Ruth Hellier, Ellen Koskoff-Women Singers in Global Contexts - Music, Biography, Identity-University of Illinois Press (2013) PDF
Ruth Hellier, Ellen Koskoff-Women Singers in Global Contexts - Music, Biography, Identity-University of Illinois Press (2013) PDF
Ruth Hellier, Ellen Koskoff-Women Singers in Global Contexts - Music, Biography, Identity-University of Illinois Press (2013) PDF
Singers in
Global
Contexts
Edited by
Ruth Hellier
Afterword by
Ellen Koskoff
Appendix 227
Contributors 239
Index 243
www.music.ucsb.edu/projects/womensingers
Audio examples of all the singers featured in this volume can be heard via the
dedicated website that accompanies this volume. In addition to audio mate-
rial, the website includes video material, still photography, links to further
resources and recordings, and updates on tours and events featuring many
of the singers.
I gratefully acknowledge the University of California, Santa Barbara, for
hosting this website.
Prelude: Warming Up
Ten Unique Women
Akiko Fujii Amelia Pedroso
Ayben Özçalkan Ixya Herrera Kyriakou Pelagia
Lexine Solomon Marysia Mąka Sathima Bea Benjamin
Sima Shokrani Zainab Herawi
Ten unique women constitute the heart of this volume: each one has engaged
her singing voice as a central element in her life, experiencing manifold op-
portunities, tensions, and choices through her vocality. Her stories encom-
pass relationships, encounters, and journeys entailing jubilation, struggle,
suffering, excitement, fervor, drive, and generosity. Her singing—the action
of producing musical sound through the expelling of air causing vibrations
of the body—involves profoundly personal and individual experiential, sen-
sory, and signifying processes that resonate with contexts ranging from local
to global. Through narrative ethnography, biography, verbatim text, and
analysis to convey fragments of these women’s lives, we reflect upon ways in
which these ten women make their literal and metaphorical voices heard.
Engaging the interface of music-making, politics, and ideology, and dealing
with aspects of vocal aesthetics, gender, and multiple identities, the narra-
tives convey accounts of agency, activism, risk, childhood, familial relations,
legacies, and the profound pleasures and passions of singing. These themes
and threads are interlaced through this collection, offering valuable insights
into issues raised by women singers in their private and performing lives, in
evidence of voice as identity and vocal aspirations, invoking women who come
to understanding a sense of self through their own singing voices. We invite
you to hear these women’s voices on the accompanying website and through
the many websites and recordings detailed in this volume.3
major world events, revolutions, social and racial movements, and transfor-
mations from communist to democratic states: Amelia lived through Castro’s
socialist regime in Cuba; Ayben grew up within Turkey’s paradoxical society
of tension between old and new; Ixya lives with the legacy of the post-1960s
Chicano movement in the United States of America and was touched by
the 1994 economic meltdown in Mexico; Kyriakou Pelagia’s life was pro-
foundly affected by the independence and division of Cyprus; Lexine’s life
is entrenched in Indigenous politics of Torres Strait Islanders on mainland
Australia; Marysia in Poland lived through the transformation from socialist
to democratic state; Sathima witnessed and lived through the South African
transition to apartheid and its demise; Sima was involved with the Islamic
revolution in Iran 1979; and Zainab was caught up in the 1978 Marxist coup
d’etat and civil unrest in Afghanistan.
by the author has a tendency to remove agency from the subject, render-
ing the individual woman an object. As cultural and music analysts we are
more comfortable engaging a theorizing and generalizing model with groups
and collectivities. In this volume authors do engage theoretical insights and
frameworks to a greater or lesser extent, but there is more of an emphasis on
the practice of lived experiences and decision-making. There are also connec-
tions here with issues of feminist theoretical models, according to particular
areas of music scholarship. Tolbert observed that “ethnomusicologists must
struggle . . . to sidestep the ethnocentrism of feminist theory” (2003, 77), and
Margaret Sarkissian noted that feminist theoretical models are “oddly absent”
from ethnomusicology, “an indication perhaps that ethnomusicologists are
less inclined than historical musicologists to search for theoretical generaliza-
tions. For the more culturally relativistic ethnomusicologist, the attempt to
understand other cultures from their own (rather than a Western-centric)
perspective makes generalization, critique, and the construction of theory
difficult” (1999, 17).
Along with theorization and generalization, the issue of contextualization
is a matter that has been addressed by each author. Each woman is inherently
in interrelation with a musical (and cultural, political, and ideological) context
or tradition(s)—with what has come before and what exists in the present,
each with its own aesthetics, roles, and expectations. A central element of this
volume concerns how each individual woman interfaces and interacts with
her context and tradition, in terms of goals, risks, and desires. Although this
is not a comparative, survey-based, or area-studies volume, details of genres,
events, repertoires, and performance contexts are included. These should be
treated as frames in a film, fragments in a mosaic, and threads in a tapestry,
all of which are important and rich in their own right, and yet are embedded
in much larger and more complex soundscapes and environments.
All provide some chronological sense and include aspects of childhood and
adulthood. Two chapters encapsulate and encompass full life cycles, for two
singers are no longer living—Amelia and Zainab. Ages, stages, and phases in
life vary: Ixya is thirty and Kyriakou nearly eighty, yet both have had a public
life as singers for twenty years. Ayben is near the beginning of her career;
Sathima has accomplished a fifty-year career. References to birth and death
are present in many chapters, and some include references to motherhood
(Marysia, Sathima, Sima, and Zainab). One noteworthy common element is
the inclusion of authors’ descriptions of their own experiences hearing the
singer sing, encompassing moments of connection and profound exhilara-
tion, and emphasizing both the nature of the personal interaction between
author and singer and also a fundamental theme: the power of a singing voice.
and betrayal, and many other complicated feelings. Akiko’s mother, who was
also her master, passed away while I was conducting field research. Akiko
initially did not talk much about her feelings, but later expressed how much
her mother’s death had impacted on her emotional transformation, as I de-
scribe in my chapter.”
• • •
Amelia Pedroso was a renowned Cuban ritual singer and priestess in the
Santería tradition, who generated remarkable achievements in men-domi-
nated and heterosexual contexts, openly creating a lesbian and gay-friendly
ritual house in Havana and, in the early 1990s when she was in her for-
ties, moving into a drumming domain that specifically prohibited Cuban
women—although paradoxically non-Cuban women were taught in Cuba.
Pedroso formed an all-women ensemble and toured and ran workshops
in the United States of America and Europe. She attracted women to her,
acquiring a role as an iconic activist, developing a network of students and
religious godchildren, and leaving a remarkable transnational legacy fol-
lowing her death in 2000.
Amanda Villepastour: “While undertaking my masters research, I first saw
Amelia Pedroso perform in March 1998 in Havana but did not have the op-
portunity to meet her or the other musicians in her group, Ibbu Okun. In the
following year when Pedroso toured the United Kingdom, I assisted with the
workshops and concerts led by Pedroso in London and Manchester, filmed her
performances, and conducted a formal interview along with several informal
conversations, leading to two journalistic articles in Straight No Chaser and
Glendora. As the U.K. orisha religious community was and is small, and I had
been studying Cuban and Nigerian batá drumming since 1996, Pedroso took
an interest in my work and experience. Our new friendship was fleeting due
to geographical distance and Pedroso’s death soon after her U.K. visit.”
• • •
Ayben Özçalkan made her mark as a seventeen-year-old, rapping on her
older brother’s CD recording in Istanbul, Turkey, in 1990. She developed
her own style and technique as a young rap artist, even though she risked
bringing disapproval to her family by performing in a male-dominated genre.
After putting her career on hold as she cared for her dying mother, she then
relaunched herself as a rapper, with multiple appearances on TV, to become
the personality that she is today. She overtly tackles women’s issues in her
performances through her lyrics that deal explicitly with the treatment of
women in Turkey.
Thomas Solomon: “I first heard of Ayben shortly after I began doing re-
search on Turkish rap in 2000, while living and working in Istanbul. I didn’t
hear much about Ayben in the following few years, but I took note when she
resumed recording and entered the public arena again during 2004. By this
time I was living and working in Norway, so I mostly followed her career ‘from
afar,’ though I was also able to get updates ‘on the ground’ and occasionally see
her perform live during my regular short visits to Istanbul every summer. I
was finally formally introduced to Ayben for the first time at a hip-hop party
in late summer 2006, and we agreed to do a formal interview later that fall
when I would be in Istanbul for an extended period of fieldwork. Ayben’s
schedule was quite full at that time, since she was busy in the recording studio
working on her first full album, as well as shooting a video clip, having live
performances (including trips abroad), and doing interviews with journalists.
But we eventually were able to do the interview one afternoon in November.
I had to listen to her very carefully during the interview, since Ayben speaks
very fast (at least that was my impression), though I also noticed that despite
the speed with which she spoke, her pronunciation was always very clear,
with consonants and vowels carefully articulated, and without ever slurring
over syllables—the same qualities that characterize her rapping style. I noted
during the interview that the rhythmic quality of her speaking voice, and her
generally fast speech, made it sometimes seem like she was spontaneously
rapping, even when she was just engaging in normal conversation.”
• • •
Ixya Herrera debuted at the age of twelve, dueting with her idol Linda Ron-
stadt in front of a crowd of thousands at the Tuscon Mariachi Conference
1992 in Arizona. Growing up in California, in the supportive environment
of a musical family, and with the legacy of Chicano cultural politics, she has
developed a solo career engaging a repertoire of diverse Mexican genres. In
her self-crafting processes she aspires to enchant audiences with the thrill
of her singing voice, negotiating stereotypes and placing satisfaction before
commercial gain. She continues to push forward with recordings and concert
appearances, engaging a form of subtle activism, and demonstrating self-
determination and self-definition.
Ruth Hellier: “Ixya and I met for the first time in Santa Barbara, Califor-
nia, in 2008. Following years of living in the United Kingdom and Mexico,
I began a process of migrating to California, to join my husband.11 Having
experienced Mexicanness in Mexico I was interested in developing an un-
derstanding from the perspective of ‘el norte’ (the north). I therefore sought
out a singer in southern California with Mexican connections, and began a
research relationship with Ixya. I remember meeting Ixya for the first time, a
young woman who was the vision of grace and charm, both offstage and on.
Although our schedules and life events have often prevented us from meeting
as often as we would have liked in the last three years, with my migration
now permanent, Ixya and I are planning opportunities for performance and
pedagogical collaborations over the coming years.”
• • •
Kyriakou Pelagia passed her childhood and much of her adult life undertaking
women’s roles of village domesticity in Cyprus, as homemaker and cultivator of
produce, caring for her husband, and raising a family. Singing was important
to her as child, but she had no public outlet. Life changed in the 1990s with the
introduction of private radio stations. Pelagia made frequent auditory appear-
ances, resulting in an invitation to perform with a local music ensemble and
record a CD, which subsequently led to national fame. With a singing career
that began as an older woman in her fifties, her social role and offstage life as
a housewife and grandmother is integral to her vocal performances.
Nicoletta Demetriou: “I was born and raised in Nicosia, Cyprus. My ma-
ternal family hails from Paralimni, Kyriakou Pelagia’s village. Pelagia and her
husband, Giorgos, remember my grandparents, especially my grandfather
Nicolas (nicknamed Koustros), working in the fields of the village, before
leaving with my grandmother to live in the nearby town (Famagusta). In
Paralimni’s close-knit, family-oriented community, the fact that I was ‘Kous-
tros’s granddaughter’ (named after him, too—Nicoletta) not only helped
to secure me an interview with Pelagia, but also immediately established a
sense of familiarity and continuity. I’ve been singing Cypriot folksongs since
childhood. As a child, I was part of a number of music and dance groups
in Nicosia, and the singer of my school’s folk dance group. As a secondary
school student in Nicosia in the 1990s, I witnessed the rise of private radio
stations as well as Pelagia’s rise to fame.
Next to folk singing I also studied classical singing for many years. After
completing my secondary school education in Cyprus, I moved to Thessa-
loniki, Greece, where I completed a BA in Music Studies and continued my
vocal training. Singing took me to Vienna next, where I had further vocal
training. There I also studied Ethnomusicology at the Institute for Musicol-
ogy of the University of Vienna, and decided to once again turn my attention
to Cypriot folk music. In 2003 I rejoined a folk music group in Cyprus and
began touring the island for performances in the summer months. In 2004
I moved to London to do a PhD in Ethnomusicology. During my fieldwork,
with Cape Town was fundamentally different. Sathima was born in 1936,
twelve years before what became known as the apartheid government, came
to power. 1936 was the same year that my parents were born. I was born in
Cape Town in 1963, just shy of three years after the infamous Sharpeville
Massacre, and a year after Sathima left for Europe. We met in New York City
in 1989 when I was a graduate student at New York University, and Sathima
and her husband, jazz pianist Abdullah Ibrahim, were living in exile from
South Africa. I had called to speak to Abdullah Ibrahim but he was not home.
