal performance. After presenting these tools, the chapter then uses them to analyze the musical performances of cisgender artists trying to pass as a different gender, cisgender queer artists twisting those vocal norms in order to make themselves audible as queer, and cisgender artists trying to pass as their own gender.
Women and Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture, 2018
Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 2015
This article presents an analytical and cultural reading of the 1932 song ‘Der Onkel Bumba aus Ka... more This article presents an analytical and cultural reading of the 1932 song ‘Der Onkel Bumba aus Kalumba tanzt nur Rumba’ by the German vocal group the Comedian Harmonists. It incorporates Erving Goffman’s stigma theory to propose an alternative interpretation of performances of commercial rumba and jazz by members of a Weimar cosmopolitan youth culture that pushes beyond paradigms of appropriation and exoticism. The author argues that songs seemingly exoticizing an Other could rather serve as a means of articulating concerns of an Othered Self in the context of the rise of National Socialism. The article contrasts a close reading of the Comedian Harmonists’ performance of the song with performances by Leo Monosson and the Melody Gents and incorporates the contrasting experiences of the lyricist Fritz Rotter with those of the Comedian Harmonists to show how ‘Der Onkel Bumba’ presented jazz/rumba as an indicator for both utopian idealism
and looming dystopian horror.
Ethnomusicology Forum, 2015
In 2008, Belgian video game company Tale of Tales released the 10-minute art game The Graveyard. ... more In 2008, Belgian video game company Tale of Tales released the 10-minute art game The Graveyard. The central action of this game consists of an old woman walking down a cemetery path, and then sitting on a bench. The game culminates in the playing of Dutch-language folk song ‘Komen te Gaan’, a nostalgic meditation on death written and performed by Gerry de Mol. The Graveyard’s creators fashion themselves as artists within a cosmopolitan modern community, yet the game itself is steeped in nostalgia and haunted by the spectre of Belgium’s place in World War II. de Mol’s song, which functions as the game’s centrepiece, manifests the New Old Europe Sound covertly; by obscuring its borrowings of East European and Jewish musical markers, it reveals an ambivalence towards the changing Europe that contradicts the game-makers’ supposed dedication to multiculturalism.
Journal of the American Musicological Society, 2013
Journal of the American Musicological Society, 2013
Feminist Formations, 2011
Journal of the American Musicological Society, 2013
Oxford University Press eBooks, Jan 8, 2019
There has been a consistent interest in how people perform gender vocally. An under-utilized sour... more There has been a consistent interest in how people perform gender vocally. An under-utilized source of insight into the vocal presentation of self can be found in the passing guides transgender people circulate amongst themselves that analyze how cisgender people perform gender through the voice. This chapter uses transgender passing guides, feminist sociolinguistics, and vocal pedagogy literature to present a consolidated set of tools to analyze the construction of normative gender vocal performance. After presenting these tools, the chapter then uses them to analyze the musical performances of cisgender artists trying to pass as a different gender, cisgender queer artists twisting those vocal norms in order to make themselves audible as queer, and cisgender artists trying to pass as their own gender.
Oxford University Press eBooks, Jan 31, 2014
Feminist Formations, 2011
Women and Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture, 2018
The Oxford Handbook of Music and Queerness, 2019
There has been a consistent interest in how people perform gender vocally. An under-utilized sour... more There has been a consistent interest in how people perform gender vocally. An under-utilized source of insight into the vocal presentation of self can be found in the passing guides transgender people circulate amongst themselves that analyze how cisgender people perform gender through the voice. This chapter uses transgender passing guides, feminist sociolinguistics, and vocal pedagogy literature to present a consolidated set of tools to analyze the construction of normative gender vocal performance. After presenting these tools, the chapter then uses them to analyze the musical performances of cisgender artists trying to pass as a different gender, cisgender queer artists twisting those vocal norms in order to make themselves audible as queer, and cisgender artists trying to pass as their own gender.
Women and Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture, 2018
Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 2015
This article presents an analytical and cultural reading of the 1932 song ‘Der Onkel Bumba aus Ka... more This article presents an analytical and cultural reading of the 1932 song ‘Der Onkel Bumba aus Kalumba tanzt nur Rumba’ by the German vocal group the Comedian Harmonists. It incorporates Erving Goffman’s stigma theory to propose an alternative interpretation of performances of commercial rumba and jazz by members of a Weimar cosmopolitan youth culture that pushes beyond paradigms of appropriation and exoticism. The author argues that songs seemingly exoticizing an Other could rather serve as a means of articulating concerns of an Othered Self in the context of the rise of National Socialism. The article contrasts a close reading of the Comedian Harmonists’ performance of the song with performances by Leo Monosson and the Melody Gents and incorporates the contrasting experiences of the lyricist Fritz Rotter with those of the Comedian Harmonists to show how ‘Der Onkel Bumba’ presented jazz/rumba as an indicator for both utopian idealism
and looming dystopian horror.
Ethnomusicology Forum, 2015
In 2008, Belgian video game company Tale of Tales released the 10-minute art game The Graveyard. ... more In 2008, Belgian video game company Tale of Tales released the 10-minute art game The Graveyard. The central action of this game consists of an old woman walking down a cemetery path, and then sitting on a bench. The game culminates in the playing of Dutch-language folk song ‘Komen te Gaan’, a nostalgic meditation on death written and performed by Gerry de Mol. The Graveyard’s creators fashion themselves as artists within a cosmopolitan modern community, yet the game itself is steeped in nostalgia and haunted by the spectre of Belgium’s place in World War II. de Mol’s song, which functions as the game’s centrepiece, manifests the New Old Europe Sound covertly; by obscuring its borrowings of East European and Jewish musical markers, it reveals an ambivalence towards the changing Europe that contradicts the game-makers’ supposed dedication to multiculturalism.
Journal of the American Musicological Society, 2013
Journal of the American Musicological Society, 2013
Feminist Formations, 2011