Sathima and I talked and agreed to meet to discuss her own life and music.
We would do this many times, mostly with a recording device between us.
In the mid 1990s we decided to write a book together, and so I began to do
oral history research amongst family members and musicians involved with
South African jazz, particularly as it happened in Cape Town in the 1950s
and early 1960s.
The piece of Sathima’s life that was the most challenging to reconstruct,
however, was her time as a jazz migrant in Europe from the early 1960s through
1977, when she and Abdullah decided to base themselves in New York City at
the famous Chelsea Hotel until South Africa was liberated. In 2006 I discov-
ered a CIA archive about African musicians, writers and artists in England and
Europe in the 1960s. Contained inside the archive of London’s Transcription
Center—the place poorly funded by the CIA—were letters and other docu-
ments by and about Sathima and Abdullah. While Sathima has focused on
performing and recording, I have done the interviewing, archival work, and
writing. We hope that our co-authored, experimental book about her life and
our working relationship will inform many about Sathima’s extraordinary life
and artistry, but also enable some to rethink the contours of thinking about
jazz, diaspora, song, creativity, and South Africa’s place in the story.”12
• • •
Sima Shokrani, an Iranian singer specializing in Mazanderani repertoire and
language, was profoundly influenced by the work songs of her grandmother,
demonstrating an engagement with political and ideological issues from child-
hood, as she challenged linguistic constraints and participated in the revolu-
tion of 1979 as a university student of twenty-one. She has shaped her career
as woman singer within the well-known constraints in Iran, as restrictions
are placed around women singers by law. Making choices to sing songs that
articulate women’s agency in romantic and other relationships, she negotiates
her multiple identities in private and public singing contexts. Supported by
her husband, and despite the painful migration of her daughters to Germany,
Sima chooses to remain in Iran, where she fulfills a role as a senior woman.
Gay Breyley: “Since 2005 I have conducted regular fieldwork in the northern
Iranian province of Mazanderan, where I met Sima and a range of other singers
and musicians, professional and non-professional. I have spent a lot of time as
a guest and friend of Sima and her musician friends, listening to Sima sing in
social contexts and watching her teach young women, as well as conducting
interviews with Sima about her life and opinions. I’d like to say that she’s the
most generous person in every way—with her music and hospitality.”
• • •
Zainab Herawi began her singing career as a child apprentice in the Herat
region of Afghanistan in the 1940s, within the context of a class-based so-
ciety, where singing by women was considered to be morally questionable.
Zainab’s is a story of unfulfilled fame because, although she was invited to
sing for Kabul Radio when twenty-seven, family and background pressures
and constraints led to her returning home, where she continued to sing
for wedding celebrations. As a series of choices and struggles involving the
interfacing domains of family, location, religion, and vocality, her life as a
local singer with a large family was one of frequent anguish and frustration;
yet her songs live on in the narratives and performances of musician and
scholar Veronica Doubleday.
Veronica Doubleday: “During the 1970s I undertook fieldwork in the city of
Herat, in Afghanistan. There I studied singing and learned to perform Afghan
music, working principally with Zainab Herawi. For some ten months, until my
departure in 1977, I concentrated on working with Zainab to research women’s
music and the position of female singers in the local community. We formed
a close relationship and Zainab taught me many songs. Also, on occasion I
performed as a member of Zainab’s band. Since that time I have continued to
perform the music I learned in Herat, and I regularly give concerts with my
husband John Baily and noted Afghan musicians. Within Afghanistan and
the transnational Afghan community I am acknowledged as an accomplished
singer with an authentic repertoire of Heratu folk material.”
• • •
Threads, Themes, Connections, and Clusters
In creating this collection we are relating to, and building on, deep foundations
laid by earlier research on music, gender, and women, published as edited
collections, monographs, and essays, and we acknowledge this prior scholar-
ship.13 Many of the issues and themes touched upon and discussed in preceding
studies recur as motifs in this volume. Here, in this final section of the intro-
for an audience or aural community of hearers who not only listen but also
look, and in some cases deliberately gaze. Choices about body-use, body-
form, and body-covering therefore form a vital element in the reception of
their voices. References to body-use include “sitting down” (Zainab), jab-
bing and chopping (Ayben), and smooth and graceful legato gestures (Ixya).
Discussions of corporeality include a so-called “normal” body (Kyriakou,
Sathima, Sima), a youthful and graceful body (Ixya), a body transformed
by multiple pregnancies (Zainab), and an aging body (Kyriakou). Sartorial
and costume elements encompass deliberately everyday clothes (Ayben,
Kyriakou, Sathima); the transformation of the quotidian (Ixya); and a fully
covered body and face, creating an “erotic voice” (Zainab).
tactics. Some chapters deal with blatantly political, religious, and ideological
agency (Amelia, Ayben, Kyriakou, Lexine, Sima), whereas others are far from
controversial. Some narratives concern overcoming challenges and obstacles
(Akiko, Ayben, Lexine, Zainab), whereas others are more related to gently
shaping pathways (Ixya, Marysia).
Legacies Finally and fittingly, each woman in this volume creates a lega-
cy—ripples of influence that extend from her singing voice and life of sing-
ing. Again, given the scope of personal contexts, such legacies cover a wide
spectrum of facets, including gender, age, politics, genre, nationality, ethnicity,
sexuality, and religion. Influences range from the subtle and hidden joy in a
home, a private gathering, or a local setting, to the transnational posthumous
life effects of a major figure (Amelia). Through their singing lives these women
have established seniority as a positive asset (Kyriakou, Sathima, Sima); cre-
ated role models for career women (Akiko, Lexine, Sathima); opened up
singing in public to women in local settings (Kyriakou); enabled diasporic
generations to connect with their homeland (Ixya, Lexine, Marysia, Sathima,
Sima); empowered women to reflect on their indigenous status, encouraging
them to become activists (Lexine); challenged men’s actions towards women
(Ayben, Sima); played with stereotypical constraints and engaged stereotypi-
cal attributes as resistance (Akiko, Amelia, Ayben, Ixya, Kyriakou, Sima); and
given thousands of listeners huge pleasure, often with numerous recordings
resounding with their voices.
Amelia Pedroso and Zainab Herawi are no longer living, and here we
acknowledge and cherish the lives of these two women.
• • •
Figure 0.1. Ixya Herrera and Ruth Hellier, Santa Barbara, California, 2008. © Ruth
Hellier and Ixya Herrera.
Notes
1. In Christopher Small’s work Musicking: The Meanings of Performing and Listening,
the verb “musicking” encompasses all musical activity, including listening, performing,
and composing.
2. For example, ethnomusicologist Zoe Sherinian has discussed the pitching of church
music for voices associated with men, rather than women, in the context of South India
(2005).
3. A companion website provides examples of these women singing, and, where rel-
evant, updated information concerning ongoing recordings, concerts, and comments. I
acknowledge the support of the University of California, Santa Barbara, in hosting this
website and the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center for providing funds. With grate-
ful thanks to website project managers: Linda Shaver-Gleason and George Blake, both
doctoral students at UCSB. www.music.ucsb.edu/projects/womensingers.
4. I am immensely grateful to Ellen Koskoff for contributing an insightful and weighty
Afterword to this volume. Here I acknowledge her influence in providing inspiration to
so many scholars and students in the study of women and music-making.
5. It might appear that we are engaging a contradictory element in citing postmodern
theories to be problematic in relation to universalizing tendencies, even as they are useful
in rendering an individual life to be of value. Such contradictions and dichotomies are
accepted and welcomed.
6. Used with permission of Nicoletta Demetriou.
7. Developing some of the issues further, the matter of how a “unified women’s category
could be articulated for feminist political purposes . . . illustrated (at least) two things.
First, that gender—or what it is to be a woman or a man—is still very much a live issue.
Second, that feminists have not entirely given up the view that gender is about social factors
and that it is (in some sense) distinct from biological sex. The jury is still out on what the
best, the most useful or (even) the correct definition of gender is. And some contempo-
rary feminists still find there to be value in the original 1960s sex/gender distinction. . . .
The various critiques of the sex/gender distinction have called into question the viability
of the category women. . . . Linda Alcoff holds that feminism faces an identity crisis: the
category of women is feminism’s starting point, but various critiques about gender have
fragmented the category and it is not clear how feminists should understand what it is
to be a woman (2006). . . . Feminism is the movement to end the oppression women as
a group face. But, how should the category of women be understood if feminists accept
the above arguments that gender construction is not uniform, that a sharp distinction
between biological sex and social gender is false or (at least) not useful, and that various
features associated with women play a role in what it is to be a woman, none of which
are individually necessary and jointly sufficient (like a variety of social roles, positions,
behaviours, traits, bodily features and experiences)? Feminists must be able to address
cultural and social differences in gender construction if feminism is to be a genuinely
inclusive movement and be careful not to posit commonalities that mask important ways
in which women qua women differ. These concerns (among others) have generated a situ-
ation where (as Linda Alcoff puts it) feminists aim to speak and make political demands
in the name of women, at the same time rejecting the idea that there is a unified category
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for the performer, having nobody around him/her to seek help. Among other
vocal traditions of Japan, jiuta also has a distinctive style of singing originally
developed by blind male musicians between the seventeenth and nineteenth
centuries. Although authorized transmission was exclusively restricted to
those blind men, jiuta also became an important repertory for geisha, who
sang and played shamisen to entertain male customers in the pleasure quar-
ters. After the modernization of Japan in the late nineteenth century, sighted
people, including women, started performing jiuta as professionals, and the
performance context of jiuta shifted from indoor private entertainment to
a staged classical art. There are several Japanese vocal genres accompanied
by shamisen, but jiuta’s distinctive feature lies in its lyrics: they depict intri-
cate emotions of women who endure suffering for their loved ones, who feel
strongly for falling flowers, and who shed tears—ultimately these are women
who follow their passion and their belief in love.
In reworking the performance context of jiuta Akiko sought to gain a more
intimate atmosphere with her audience by incorporating speech, another
significant element of her performance. She spent time at concerts detailing
her personal relationships with her family. As a result, listeners could wit-
ness the creative process of an isolated but determined woman striving for
a musical career through her jiuta training and her family relations. Akiko’s
jiuta performance came to embody her whole life and emotional experi-
ences. For her these were fully integrated into her artistic world, presenting
the compelling drama of an independent woman.
Material for this chapter is drawn from my research conducted between
2003 and 2009.1 During this time I was associated with Akiko as a researcher,
her jiuta student, a friend, and a colleague in the art world. In our formal
interviews as well as informal conversations, Akiko expressed her complex
feelings experienced from her childhood to the present day, including key
events that took place in her youth, within her marriage, her divorce, and
ultimately her mother’s death. Musical life stories can reveal our desires and
the self that we wish to realize in relation to our music. They can be seen
as constructions or fantasies of the world, created by the person telling the
story, in which one’s individuality is negotiated in relation to the surrounding
society (Diamond 2000, 131). For Akiko, the telling of her musical life story
was a way of reexamining her own life experiences. Thus she reconstructed
her identity to reflect her desire to pursue a career as an independent singer.
Many of the stories Akiko told me included details of her relationship with
her audience, which was a crucial aspect for her constructions of self im-
ages, including her presentation as a woman singer. Although these stories
may not be precisely accurate records of the events, it is possible to examine,
ing meals, cleaning, and other routine chores. Such internal apprenticeships
used to be quite common in the traditional Japanese performing arts, whereby
students who wished to become professional artists were expected to faithfully
follow their master’s instructions and share in their daily life. It was thought
that this would enable them to forge a stronger bond with their master.
Although Akiko’s mother held a respected position within her school and
musical spheres, as the wife of a businessman she had another important
role within the home—that of managing housework and looking after her
husband and two children. Akiko’s mother may have thought that having
an internal apprentice at home would threaten her husband’s authority, and
so instead she gave extra duties to her daughter. Akiko was caught in a trap,
under enormous pressure from two directions. She not only had plenty of
extra housework as an internal apprentice, but was also under psychological
pressure from being heir to the school.
My mother was extremely busy, but when she was at home she totally dedi-
cated herself to her husband [Akiko’s father], who was an autocrat. Perhaps it
was a reaction to stress, but she was always irritated and snappy. The brunt
of her irritation was borne by her children. My brother turned his aggression
on me and bullied me when I was a child. Because there was no uchi-deshi at
that time, I did everything—such as housework, including looking after my
father—and when I graduated from school, I picked up my mother from work
and was a kaban-mochi (“bag carrier”). I couldn’t bear it psychologically, and
I ended up all skin and bones. I often caught a cold, had anemia, and had to
stay in bed because of stomach-aches caused by kidney disease. I also refused
to go to school and often stayed indoors all day.
Being a kaban-mochi (bag carrier) symbolizes Akiko’s suppressed status. The
term describes a person who serves a superior—colloquially, this might be
called “a dogsbody”—the image is of a person struggling beneath a heavy load
and accompanying their superior everywhere. Akiko had complex feelings
about her parents’ relationship as well as her own situation, which she felt
her mother forced her into. She described how her mother had been always
preoccupied with her responsibilities, and consequently how she would run
out of patience:
I couldn’t love my mother. She was extremely bitter, strict, and abusive. I
even hated her. Because of that, I couldn’t concentrate on my training and spent
everyday with zero energy. It was a kind of depression. It was around the time
when my brother entered the Tokyo University of Fine Arts and Music, and
people around me began to think that he would inherit our school. I wondered
whether I should look for a different career, but I couldn’t think about it, and
just closed my mind. My parents accused me of being lazy. Every day was hell,
and I often thought about committing suicide.
Akiko had ambivalent feelings about jiuta. She followed the art with no
other options because she knew that she was “born into the family of jiuta.”
However, it was jiuta that deprived Akiko of a “normal” relationship with
her mother. For Akiko, professional and family life had coexisted within the
home since her childhood. Although Akiko saw her mother as a role model
in terms of her being a jiuta musician, as a mother she was far less of a role
model. This woman had no need to earn a living because her husband was
wealthy. So her role within the family was as a full-time housewife supporting
her husband. Akiko’s father failed to respect her mother’s musical career. Her
mother carefully monitored his moods and dedicated herself fully to serving
him as a housewife. There was much tension between them, and Akiko felt
her parents’ relationship was one of “pretending” to be a couple.
Within postwar Japanese society many women began to engage in highly
respected professions, becoming doctors, lawyers, and so on, but at the same
time they were faced with the difficulties and expectations of fulfilling mul-
tiple roles inside and outside their homes. In general, society still considered
marriage and motherhood to be the primary roles of women. If a woman
tried to pursue her own career, this was regarded as inappropriate. Due to
a strong cultural tradition that demanded that women dedicate themselves
to their homes and families, those who chose to be career women and have
families at the same time had to deal with the social stigma of displaying “ab-
errant behavior” in terms of neglecting their husbands and children (Dilatush
1977, 191–203; Hendry 1981, 28; Iwao 1993). Looking at her mother struggling
with her two roles within the family—master of an art and full-time house-
wife—Akiko developed a complex feeling toward gender roles. While she
was encouraged to follow in her mother’s footsteps as a career woman, she
saw the reality of its consequence: a suppressed position in relation to the
husband who had no respect for her career.
In addition to this, sibling rivalry arose between her and her brother. Akiko
had been regarded as the next to inherit the school when she was a child.
This was due to the fact that her brother, who was also learning jiuta, had
expressed no intention of pursuing a career in music, but instead wanted to
study science at university. Although he began learning jiuta at a very early
age from his grandmother and mother, this was simply because he grew up
in an environment where the people around him were musicians. However,
when he was a high school student he had an accident that hospitalized him
for a while and subsequently gave him the chance to reconsider his career. He
then began to take seriously the training from his grandmother and mother
and eventually entered the Tokyo University of Fine Arts and Music. Akiko,
on the other hand, gave up attending the university due to illness. Getting into
the Tokyo University of Fine Arts and Music is part of the standard career
progression of children from hereditary musical families, and so for Akiko,
her own failure and her brother’s success at the university meant that she was
put into second place for succession to their musical lineage. As expected,
Akiko’s mother announced, at a 2006 recital, that she had handed over her
position as head of the school to her son, who would now be responsible for
continuing the school.
In many musical families, a male child is seen as the legitimate heir of
the lineage, whereas female children are expected to play supporting roles
and often remain dilettantes in spite of their skills. Although many women
musicians have played a leading role and achieved success as iemoto, within
traditional music the majority of female musicians are still given supporting
parts. Within the circle of jiuta, many school members tend to be women
but the iemoto are very often men. It is generally the case that a male child
succeeds to his parent’s position, and a female becomes head only if the in-
cumbent head does not have a son, or if the son chooses a different profes-
sion. Akiko’s grandmother was the exceptional woman—she broke free and
established herself as iemoto of her own school by becoming independent
from her teacher, despite the fact that her teacher was strongly offended by
her decision. The school founded by Akiko’s grandmother was handed down
to her mother, the family’s only child.
Akiko described how she had believed that inheriting the art of jiuta from
these women was her fate. Akiko, seeing herself as responsible for these two
senior women’s heritage of art, felt she had lost her own place in the family.
Her stress and depression became even deeper when her brother entered uni-
versity and stood, ahead of her, as a rival. While struggling to find a direction,
she sought a new way of life in marriage. “My desire for marriage, which I had
since childhood, was a dream of escaping from home,” said Akiko. Her marriage,
however, was not a happy one. “It was,” Akiko said, “the wrong marriage from
the beginning,” and broke down very quickly. Her husband was a sararî-man
(salaried man), and an office worker. “He was not a musician,” said Akiko,
and so failed to understand her career as an artist. Like her father, who had
no connection with the art world, Akiko found her husband had no respect
or support for his wife’s profession. These stories suggest that Akiko had an
idea that marriage would bring her a better place to live and a home where
she would be loved, cared for, and most importantly, encouraged to pursue
her musical career. Akiko had a desire to find a husband who found values
in art and showed his sympathy with her passion as a musician. She dreamed
of a true partner, the kind of person her mother could not have had.
organizing the event. In 2001 she started giving a recital every two months
in an informal setting for small audiences of around fifty people. The venue
was a small space adjacent to an Italian restaurant, Taberuna [Taverna], in
Shinjuku, central Tokyo. I began attending these Taberuna concerts, and
after being present at several of these, I was struck by how different they
were from the usual jiuta event. Not only was the setting surprising, but also
the sense of intimacy created between the performer and audience due to
the restricted space—listeners sitting in the front row were close enough to
touch Akiko, and everyone present could see the sweat running down her
face (figure 1.1).
Before the Meiji Restoration and the consequent Westernization of Ja-
pan in the late nineteenth century, jiuta was performed as entertainment
in private households, as well as in the pleasure quarters. In this context,
performances took place in an intimate environment with no clear boundary
between performer and audience. After the development of modern concert
halls in the twentieth century, the boundary between stage and audience
became obvious. Thus the original context of a jiuta performance, where
the performer and the audience interact via music and conversation, was
lost. However, the venue in which Akiko chose to perform was originally
a karaoke area within an Italian restaurant. The owner had refurbished the
karaoke space to make a small concert venue and sought the opinion of Soh
Figure 1.1. Akiko Fujii performing “Kageboshi” (“Shadow”) at her recital in the
Kioi Hall, Tokyo, October 2008. Photograph by Hideyuki Masuda. © Akiko Fujii.
By explaining the lyrics, Akiko believes that those in the audience unfa-
miliar with jiuta can increase their knowledge of the music, for one of the
difficulties for contemporary listeners is understanding the lyrics, which
are written in classical Japanese. However, Akiko’s talk about lyrics is not
just intended to make traditional music comprehensible for a present-day
audience. More significantly, it personalizes her performance by sharing
her emotions arising from the world depicted in those lyrics. Such lyrics
explore passionate feelings of women toward their love, and frequently an
unrequited love. Women depicted in jiuta were mostly idealistic images cre-
ated by male poets between the seventeenth and the nineteenth centuries.
Consciously or unconsciously, Akiko manipulates these images of feminin-
ity, reinterprets them, and portrays herself as representing women’s voices
through her speech and singing. Turning her thoughts toward people in the
past, about whom the lyrics of jiuta spoke, Akiko finds the strong bonds
between the people of that time especially moving:
I think people in the past had a strong faith not only between couples, but
also between mothers and their children, masters and their disciples, and in
many other people’s relationships.
For Akiko, such relationships can be described as “for one’s dear life,” and
she feels “people’s strength” in them. Jiuta has always conveyed strong, faith-
ful, and passionate relationships, expressed via women’s voices. As someone
who has negotiated an emotional minefield with regard to her family and her
jiuta training, Akiko has at last found her own meanings in her performance
of this art form.
Akiko’s complex feelings toward her mother were particularly in trans-
formation due to her mother’s illness at that time. This significant episode
changed their relationship dramatically. Akiko realized that, before her death,
her mother felt compelled to teach Akiko the repertories and performance
techniques she had not yet passed on. In spite of her ambivalent feeling about
her mother’s appointment of her brother as successor, Akiko understood her
mother had been seriously considering Akiko’s life and future, if not quite
in the same way that she had taken care of her son.
When I divorced, I was at my wits end because I didn’t have much income
to survive on. But the divorce enabled me to nurse my mother, and I practiced
jiuta day and night. In every way, the divorce made me commit to that art for
life. It has become a treasure that I could spend intimate time with my mother
due to the divorce. . . . My mother, who lived only for the pursuit of her art,
was perhaps not such a good mother, but she made me follow her art. At the
time of her death, I felt deeply content that we had come to love each other
and could finally become real mother and daughter, as well as real master and
disciple. If I hadn’t pursued my artform seriously, I wouldn’t have been able to
understand my mother and appreciate her. My mother taught me jiuta for life,
and so I am determined to take on her teaching for life.
Self-Realization
The experience of Akiko is both inspirational and poignant on many lev-
els. This is because Akiko describes a variety of aspects of women’s lives,
struggles, and achievements, which many women can relate to. In Akiko’s
generation, more and more women who pursue professional careers choose
to remain single so that they can avoid taking double roles: career woman
and full-time housewife. Although she once hoped to establish a family with
an ideal husband, happy to encourage her enthusiastic pursuit of an artistic
career, Akiko faced a reality in which her husband showed little respect for
her artistic interests. Akiko therefore chose to become single, though she
knew that the decision would cause financial difficulties as well as social
disapproval of a single woman without a legitimate job.
Akiko’s feelings toward her brother also involved delicate issues. Although
he inherited the school, according to Akiko, “various problems” arose among
the members, who still maintained a great admiration for their previous
head. When Akiko and her brother talked about their future, her brother
told her that he wanted to be a distinguished shidôsha (teacher) of their
school. Akiko replied that her goal was to save the tradition of jiuta for the
Japanese people. Saving the tradition of jiuta means continuing the heritage
that Akiko’s grandmother and mother left for her. Singing jiuta, for Akiko,
is to trace the musical lives of these individuals who taught her about the
emotions of women in such different ways.
Her mother’s death had a significant impact on Akiko: the loss of her
mother was also the loss of her master whose art she had followed. “I can’t
understand why she is no longer here,” Akiko lamented. Singing jiuta meant
following in the footsteps of the two senior women in her family, who were
pioneers in cultivating the position of women within the traditional music
of Japan. However, since childhood Akiko had watched these professional
women struggle to negotiate their gendered identity as wives and mothers
within their families, despite the great successes they had achieved in society.
Akiko’s fundamental desire is not to become a teacher, but to continue
to be a hyôgensha (artist), who inspires present-day people through her art
form. Voice is a fundamental device of human beings used to differentiate one
from another and express identities, articulated as “giving voice” and “hav-
ing voice” (Feld et al. 2004, 341–42). In her own musical life stories, Akiko
portrays her self-conception as an independent woman singer, triumphing
over adversity in her youth, and embarking on an uneasy journey in pursuit
of her musical career. Whereas Akiko revealed to me her emotional struggles
with regard to her family, in her concert talks she never expresses negative
feelings about her family members, but rather she portrays them as a strongly
bonded family and precious musical colleagues who played crucial roles in
the creation of Akiko as a singer. Akiko continues to negotiate her identities
through the voices of women in jiuta—not only the reflections of her two
women role models, but also the images of her own self-realization. Thus she
continues to encourage her contemporaries and inspire still more women in
the future to express their passionate selves.
Acknowledgments
I would like to express gratitude to Akiko Fujii, who kindly assisted with
this research and disclosed her life story, allowing me to write about it in
this chapter. I also owe a lot to Soh Fujimoto, Andrea Hector-Watkins, Clive
Bell, and Christie Goodall for their helpful suggestions.
Notes
1. All translations from Japanese to English, including quotations from literature and
interviews, are the author’s own, unless otherwise stated. All interviews with Akiko Fujii
were conducted in October 2008, unless otherwise stated.
2. Tokyo University of Fine Arts and Music is the English description of Tokyo geijuts
daigaku.
3. Akiko Fujii quoted in “Close Up.” Hogaku Journal 2005, 219:2.
4. Japan Traditional Cultures Foundation is the English description of Nihon dentô
bunka shinkô zaidan.
5. Interview with Soh Fujimoto, October 2008.
6. Taken from Akiko Fujii’s talk at her concert on June 15, 2009.
7. Interview with Akiko Fujii, September 2009.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid.
10. The “black hair” referred to in this piece describes the sadness of a woman with
black hair, who is unhappily sleeping alone. In Akiko Fujii’s commentary, she refers to
the beginning of the lyrics “kurokami no musubore taru omoi oba,” which means “the
feeling of unity, like my black hair, is tied up.”
11. Taken from Akiko Fujii’s talk at her concert on June 20, 2005.
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1st April 1998: I am in Havana on my first field trip to Cuba, day four. I
arrive at UNEAC (Unión de Escritores y Artistas de Cuba) [Union of Writ-
ers and Artists] for an outdoor performance. I hear batá drums as I make
my way through the crowd and approach the stage. I feel excited by the
sound of the drums. As the performers come into view, I am astounded to
see that the three drummers are women. I hear a soaring voice leading the
performance. I look for the lead singer, who would usually be standing
beside the drummers. There isn’t one. After a couple of minutes of scanning
the performance space, I realize one of the drummers is leading the song.
Everything is new and different.
Amelia Pedroso (1946–2000) was an esteemed, yet controversial, ritual singer
or akpón in an Afro-Cuban spiritual tradition popularly known as Santería, or
to the devotees themselves, Regla de Ocha or simply Ocha. Pedroso’s voice—lit-
eral and metaphoric—continues to posthumously shape issues of gender in the
music-making of Santería.1 While the overwhelming majority of ritual singers
in the tradition are men, there is no religious discourse that narrates why this
should be so, as there is in Afro-Cuban drumming traditions. However, it is
not Pedroso’s status as a leading woman akpón that created controversy. Using
one kind of power, as a priestess (santera) and akpón, Pedroso appropriated
another form that had previously been prohibited for Cuban women. She was
almost certainly the first Cuban woman to cross a traditional gender line and
perform publicly with her own all-women group on the drums, the batá, which
accompanied her vocal performances. Pedroso died in 2000 before she could
fulfill her deeper, far more radical mission: to own and play her own conse-
crated batá drums, which Cuban practitioners call fundamento.2 Through her
resistant actions and radical ideology, Pedroso’s influence has spread beyond
the shores of Cuba and the bounds of her own lifetime, leaving a network of
students and religious godchildren who have inherited her legacy.3
The phrase “leading from the inside” refers both to the way Pedroso led her
all-female ensemble Ibbu Okun musically, and to the manner in which she led
what has now become an international female batá drumming movement, with
Pedroso as its iconic symbol. As the prestigious Cuban priestess and musi-
cian within a movement that was partly initiated and primarily enacted by
non-Cuban women, Pedroso “led from the inside” culturally, religiously, and
musically. I propose that Pedroso created “power loops” in two respects. The
first—at the micro level—was a musical power cycle, as Pedroso directed her
ensemble by leading vocally—the true seat of power in batá performance. But
Pedroso was unusual because she led vocally while simultaneously playing one
of the drums, though typically not the lead drum. This musical loop provides a
useful metaphor for the second, macro power loop between Pedroso, an iconic
Santería religious and musical insider, and non-Cuban women, who were in
fact first to cross the gender boundary and play the batá drums.
By playing the batá, I propose that Pedroso used one form of power—as
priestess and akpón—to lever another, as a female batá drummer, for which
no word traditionally exists. (The traditional word for batá drummer is the
masculine batálero, though the term batálera is now creeping into the vocabu-
lary of women, and sometimes men, to designate female batá drummers.)4
In this chapter, I argue that it was Pedroso’s high status as a ritual singer and
priestess that empowered her radical resistance to the preexisting gender
boundaries in the music of Santería. Although there are stringent prohibitions
against homosexuals and women in several forms of Afro-Cuban drumming,
the wider Santería community is accepting and welcoming of homosexuals,
providing a degree of refuge from a historically homophobic political and
social environment. Indeed, key Santería priesthoods are routinely occupied
by gay men and women. With this intrareligious tension in view, it is of great
interest that Pedroso was a lesbian.
Briefly revisiting the well-trodden ground of issues related to “insider” and
“outsider,” Santería and batá drumming are becoming increasingly globalized
(see Olupona and Rey 2008) and the boundaries between insider and out-
sider are becoming ever more porous at the transnational level. However, my
study not only examines the reconfiguration of internal gender boundaries
among devotees across national and cultural borders but proposes a nebulous
boundary perceivable only to practitioners themselves: this world and the
“other world.” Within a belief system where the living “pass to the ancestors”
and transform into a kind of spirit called “Egun,” Pedroso remains present
in the lives of people she influenced. While she instigated objective change
in women’s access to both singing and batá drumming during her lifetime,
Amelia Pedroso maintains her power as an icon, and to some, an Egun, by
continuing to guide and inspire those who share her vision.
ing to one female participant (who asked not to be named), some New York
male batá teachers (both Cuban exiles and locals) told their students not to
attend Pedroso’s workshops. These teachers disapproved of Pedroso’s contro-
versial stance and urged their female students not to support her. A cluster
of male batá players who attended one of Pedroso’s workshops in New York
created tension by standing outside the door where she was teaching, at no
point entering the space. In Philadelphia, male drummers also discouraged
students and friends (of both sexes) from attending Ibbu Okun’s week of
events, though the event was well-attended by men and women (Elizabeth
Sayre, pers. comm.).
In 1999 Pedroso toured the United Kingdom. Traveling on her own, she
collaborated with U.K.-based musicians and dancers and performed concerts
and conducted song workshops in London and Manchester (figure 2.1). Un-
like her trip to the United States with Ibbu Okun, Pedroso’s trip to the United
Kingdom was less politically charged. With only a fledgling Santería religious
community at that point and as yet no significant community of female batá
players, Pedroso’s presence did not mobilize a vanguard of female musicians
(at least at that time) as it had in the United States. In the same year, another
recording featuring Pedroso’s singing voice was released. Blues for Yemayá
is a musical fusion produced by German-born jazz flautist and composer
Mark Alban Lotz (recorded in Havana in 1997 and released in 1998).
Pedroso made two more international trips. In August 1999 she traveled to
New York with her partner Alina Valera. While there, they attended the Catskill
Women’s World Drum & Percussion Happen’n (cofounded by percussionist
Ubaka Hill) near Woodstock, New York. Pedroso’s last trip to the United States
was in 2000. After a battle against cancer, she had a relapse while abroad and
returned urgently to Cuba, where she died just weeks later on May 24, 2000.
Sadly, negative stories persist concerning Pedroso’s death. Narrow-minded,
fundamentalist Santería practitioners in the United States have been heard
saying that Pedroso died because she played the batá. One woman I spoke
with (who wishes not to be named) said that she received divination and was
told not to play the batá as Pedroso “may have died” because she did. Other
unsubstantiated stories circulate that Pedroso did in fact play a fundamento
while in New York and then became ill, while others say that she was killed
by magic. What can be said is that Amelia Pedroso’s cancer had been poorly
treated in 1998 when she was first diagnosed in Cuba, an all-too-common
situation due to the economic blockade that deprives Cuban citizens of es-
sential medicines.
In terms of Pedroso’s private life and family situation, she was a lesbian
and did not marry or give birth, although she did raise a close relative as
her own daughter and was with her longtime partner, Alina, at the time of
her death. Historically, Cuban culture is not conducive to living an openly
gay or lesbian lifestyle partly due to oppressive pre- and postrevolutionary
policies. Yet Pedroso created her own family within her ritual house—known
in the Santería tradition as an ilé—in Havana and a transnational network
of religious godchildren. Several of Pedroso’s U.S. American students and
godchildren had helped to fund her medical care and attended her funeral
and three-month commemoration ceremony (a Santería rite) in Havana.
Figure 2.2. An analysis of two of Pedroso’s recordings, “Ilú Añá” and “Santisimo.”
before possession occurs. This canon is the closely guarded oricha tratados
(sung prayers dedicated to specific orichas). The akpón’s utterances—the
confluence of sung incantations and aché—bring the orichas into the ritual
space through the bodies of devotees.
travels, Pedroso quickly developed an iconic status. Women saw her play
and were inspired to learn the batá and travel to Cuba to study with her.
As a Portland-based Cuban-American musician and goddaughter of Pe-
droso, Virginia Lopez stated, “Before seeing Amelia, I would never have
dared play the batá.”
Pedroso’s international reputation grew alongside the Cuban government’s
instigation of the periodo especial económico (special economic period) in
1991, which brought a new set of government policies. Introduced after the
collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990 and its withdrawal of economic support
to Cuba, then president Fidel Castro opened the nation to mass tourism in
order to attract much needed revenue into the country. The Cuban constitu-
tion was amended in 1992 and citizens were guaranteed nondiscrimination
based on religious belief and for the first time people with religious beliefs
were allowed to join the Communist Party. The Pope’s visit to Cuba in 1998
also led to further relaxing of religious oppression. In this newly constructed
environment, the government selectively condoned religious tourism, which
became known as ochatur or santurismo (see Hagedorn 2001, 9), and ap-
propriated religious music forms as tourist attractions. Pedroso’s unusual
credentials did not escape the gaze of Cuban authorities. A Havana-based
government organization, Asociación Yoruba de Cuba, organized Ibbu Okun
workshops in December 1998 and January 2000, which were attended ex-
clusively by foreign women.
While most of Pedroso’s batá students in the United States were also women,
some men did attend her workshops. I spoke with an accomplished male
Añá drummer, Orlando Fiol, who attended one of Ibbu Okun’s workshops
in New York City. He said that Pedroso and her iyá player, Aleida Nani, were
unsure of several rhythms. In response to one particular rhythm Ibbu Okun
performed, Fiol said to the women, “That is not how it goes, but I can teach
you.” The three Cuban women responded positively to Fiol’s offer and ac-
cepted the opportunity to learn from him.15 This account, along with other
criticisms about Pedroso’s technique (Elizabeth Sayre, pers. comm.) suggests
that Pedroso was a better singer than she was drummer, which is not surpris-
ing given that she lacked an environment where she could learn drumming in
community (routinely available to Cuban men). Furthermore, she had been
drumming for a far shorter time than she had been singing. Fiol’s anecdote,
along with my observations of Pedroso in the United Kingdom, indicate that
she did not self-segregate and was open to engaging with and learning from
men. Her segregation came from the outside.
A Transnational Sisterhood
Pedroso and the non-Cuban network of women playing the batá needed
one another in several respects. Because both groups of women had limited
opportunities to share information and play publicly in their home communi-
ties, forming mutual bonds was advantageous in a range of ways. Although
many non-Cuban women were getting what they needed in terms of musi-
cal instruction from male Cuban teachers (both with master drummers in
their home countries and in Cuba), it was, nevertheless, much harder for
women to gain musical knowledge and performance opportunities, which
were routinely offered to men. Pedroso’s emergence as a visible, authorita-
tive, and resistant Cuban woman gave license to non-Cuban women to start
questioning the musical gender boundaries in their own environments. At
the same time, many non-Cuban women were and remain uncomfortable
with the discrepancy between themselves and Cuban women. Rather than
envying or resenting what she perceived as the favoritism shown to foreign
women, Pedroso metaphorically joined hands with them, forming bonds of
sisterhood, family, and godchildren. There were several likely explanations
for this.
For reasons that need further investigation, my fieldwork and research has
shown that a disproportionate number of women batá players are lesbian or
bisexual. Although gay women are marginalized to varying degrees around
the world, their marginalization in Cuba has been particularly harsh (see
Lumsden 1996).16 Given that gay Cubans have been especially persecuted in
the twentieth century, relative to, say, gay people in the United States, it is
arguable that, as a Cuban lesbian, Pedroso had less at stake in defying the
patriarchy around singing and drumming than heterosexual women. My fe-
male research participants have repeatedly said that heterosexual women who
uphold musical gender boundaries are frequently concerned about “looking
good” in front of the men.
As in music, gay Cubans have formed religious alliances. Within Santería,
networks of religious lineages are formed through initiation (as in the Añá
drumming cult). With the globalization of orisha religion generally, and with
Santería specifically, it is financially attractive for Cubans to have foreign god-
children, and also immensely socially prestigious. Many transnational religious
networks that have developed over the last four decades have been led by
musicians (men and women), because under former President Fidel Castro’s
policies, musicians were among an elite group (which also included visual
artists and sportsmen and women) who were granted permission to leave and
return to Cuba. Through Pedroso’s own travels and the networks that devel-
oped, she acquired numerous European and North American godchildren.17
Many of the aspiring akpónes and women batá players I interviewed in the
United States have ritual affiliations with Pedroso. It was her interlinked musi-
cal and religious activities at home and abroad that instigated a “sisterhood”
in opposition to the Añá brotherhood, the male-only drumming cult. Within
her circle of musicians and religious devotees, Pedroso stated her mission in
no uncertain terms. Less than two years before her death, she privately said
to me, “Women will play Añá,” meaning that women will, one day, be able to
play the consecrated batá drums, which is currently taboo. On her last trip
to the United States in March 2000, two months to the day before her death,
Pedroso uttered it publicly in a song workshop in the presence of twenty to
thirty participants (Elizabeth Sayre, pers. comm.). But Amelia’s vision did not
stop there. Carolyn Brandy maintains that Pedroso had explicitly declared her
mission to own a fundamento one day.
While the majority of women Santería devotees regard the religion’s pre-
scribed gender divisions and taboos as uncontestable tradition, Pedroso
viewed women’s musical gendering as an asymmetry that needed reform.
Yet given that Pedroso was already remarkably powerful as a priestess and
akpón and could authoritatively lead an all-male ensemble of drummers
and transform gatherings of devotees, why was she so concerned with ap-
propriating another form of power and overturning a religious taboo that
excluded women from playing the fundamento? While her choices might
seem a logical progression, women singers who were her contemporaries
and predecessors had not followed the same path but rather accepted the
religious drumming taboos as a given and hence maintained their religious
status. In an environment where ceremonies are poorly paid and compe-
tition is high, Pedroso could little afford to dent her social and religious
status. Since she has died, Pedroso’s full motivation remains speculative.
One simplistic proposition might be that she was influenced by the actions
of foreign women. Another (though not mutually exclusive) explanation
is that she perceived a gender asymmetry that she regarded to be unfair
and decided to take the lead simply because as a reputable priestess and
musician, she felt she could. Or perhaps she decided to do so because she
simply loved the sound of the drum. While all of these reasons are probably
relevant, Brandy added,
Amelia was very devout and believed that she was spiritually destined to play
the drums. She was called to play the drums and she had enough courage not to
back down. We foreigners only gave her that moment in time to walk through
that door. Ame felt that her playing batá and fundamento was natural, and in
the natural order of her spiritual progression and destiny. Just because some of
her male peers told her “no” was not good enough for Amelia, especially when
all the evidence proved them wrong and they could sell it for money.
Cierre
The fourth, shortest, and final segment of a bembé (ceremony) is the clos-
ing, or cierre. The akpón steps aside while the drummers perform rhythms
that “salute” the orichas and eguns (ancestors). Falling silent, Pedroso has
now become an Egun to be saluted. Given that Havana is home to a vibrant
religious and musical culture with many great musicians, what was it that set
Amelia Pedroso apart? And why did she emerge as an international figure
who continues to be influential after her death? First, Pedroso was enormously
skillful and knowledgeable as a singer and aesthetically had the perfect voice
for the oricha song repertoire. Second, as a priestess initiated at the age of
three in an environment where years of initiation pushes one up the religious
hierarchy, Pedroso wielded spiritual authority in Santería and was believed
to be endowed with abundant spiritual power, aché. Third, she became inter-
nationally mobile in a political climate where foreign, and most particularly
U.S. American visas and Cuban permission to travel were, and continue
to be difficult to obtain. Pedroso’s mobility enabled her to forge a mutually
beneficial international network of non-Cuban women who wanted to be
led by a cultural insider. Fourth, Pedroso’s gender activism drew attention
within both local and transnational communities built around Santería and
its music. As a gay woman, Pedroso was already considered to be subversive
in her own environment, but fitted in quite comfortably with an international
network substantially, though not exclusively, populated by lesbian women.
Although Pedroso had acquired significant esteem and power as a ritual
singer within Cuba before she began drumming in the early 1990s, it was her
decision to perform on the batá drums that made her a transnational cultural
icon. Levering the situation with her position of power as a senior priestess
and musician, Pedroso mobilized first her own musicians at the local level,
and then a transnational network of female batá drummers. It is these loops of
power that developed transnationally between women that are spiraling into
real social and religious change. Through the attention that her drumming
attracted, Pedroso’s singing voice became known outside of Cuba, and as her
international audience and network of students and religious godchildren
grew, her status strengthened at home in Cuba. Although Pedroso became
known internationally as a drummer in the latter years of her life, her real
mastery was vocal. Her unique timbre, command of the religious repertoire,
powerful aché, and virtuosic command of closely guarded texts struck awe
in devotees and musicians.
Devotees and aficionados have been left with several significant commercial
recordings of Pedroso’s vocal performances. Moreover, within a tradition
Glossary
Aché: spiritual power believe to reside primarily in human utterances.
Akpón: ritual singer in Afrocuban musical traditions.
Bembé: a Santería ceremony in which batá drums are used.
Itótele: the middle-sized drum in the batá ensemble.
Iyá: the leading and largest drum in the batá ensemble.
Okónkolo: the accompanying and smallest drum in the batá ensemble.
Santería: an Afrocuban spiritual tradition deriving from the Yorùbá people in West Africa.
Santero/a: initiated oricha devotee.
Notes
1. This article draws from research conducted during a fellowship at the Latino Centre,
The Smithsonian Institution in 2008. I am grateful to the many people interviewed at that
time though special mention is due to Elizabeth Sayre and Carolyn Brandy who not only
shared their knowledge of Pedroso and the events during her U.S. visits, but suggested
revisions in the final stages of preparing this chapter.
2. The word fundamento is also used for other religious objects in Santería.
3. With the breakup of family lineages under slavery, ritual lineages took precedence.
Santeros (priests) form ritual relationships with ahijados (godchildren) through initia-
tion ceremonies and are themselves referred to as the padrino (godfather) or madrina
(godmother).
4. A closed Facebook group called Bataleras was instigated by New York percussionist
Lisette Santiago on November 2, 2010.
5. Rumba is a Cuban secular drum and dance form that has developed into a folkloric
and concert genre alongside community performance.
6. Spelled òriṣá in Yorùbá and orisha in English when referring to transnational tradi-
tions.
7. Pedroso did not have the opportunity to travel to Africa and had limited contact with
Nigerians, whose insider knowledge of Yorùbá drumming cults may have been limited. She
claimed to glean some of her information from a book she saw in France while traveling,
but could not remember the title or author. She also referred to “a Nigerian man” as the
source of her information. Pedroso is correct that women are initiated into the Àyán cult
in Nigeria. However, there is a set of loosely related menstruation taboos. See Vincent
[Villepastour] 2006, 161–66.
8. Santeros use the words santo (saint) and oricha interchangeably.
9. I am grateful to Katherine Meizel for both sharing her insights on Pedroso’s recorded
voice and being a helpful sounding board as I searched for descriptive language to explain
vocal technique and timbre.
References
Abraham, R. C. 1958. Dictionary of Modern Yorùbá. London: University of London Press.
Crowther, Samuel. 1852. A Vocabulary of the Yorùbá Language. London: Seeleys.
Drewal, Henry John. 1974. “Efe: Voiced Power and Pageantry.” African Arts 7(2):26–29,
58–66, 82–83.
Drewal, Margaret Thompson. 1992. Yorùbá Ritual: Performers, Play, Agency. Bloomington:
Indiana University Press.
Gleason, Judith, with Awotunde Aworinde and John Olaniyi Ogundipe. 1973. A Recitation
of Ifa, Oracle of the Yoruba. New York: Grossman Publishers.
Hagedorn, Katherine J. 2001. Divine Utterances: The Performance of Afro-Cuban Santería.
Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Hallgren, Roland. 1995. The Vital Force: A Study of Àṣẹ in the Traditional and Neo-Tra-
ditional Culture of the Yorùbá People. Lund Studies in African and Asian Religions,
Volume 10, ed. Tord Olsson Lund. Lund, Sweden: Department of History.
Lumsden, Ian. 1996. Machos, Maricones, and Gays: Cuba and Homosexuality. Philadelphia:
Temple University Press.
McKenzie, Peter. 1976. “Yorùbá Òríṣà Cults: Some Marginal Notes Concerning Their
Cosmology and Concept of Deity.” Journal of Religion in Africa 8:189–207.
Discography
Clave y Guaguancó. 1994. Songs and Dances. Xenophile CD 4023.
Emilio Barreto. 1996. Santisimo. Luz Productions CD LUZ0002.
Grupo Ilú Añá. 1995. Sacred Rhythms. Fundamento Productions 6120.
Grupo Ilú Añá. 2001. [reissue] Sacred Rhythms. Bembe CD 2055828.
Lotz of Music in Havana. 1998. Blues for Yemayá. Via Records CD 9920592.
Personal Communications
Carolyn Brandy, Oakland, July 28, 2008, email June 3, 2011.
Robin Burdulis, telephone interview, July 8, 2008.
Orlando Fiol, Philadelphia, June 10, 2008.
Regino Jiménez, Havana, April 8, 2004.
Virginia Lopez, telephone interview, April 26, 2008.
Amelia Pedroso, Manchester, March 27, 1999.
Elizabeth Sayre, multiple communications since 1999.
Michael Spiro, Humboldt, July 25, 2008.
Estéban “Cha Chá” Vega, Matanzas, April 5, 2004.
It is a warm, muggy evening in late May 2004 in the northern Istanbul district of
Maslak, where an outdoor hip-hop festival is taking place.1 Since midafternoon
various Turkish hip-hop acts have taken the stage, including well-coordinated
rap groups, charismatic solo performers, and enigmatic DJs holding court from
behind their setups of turntables and mixers. A variety of rap styles—pop rap,
hardcore rap, oriental rap—are represented, and the performers have all been
men. In the late evening the much-anticipated headliner from New York takes
the stage with his crew, and the crowd rushes forward to catch a view of him.
RZA, from the renowned rap group Wu-Tang Clan, has brought with him
an international roster of performers, including Netherlands-based rappers
Cilvaringz and Salah Edin, both of Moroccan descent, as well as Wu-Tang
Clan’s DJ Sueside. The languages of the raps are now English and Arabic, but
the performance of hypermasculinity emanating from the stage continues in
the vein established by the Turkish rappers earlier in the day.
About midway through the set, RZA stops and gestures to stage left, where
a young woman has been standing in the wings, watching the performance
intensely, obviously enthralled. Cilvaringz escorts the young woman, recog-
nizable to many in the crowd as the Turkish rapper Ayben, to center stage,
and she is given a microphone. She is wearing a tank top and the baggy, low-
slung pants of hip-hop fashion. The DJ starts the music, and Ayben begins
rapping, somewhat hesitantly at first. After a few lines, she stops and looks
over to RZA, who shouts encouragement to her and motions to continue.
She hesitates again a bit while waiting for the right moment to enter in the
cyclical rhythmic structure of the music and then launches again into her
rap. This time she is confident, animated, vigorous—in the zone—as she
delivers a series of fast, staccato rhymes, chopping and jabbing at the air with
her hand to punctuate the complex, syncopated structure of her lines. The
crowd roars in approval. After she has finished her verse, RZA indicates to
her to hand off the microphone, and Salah Edin takes over the rapping as
Ayben exits to stage right, having spent barely two minutes onstage.2
Ayben would later characterize this brief performance as one of the high-
lights of her career as a rapper. She described how when she was younger she
listened to Wu-Tang Clan, had posters of RZA and the group on her bedroom
wall, and carried a picture of RZA with her in her wallet. She was a tremen-
dous fan of RZA, but he seemed to her to be so far away and unapproachable.
Then here he was in Istanbul, actually inviting her to join him onstage. In
the days after the festival an interview with RZA was broadcast on the Turk-
ish music channel Dream TV, and RZA commented specifically on Ayben’s
performance, saying that she rapped very fast and was really good. Ayben
described how, while sitting at home and watching this interview in which
RZA praised her rapping, she felt the pride well up inside her and she began
to cry tears of joy. Someone whom she idolized had given her the chance to
make her voice heard and had taken her—and her rapping—seriously.
• • •
In their introduction to Embodied Voices: Representing Female Vocality in
Western Culture, Leslie Dunn and Nancy Jones note how, in feminist dis-
course, “‘voice’ has become a metaphor for textual authority, and alludes
to the efforts of women to reclaim their own experience through writing
(‘having a voice’) or to the specific qualities of their literary and cultural
self-expression (‘in a different voice’)” (1994, 1). As Bernstein explains in
Women’s Voices across Musical Worlds, such metaphors are meant to “express
autonomy, authority, and agency that have been denied to women” (Bern-
stein 2004, 4). Dunn and Jones argue that it is necessary to go beyond this
metaphorical use of “voice” and return to “the concrete physical dimensions
of the female voice upon which this metaphor was based” (1994, 1).
Writing from the interstices of ethnomusicology and linguistic anthro-
pology, Steven Feld and Aaron Fox also emphasize the connection between
empirical and metaphorical evocations of voice and vocality (2000, 161).
Voice is both “the embodied locus of spoken and sung performance” and
“a metaphor for difference, a key representational trope for identity, power,
conflict, social position, and agency” (ibid.). Feld and Fox argue that
The connection between these empirical and metaphorical invocations of voice
indexes a broader . . . project . . . that means to link embodied expression with
social agency. This connection explores how vocality is a social practice that is
locally understood as a conventional index of authority, evidence, and experi-
In this chapter I explore how one Turkish rapper has developed her own voice,
both literally and metaphorically. In more literal terms, the rapper Ayben has
worked over the last decade to develop her technique in composing rap texts
and performing them, gradually finding her own rapping voice. In more meta-
phorical terms, her increasing self-confidence in her own rapping ability, and
her growing sense of the potential of her rap performances to become a vehicle
for reclaiming the everyday experiences of Turkish women, have led her to use
her rapping to express the agency she feels has been denied women in urban
Turkish society, giving a voice to Turkish women whose interests and concerns
she perceives have been underrepresented in Turkish popular culture. Ayben is
a young woman in a historically patriarchal society (Kandiyoti 1995) who has
chosen to work in a musical genre also dominated by an overtly masculinist
orientation—both in its place of origin in the United States of America and as
re-emplaced in Turkey. Ayben has thus had to negotiate a particularly complex
gendered subject position through her self-penned song texts and in the way
she deploys her voice in her personal rapping style. I explore here Ayben’s voice
and subject position through a combination of analysis of rap songs from dif-
ferent periods in Ayben’s career and discussion of excerpts from an interview
I conducted with her in 2006. I think it is important to not just try to recover
Ayben’s voice and agency through analysis of her songs, but to also take seri-
ously her explanations, in her own words, of her life and her artistic project.
not from the diaspora—to gain any significant media attention in Turkey.
Much of the attention she has received has thus focused on the novelty of
her being a woman rapper in Turkey and on her family relation to her older
brother Ceza, himself the first full-blown homegrown Turkish rap star.
Ayben comes from what she herself describes as a “traditional” Turkish
family from a traditionally oriented neighborhood in Üsküdar, a district popu-
larly known for having a large religiously conservative Muslim population.
During our interview3 she talked about how the values of her parents and her
local community place certain expectations on her as a young woman and
how this could potentially have constrained her choice to be a rapper and
performing artist. She also talked about how the fact that her older brother
had already achieved substantial success as a performer by the time she started
working seriously on her own career was an advantage to her because her
family—particularly her father—had learned with Ceza’s success that one
could actually make a viable career as a rapper in Turkey.
In the structure of the Turkish family, daughters are special, the jewel of the
home. But at the same time, the family expects things of them. Schooling is
always very important. Maybe there are families in Anatolia that don’t send
their daughters to school, but I’m talking here about Istanbul. My family is
conservative. They might think it’s wrong for a girl to go out at night. Or in
that culture, adults might disapprove of a girl performing onstage. I’m actually
from a family that is committed to those traditions.
On the other hand, it has been a big advantage for us that my father listens
to music,4 that in his youth he was from the generation of ’68, that he is a man
who has seen and experienced a lot. Of course, everything is not how it looks.
Since the beginning [of her brother’s rap career] there have been times when
my father supported it and when he didn’t support it, but I didn’t experience
that. After he saw my brother’s success, it was more a question of “What will
the neighbors say?” In the end, our mother and father are from the same culture
since they were children.
We grew up in Üsküdar, they are also from Üsküdar, etc. There’s a certain
attitude in the neighborhood we live in. . . . In the traditions and customs of
the Turkish family, respect and love are of course very important. Besides that,
they can regard as strange the idea of going onstage to perform. There are some
Turks who think this is wrong. There are those who think that people who
perform onstage are a little weird. . . . In regard to the traditions and customs
of the Turkish family, I come from a family with strong family ties. Our family
ties are very strong, we are bound to each other.
Besides that, relations with our neighbors are very important. I’m still Ayben
the girl from the neighborhood. Along with that, at the same time I’m still the
Ayben who cooks at home, who does the dishes, who washes the clothes, who
cleans house, who cleans the windows. That continues along with this [her
musical career], I’m carrying on with both of them together. Of course I don’t
know how long it can continue like this. I don’t know how long I will carry on
with both of them without them getting in the way of each other.5
Ayben’s comments about the conservative disapproval of women per-
forming onstage deserve further explication. As in many other Muslim and
Muslim-influenced societies (Doubleday 1999, 2006 [1988]; Jones 1987; Nar-
oditskaya 2000; van Nieuwkerk 1995; Olsen 2002; Sakata 1987) in Turkey
there has historically been an attitude of disapproval against Muslim women
(often in contrast with women from non-Muslim minorities, such as Greeks,
Armenians and Jews) performing publicly onstage—what Atamert refers
to as a “taboo on dancing and singing Muslim women” (2001, 12) and what
O’Connell pithily calls the “male preference for female invisibility in the
public domain” (2006, 287). The assumption is that women who, as per-
formers onstage, willingly make themselves available to the gaze of the male
spectator must be of questionable morals, and such performers may often be
assumed to be promiscuous (Bryant 2005, 232; Greve 2003, 123; O’Connell
2006). This is not to imply that there is a dearth of prominent successful
female performing artists in Turkey today—they are legion, especially in the
various subgenres that collectively make up Turkish pop. The point, rather,
is that within the more conservative segment of urban Turkish society that
Ayben’s family inhabits, it is one thing for some other (family’s) woman to
make a career as a performing artist, but it is an altogether different mat-
ter for a local “neighborhood girl” to enter this suspect profession. Ayben’s
emphasis on her strong family bonds and her assertion that she is still the
“girl from the neighborhood” who takes care of the household chores can
be understood as a strategy for insulating herself from potential accusa-
tions that, as a performing artist, she is somehow being drawn into what is
perceived as the degenerate lifestyle of pop stars as constantly reported in
the tabloid press and on television magazine programs. Ayben thus engages
in a delicate negotiation with what Dunn and Jones refer to as “patriarchal
constructions of the feminine” (1994, 3), accepting some aspects of the con-
straints her family and neighborhood obligations place on her, while also
challenging other aspects as she pursues her chosen career as a performer.
Ayben’s first recorded appearance as a rapper was in a guest appearance
on one song on the first album by the Istanbul rap group Nefret (“Hate”),
consisting of her brother Ceza and his friend Dr. Fuchs.6 The song, “Yüz
Yüze” (“Face to Face”), was recorded in 1999, when Ayben was seventeen
years old, and released the following year. During our interview, my ques-
a series of four couplets on the basis of semantic unity and (in the case of
couplets 2 and 3) end-rhyme. All of these features are consistent with what
Adam Krims, in his book Rap Music and the Poetics of Identity, describes
as typical of early rapping in the United States of America, which gener-
ally featured a fairly predictable “antecedent/consequent couplet and . . .
matching-beat-class end-rhyme” structure (2000, 49). Of the eight lines in
this verse, all but one have a midline caesura, with the text constructed such
that the caesura—an audible pause that breaks up a line—occurs naturally
between two distinct phrases or logical word groupings within the line,
and thus does not disrupt the semantic flow of the text. The second half-
line after the caesura always begins squarely on the downbeat of the third
quarter note in the measure, with the result that the relationship between
the text setting and the meter is easy to follow. The predictability of the
placement of the caesuras and the beginning of each half-line of text, the
repeated intonation pattern in which the last, prosodically stressed8 syllable
of each half-line of text usually ends on a higher pitch, and the end-rhyme
of couplets 2 and 3 all contribute to creating the singsong, old-school qual-
ity of the rapping. The transcription in figure 3.1 represents some aspects
of Ayben’s rapping style in this verse, focusing particularly on the point of
articulation of syllables within the rhythmic structure of each line.9 Each
line across represents one measure in 4/4 meter. The top line of numbers
1–4 represents quarter note values; the second line of numbers represents
sixteenth note subdivisions. The syllables of each line are lined up under-
neath the rhythmic position on which they are articulated. The sign ¶ in the
rhythmic transcription represents the beginning of a new textual line; in
this song all of these coincide with the beginning of a measure. A forward
slash (/) in both the rhythmic transcription and the textual transcription
with translation underneath represents the end of the metrical unit (one
measure), here always coinciding with the end of a textual line. Rhymes
(also all at the end of textual lines) are indicated with underlining.
1 2 3 4 # of syllables
1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 in line
1 ¶
Dok- san do- kuz se- fer sa- yı- lı u- çak / 11
2 ¶
Be- nim a- dım Ay- ben Ce- za- nın kar- de- şi / 12
3 ¶
İş- te kız M C a- pay- rı bir ses / 10
4 ¶
Ge- li- yo- ruz iş- te şim- di tan- ta- na- yı kes / 13
5 ¶
Kim de- miş kız- lar be- ce- re- mez bu i- şi / 12
6 ¶
Bi- lek i- şi değ- il sa- de- ce yü- rek i- şi / 13
7 ¶
Dok- tor ve Ce- za kar- şı- nız- da Nef- ret / 11
8 ¶
Ay- ben ve E- lif Türk- çe ra- pin kız se- si / 12
Figure 3.1. Nefret featuring Ayben and Elif, “Yüz Yüze,” (2000): Ayben’s first verse,
articulation of syllables within rhythmic structure of each line. Lyrics by Ayben
Özçalkan. © 2000 Hammer Müzik (Turkey). Used by permission.
Ayben’s first recorded rap thus embodies the tension between the patriar-
chal constraints she works under and what Wayne Koestenbaum would call
her “will to be heard” (cited in Dunn and Jones 1994, 6). She both depends
on her older brother’s patronage (“My name is Ayben, Ceza’s little sister”)
and also claims a position of independence and authority as she affirms her
(and Elif ’s) unique voices as a vehicle for speaking for other girls within the
context of Turkish hip-hop (“This is a girl MC, a very different voice”; “the
girl’s voice in Turkish rap”). But compared to the more complex rapping
style she would later develop (see next section), Ayben’s voice here can still
be heard as tentative, relying as it does on old-school stereotypes of how
to embody a message in rhyme, rhythm, and intonation. As she identifies
herself in the text, it is the voice of a girl (kız in Turkish), the voice of one
who is just starting out and who, while having discovered her own vocality,
has only begun exploring its possibilities.
while rapping along with rap songs on CDs. In this way she internalized ways
in which syllables can be put together in a rap text and delivered rhythmically
in performance, to create what rappers call a flow, or personal rapping style
(Rose 1994, 39, Krims 2000, 48–49; Turkish rappers also use this English term).
Actually, I continued writing songs. I took great pains to not stay far away
from rap because for me during that period, at that time I—my mother was
sick and all. I stayed away from the rap scene for a long time, but I did the
best I could to not stay away from rap itself. I was always writing. I even used
to do like this at home: I’d play a CD, put a microphone by the CD player and
rap along with it and record it like that onto a computer, and I’d copy it to a
diskette and have my brother play it for people. I remember the days when I
used to say “Brother, will you play it for them?—look how good it turned out,
how good I did it.” Now when I look back at those times, they were—How can
I explain it? It was harder—When I look at it now, I’ve begun to see things now
more in terms of technique. Some things are developing and it means that now
that I’ve started doing this professionally, I’m doing this as a profession, and
this is what makes me happiest.10
During the period when she did not record professionally or give any con-
certs, and was mostly at home taking care of her mother, Ayben thus used the
resources available to her at home to continue to develop her rapping skills and
cultivate her own style. The way in which she learned existing raps by other
performers and then recorded herself rapping along with them mirrors the way
self-taught musicians in other genres such as rock or jazz long have developed
their craft, learning licks by playing along with favorite recordings, eventually
synthesizing the different styles of other players and adding their own ideas to
develop their own instrumental voice. In Ayben’s case, this involved learning
the stylistic vocabulary of rap—techniques of rhyme, alliteration, assonance,
and consonance, the rhythmic articulation of syllables and their emplacement
within a metrical framework, different approaches to intonation and melody—
internalizing all these features through repetition, and then moving beyond
imitation to develop her own, individual rapping voice.
Several months after her mother passed away, Ayben reappeared on the
rap scene with guest spots on two songs (“Sinekler ve Beatler” [“Flies and
Beats”] and “Araba” [“Vehicle”]) on her brother Ceza’s 2004 album Rapstar.
With these two songs, recorded some five years after her debut on “Yüz Yüze,”
Ayben restarted her career with a very different rapping style than that used
on the earlier song. In contrast to the singsongy old-school flow of her verses
on “Yüz Yüze,” on these two songs she delivered her verses with a percussive,
aggressive high-speed flow similar to that of her brother. In the song “Araba”
Ayben also introduced for the first time a new tagline for which she would
everyday Turkish life, and Ayben’s ironic appropriation of it in this song makes
clear her agenda of attacking the status quo of gender relations in Turkey.
While the song would not be commercially released on Ayben’s album
until May 2008, Ayben performed part of it live on Turkish television in
2006 and a clip of the performance was uploaded to YouTube by a fan, so I
was able to watch the performance and ask her about the song before it was
officially released on her album. In our interview Ayben explained what she
was trying to do with this song.
This is something that really bugs me. Things like sexual harassment on
the street, men making rude remarks etc. It’s like this: you can like somebody,
find them attractive. But if it starts to get ugly, if it gets to the point of making
improper overtures to a woman and making her feel ill at ease, then that’s
really bad. It’s one thing to say you like somebody, but they make movements
with their hands that make women feel uncomfortable on the street, they say
offensive words, this happens a lot to women.
This is my biggest complaint—to not be at ease on the street, to not be able to
wear what you want to. . . . In fact, men can look disapprovingly on a woman
who is just going out in the evening to have fun. Those men making rude
remarks, those backward men—they think they’re so smart. But to think that
indecently assaulting women—those men with the mentality of disapproving
of girls who go out to have fun by themselves, I really hate them . . . I’m really
against making rude remarks on the street, it really bothers me, and in this
way I’ve expressed it. I mean, I wanted to express something I’ve experienced.
Anyway rap is for me the art of defending with words. It’s a way of explaining
everything I want to, from one point of view it’s freedom. Maybe the guy who
made rude remarks to me on the street will hear my song. He will say, “Wow,
she’s right. This girl is saying something, and she’s right, it really shouldn’t be like
this.” Maybe he’ll come to his senses, or maybe he’ll just say, “What on earth is
she saying?” and close his mind. You can never tell, but I wanted to say it. This
is what’s on my mind, and I did it [made a song about it].11
The transcription of the first verse of “Dişi Köpek” in figure 3.2 shows how
extensively Ayben had developed her rapping technique since “Yüz Yüze” was
recorded, incorporating a number of techniques generally associated with
what is often called “new school” rapping in the United States of America. In
contrast to the earlier song, in this rap the textual lines don’t line up squarely
with metrical units. Measure boundaries occur in the middle of textual lines
(and even in the middle of words), and new lines of text start in the middle
of measures. While in “Yüz Yüze” every textual line is neatly contained within
the boundaries of a single measure, such enjambments occur in eight out of
the twelve measures containing the eighteen textual lines in the first verse of
“Dişi Köpek.”12 The rap also gives an impression of being faster—not actually
in tempo but because it is more dense in terms of the number of syllables put
into each measure. Another technique that adds to the sense of the rap being
faster is the use of triplets, thereby getting three syllables within the space of
two sixteenth notes. The techniques used here thus represent a move from
what Krims (2000, 49–52) calls “sung” rhythmic style in “Yüz Yüze” to “speech-
effusive” rhythmic style in “Dişi Köpek.” In contrast with the rather rudimen-
tary end-rhymes employed in “Yüz Yüze,” here there are also denser rhyme
complexes, with many internal rhymes besides rhymes at line ends, as well
as the use of alliteration (“Yolda yürüyemez” [“She can’t walk on the road”]),
assonance (combined with word-final rhyme in “yeter der geçer” [“she says
‘enough’ and continues on”]), consonance (“zaten itler” [“as a matter of fact the
sons-of-bitches”]) and other kinds of play with the sounds of the words. Gone
here also is the singsongy quality, as Ayben varies the intonation contours from
one line to the next. The use of textual lines of constantly varying length—
from two to seven words each—often cutting across measure boundaries, also
mitigates against a repetitive singsongy quality and contributes to the move
in the direction of “speech-effusive” styling. Three symbols I use in this figure
that did not appear in figure 3.1 are parentheses ( ) indicating interjections by
another voice (probably the track’s producer Roka13), not included in the syl-
lable count; vertical bars | | surrounding triplets; and φ between two syllables
to indicate an empty second position in a triplet, as in | 𝅘𝅥𝅯 𝄿 𝅘𝅥𝅯 |. In figure 3.1,
I use the forward slash (/) to indicate measure boundaries in the rhythmic
transcription, in the Turkish text below it, and in the English translation.
In figure 3.2, I similarly use the forward slash in the Turkish text below the
rhythmic transcription, thus indicating the placement of enjambments. But
I do not use it in the English translation since the very different word order
of the English equivalent from the original Turkish makes this unworkable.
1 2 3 4 # of syllables
1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 in line
1 ¶Yol- da |yü- ru- ye- | mez ka- dın ¶
Her a- dım da bir he- ce / 15
2 laf a- tar ¶
Yal- nız ol- mak suç mu san- ki ¶
Bak ye- ter / 14
3 der ge- çer ¶
Tep- ki- siz kal- mak ay- rı dert ¶Ce vap ve- / 14
4 rir- sen it gü- ler ¶
Na- mus el- den git- me- sin (Ha!) / 12
5 ¶Kal- dı- rım- da ve- sa- it bek- le- mek ö- lüm ge- lir ¶
Ve- / 15
6 sa- it gel- me- den de za- ten it- ler he- men |di- zi- lir | (Yeh!) ¶Ya- / 16
7 yay- ken ay- rı dert ¶
|A- ra- ba | ku- la- nır- ken ta- ciz |e- di- lir | / 17
8 ¶İf- ti- ray- sa ha- zır ¶
Ha- tun |a- ra- ba | kul- la- nır mı / 15
9 ¶
|Hak- ∅ kı | yok ¶
Ka- dın ge- ce so- kak- ta eğ- le- nir- se / 14
10 |ta- ∅ ciz | |hak ∅ kı | var ¶
Ser- best ser- best |do- la- şa- | / 12
11 maz ka- dın ¶
Doğ- ru ya so- kak se- nin ma- lın ¶
So- / 13
12 kak se- nin me- kâ- nın (Nah ha!) / 6
Figure 3.2. Ayben, “Dişi Köpek” (2008): first verse, articulation of syllables within
rhythmic structure of each line. Lyrics by Ayben Özçalkan. © 2008 Pozitif Edisyon
(Turkey). Used by permission.
patterns, to the complex rhythmic and rhyming patterns she deploys in this
song. In “Dişi Köpek” she has a verbal message to get across, the content of
the song text, but—importantly—this message is embodied in a sonorous
vehicle that highlights the sounding language itself, with her attention to
the sounds themselves of the words and syllables and with her particular
use of alliteration, consonance, assonance, and rhyme. The irregular line
lengths, syncopations, and enjambments form a sort of sonorous jagged
leading edge for the message contained within them. This vocal jagged edge
powerfully embodies the materiality of Ayben’s sounding voice as it cuts
through patriarchal attempts to “undo women” (Clément 1988). Ayben also
calls attention to the embodied, corporeal dimension of her rapping in her
live performances, where she emphasizes the sounds and rhythms with the
physical motions of her hand chopping at the air with the side of the palm
and jabbing outward with her outstretched fingers.
Acknowledgments
Thanks first to Ayben for taking time from her busy schedule of recording and
performing to do an interview with me. Thanks also to Serkant Köseler for his
transcription of the Turkish interview recording; to Deniz Akın for additional
Notes
1. The event described here is “Hip Hop Jam Istanbul 2004,” which took place on Sun-
day, May 23, 2004, in the performance space called Maslak Venue. My description here
is based on my own attendance at the event, supplemented by some details from the clip
mentioned in note 2.
2. A clip of this performance by Ayben can be watched on YouTube at http://www
.youtube.com/watch?v=ThGSVEfF6jM (accessed March 2012).
3. My interview with Ayben was conducted on November 4, 2006, and lasted about
ninety minutes. The interview was conducted in Turkish. Translations in this article of
excerpts from this interview are by me.
4. Ayben’s father Danyal Özçalkan is interviewed briefly in the rap music segment of
German-Turkish director Fatih Akın’s documentary film Crossing the Bridge—The Sound
of Istanbul. In the interview he talks about how he had listened in his youth to rock musi-
cians such as Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix and did not understand rap music when he
first heard it, but later came to appreciate it as a valid and vital musical expression.
5. Türk aile yapısında genelde kızlar evin gülüdür, evin değerlisidir. Ama bir yandan da
şey ister aileler. Her zaman okul çok daha önceliklidir. Belki Anadolu’da kızlarını okutmayan
aileler de var, ama İstanbul için konuşuyorum. Ailem şeydir, tutucu. Bir kızın gece sokağa
çıkması yanlış düşűnülebilir. Ya da o kültürden, o şeyde yetişmiş insanlar için bir kızın
sahneye çıkması kötü bile karşılanabilir. Aslında o geleneklere bağlı bir aileden geliyorum.
Bir yandan babamın da müzik dinliyor olması, gençliğinde hani bu 68 kuçağı dediğimiz
kuşaktan geliyor olması, hani görmüş geçirmiş bir adam olması bizim için çok büyük
bir avantaj oldu en başta. Tabi her şey göründüğü gibi değil de. Başından beri babamın
desteklediği, desteklemediği zamanlar da olmuştur, ama bunları ben yaşamadım. Abimin
başarısını gördükten sonra daha çok “Konu komşu ne der” şeyi oldu hep. Sonuçta annemiz
babamız küçüklüklerinden beri aynı kültürdeler. Üsküdar’da yetiştik, onlar da Üsküdarlılar,
vesaire. Yaşadığımız çevrede bir şey var . . . Türk aile gelenek ve görenekleri şeydir: saygı,
sevgi tabi ki çok önemlidir. Onun dışında, garipsenebilir ya sahneye çıkmakla alakalı bir
şey. Hani bunun yanlış bir şey olduğunu düşünen bir yanı var Türk insanının. Sahneye
çıkan insanlara birazcık garip gözle baktıkları var . . . Türk aile gelenek ve göreneklerinde,
akraba, aile bağları sağlam bir aileden geliyorum. Aile bağlarımız çok kuvvetli, birbirimize
kenetlenmiş durumdayız. Onun dışında komşuluk ilişkilerimiz çok önemlidir. Ben yine
mahallenin kızı Ayben’im. Onun yanı sıra ben hala evde yemek yapan, evde bulaşık yıkayan,
çamaşır yıkayan, ev temizleyen, cam silen Ayben’im bir yandan da. Bu da bununla birlikte
devam ediyor, beraber sürdürüyorum. Nereye kadar sürer bilemiyorum tabi ki ama. Nereye
kadar bunları birbirine karıştırmadan sürdürürüm bilemiyorum ama.
6. I discuss this group and some of their songs in Solomon (2005a,b).
7. Çocukken bir heves ettim tabi graffiti yapayım. Ama benim çizim yeteneğim hiç
yok. Dans etmek istedim, yeteneğim yok. Yapabileceğim bir şey değildi. Ben yapayım,
References
Abu-Lughod, Lila. 1991. “Writing against Culture.” In Recapturing Anthropology: Working
in the Present, ed. Richard G. Fox, 137–62. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press.
Atamert, Engül. 2001. Tango and the Invention of Modern Turkey. MA thesis in Ethno-
musicology, Department of Advanced Studies in Music, Istanbul Technical University.
Bernstein, Jane A. 2004. “Introduction: On Women and Music.” In Women’s Voices across
Musical Worlds, ed. Jane A. Bernstein, 3–12. Boston: Northeastern University Press.
Bryant, Rebecca. 2005. “The Soul Danced into the Body: Nation and Improvisation in
Istanbul.” American Anthropologist 32(2):222–38.
Clément, Catherine. 1988. Opera, or the Undoing of Women, trans. Betsy Wing. Minne-
apolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Cusick, Suzanne G. 1999. “Gender, Musicology and Feminism.” In Rethinking Music, eds.
Nicholas Cook and Mark Everist, 471–98. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Doubleday, Veronica. 1999. “The Frame Drum in the Middle East: Women, Musical In-
struments and Power.” Ethnomusicology 43(1):101–34.
———. 2006 [1988]. Three Women of Herat: A Memoir of Life, Love and Friendship in
Afghanistan. New York: Tauris Parke Paperbacks.
Dunn, Leslie C., and Nancy A. Jones. 1994. “Introduction.” In Embodied Voices: Represent-
ing Female Vocality in Western Culture, eds. Leslie C. Dunn and Nancy A. Jones, 1–13.
Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.
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2):159–62.
Feld, Steven, Aaron A. Fox, Thomas Porcello, and David Samuels. 2004. “Vocal Anthropol-
ogy: From the Music of Language to the Language of Song.” In A Companion to Linguis-
tic Anthropology, ed. Alessandro Duranti, 321–45. Oxford, U.K.: Blackwell Publishing.
Greve, Martin. 2003. Die Musik der imaginären Türkei: Musik und Musikleben im Kontext
der Migration aus der Türkei in Deutschland. Stuttgart: Verlag J. B. Metzler.
Jones, L. JaFran. 1987. “A Sociohistorical Perspective on Tunisian Women as Professional
Musicians.” In Women and Music in Cross-Cultural Perspective, ed. Ellen Koskoff, 69–83.
New York: Greenwood Press.
Discography
All items are Turkish CD pressings unless otherwise noted.
Ayben. Sensin O. Pozitif Müzik Yapım PMY 011 (2008).
Aylin Aslım ve Tayfası. Gülyabani. Pasaj 1717 (2005). [Includes “Gelinlik Sarhoşluğu (Bana
Ne),” duet with Ayben.]
Ceza. Rapstar. Hammer Müzik/Hipnetic Records (2004). [Includes “Araba” and “Sinekler
ve Beatler” featuring Ayben.]
Nefret. Meclis-i âla İstanbul. Hammer Müzik/Hipnetic Records HPNCD001 (2000). [In-
cludes “Yüz Yüze” featuring Ayben and Elif.]
Nil. Tek Taşımı Kendim Aldim. Sony BMG/Epic 82876856542 (2006). [Includes “Peri,”
duet with Ayben.]
Websites
http://www.myspace.com/ayben34 (accessed March 2012).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThGSVEfF6jM (accessed March 2012).
the venue expresses. Here, Ixya’s vibrant voice and presence resonates with
personal and collective lives.
• • •
I am mesmerized—the whole audience seems mesmerized—spellbound,
enthralled, and thrilled. Ixya’s voice balances on a tight rope—it feels as if
we are all balancing on a tight rope that spans two worlds. Her voice is re-
fined and raw, fragile and robust—there is no contradiction, no dichotomy.
She sings a high falsetto note—1 . . . 2 . . . 3 . . . 4 . . . 5 seconds . . . the air
is motionless, even as waves ripple through the space, seemingly drawing
us with a shimmering sonic thread—delicate, fine, and very strong. She is
intertwining silk strands, creating an embodied tension through highly emo-
tive sound—6 . . . 7 . . . 8 . . . 9 . . . 10 seconds . . . she is willing us to come
with her—the resonance is clean, brilliant, shining. Time transforms and
stands still as each person seemingly holds their breath and breathes to the
utmost depths of their beings, as that voice dissolves, converges, suspends,
and liquefies borders between then and now . . . between here and there—11
. . . 12 . . . 13 . . . 14 . . . 15 . . . Ixya is playing, taking risks, and leading us to the
edge, weaving a spell and charming us—she is crafting a direct connection,
organic and unmasked, producing iridescent waves and flow through the
warm summer air in the auditorium.
In an instant she resolves the tension with another flip of her voice, elicit-
ing vocalized whoops of joy and percussive, applauding admiration from
the audience. Ixya’s voice is sweet sounding, beautiful, teasing, full of clarity,
and strength. She delights in the control and power—control of her breath,
the audience, the space—and the power to enchant. Her sense of playfulness
and risk-taking through her vocality are striking.2
• • •
Seven
When I first heard her album Canciones de mi Padre [Songs of My Father] I
was seven years old at the time. I still remember that day so well when my dad
brought the cassette home and he put it on . . . oh . . . just hearing that voice . . . 3
Ixya’s voice trails away—she is lost in an enchanted, sonic world, transported
and transfixed by a singing voice—her body responds kinesthetically with
muscular and emotional shaping in her jaw, lungs, and breath. Ixya (pro-
nounced ee-shaw) is recalling a weighty occasion of epiphany in her home in
1987, in Oxnard, a town in southern California, sixty miles north of Los An-
geles. Her face lights up and her throat releases as her mind’s ear re-members
She was beguiled by what might be called the “intensities and irritations”
(Primavesi 2003, 66).7
It wasn’t the style of music, but her voice that’s influenced me. Had I heard
her singing rock I would have been blown away—and her versatility . . . the
clarity in her voice, the strength, the control—especially for the soft beautiful
pianissimo notes. I think that she can sing those like no other. It’s such a full
voice . . . it has so much body to it, but it’s such a sweet sounding voice, a very
beautiful voice.
These narratives concerning the aesthetics of Ronstadt’s vocality are vital in
understanding Ixya’s own crafting of herself as a singer. From childhood,
through teens, to adulthood Ixya has developed her own unique voice, taking
a profound pleasure in singing and desiring to enchant and move others in
the way that she was mesmerized in 1987. Transforming and translating sonic
elements and embodied sensibilities into words is a challenge. Deploying
adjectives to talk about singing voices and performance can be problematical,
for, as Barthes observed, the adjective is “the poorest of linguistic categories.
. . . The adjective is inevitable: this music is this, this execution is that” (1977,
179). Yet Ixya’s descriptions of Ronstadt’s vocality provide a way to appreci-
ate and comprehend her own values—versatility, clarity, strength, control,
sweet sounding, so much body, and very beautiful. Her account resonates
with Barthes’s and Simon Frith’s attempts to classify and capture attributes
of singing voices, particularly in terms of the presence of the body in the
voice, voice as body, and the volume of the singing voice—denoting capac-
ity and space rather than decibel level (Frith 1995, 1, and 1996, 191; Barthes
1977, 182). As one who takes delight in Ixya’s singing, I can bear witness to
her realizations and accomplishments, and would indeed make use of these
very descriptions to evoke Ixya’s own voice.
• • •
Twelve
When I was twelve my dad was invited by the director of Mariachi Los Camp-
eros, Nati Cano, to tour with Los Camperos and Linda Ronstadt, because by
that time she had released her second Mexican album and they needed a harpist.
Nati became friends with my dad—he would go to the house and so had heard
me sing, and asked me to come along to one of the rehearsals.
Ixya recalls the momentous occasion of transformation that took place at the
Tucson Mariachi Conference, Arizona, in April 1992. Staged annually since
1982, this large-scale fund-raising performance event is highly significant,
devaluation of the peso in 1994 plunged the nation into economic crisis, im-
pacting on the possibilities for Ixya to work for Televisa. During the same
period, in another noteworthy performance, she was invited to sing, as one
of just two soloists, at the Mariachi Conference in Las Cruces, New Mexico,
United States of America. The other soloist was the long-renowned Mexican
star and “la reina de la música ranchera” (Queen of Ranchera music), Lola
Beltrán. For this event it was Beltrán who crossed the border from Mexico to
sing in the United States of America, performing on the same stage as Ixya.
• • •
Sixteen
By the time I was sixteen I released my first CD, which I called Primavera
[Spring] . . . underneath we put Xopancuicatl, which also means primavera
in Náhuatl.10 We chose the name Primavera because everything grows in the
spring of course . . . everything blossoms again.
I grew up listening to my dad’s old records . . . he has a lot. He had this old
album that he bought when he was nineteen years old, with this trio called Los
Hermanos Luna—two brothers and one sister . . . this old album with the bacon
sizzling in the back, with the sister singing and the brothers playing guitars . . .
all huapangos, with just guitar and voice.
Significantly, the recording of Primavera took place in a studio in Los Ange-
les, engaging an arranger from Mexico City, and renowned musicians from
Mexico and Cuba, performing on marimba, flute, huasteco violin, guitar,
and salterio.11 Crossing territorial borders was an important element of the
venture. Together, Ixya and her father chose a selection of Mexican songs,
ranging from the well-known to the less-familiar. Since inception Ixya’s un-
dertaking has not concerned replicating the past and singing “old” songs
because they are old per se, but rather because she herself loves to sing them
and listen to them and therefore has a desire for others to share her enthu-
siasm and sense of thrill. Giving new life and nurturing are central to Ixya’s
career and passion as a singer.
When I heard Canciones de mi Padre I didn’t know they were old songs.
This is really interesting to take these old songs and give them life. Some of
them [that we chose] had not been recorded since the 1950s. There was this
piece that I loved, “El Prófugo” [“The Fugitive”]—about this man who was in
jail, he escaped prison to see his dying mother—you know how some of these
Mexican songs can be very intense . . . this lovely song hasn’t received any at-
tention . . . so it’s like we were giving it life again.
I try to transport people with the songs. . . . There’s definitely an attempt to
take people back even if they’re not that old. I get feedback saying “thank you
. . . you took us to a different world.” It definitely helps to keep the music alive.
So many people thank me for singing these songs, especially older people—they
say “You’re so young, and you’re keeping these songs alive, thank you.”
As an enabler and facilitator, Ixya also teaches and gives lecture-demonstra-
tions in schools and colleges in Los Angeles County, specifically engaging
children and young people. By talking about different styles of Mexican mu-
sic, and also voice technique, she inspires these students to take an interest
in stories of the past and to appreciate the singing voice as an instrument.
• • •
Enchantment
Oh, I’ve got a great story. A couple of years ago I was invited to perform at the
Schwob School of Music, Columbus, Georgia. This town borders Alabama, so
it is very, very southern and a small town, but with a beautiful school of mu-
sic. The theater had no microphones and it was all wood—a gorgeous place.
There were a couple of Mexicans in the audience—everyone else was white
and Southerners. For the performance it was just myself and Elias Torres, the
guitarist—we said “ok, here goes nothing.” But the people loved it. Afterwards,
this little old lady came up to me and said, “I was watching you sing and the
whole time I was looking at you going up and down the stage and I wanted to
be you.” Mission accomplished—I was able to take her to another place.
Throughout the almost twenty years of her career Ixya has sung for diverse
audiences in concert halls large and small in the United States of America and
Mexico, including the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York
City (figure 4.1), the John Anson Ford Amphitheater in Hollywood, and the
Teatro de la Ciudad de la Paz in Baja California. Sensitive and attentive to
the needs of her audiences, she introduces and explains each song, enabling
her public to feel comfortable with their experience, even as she leads them
into new terrain. Most songs are in Spanish (with one or two in Náhuatl);
however, for her concerts in the United States of America Ixya engages both
English and Spanish for salutations and explanations. Speaking to the audi-
ence her voice takes on a tender and soft timbre as she caresses the air with
an aesthetic of grace and control, which soothes and facilitates trust. Very
aware of the contrast between her vocality when speaking and singing she
deliberately engages this as a facet of her energy, bringing into focus ques-
tions of the “femininity” of the singing and speaking voice, and playing with
Figure 4.1. Ixya Herrera in concert at Lincoln Center, New York, 2002.
Photographer unknown. © Ixya Herrera.
Father
It’s a collaboration. That’s something my father and I have worked at. I started
taking voice lessons at twelve and he sat in on every class and took notes. To
this day, he’s the one who guides me. He says “I don’t think you should prolong
that note,” or “this note should be softer,” so it’s been the two of us.
Fittingly for a singing career that was set in motion by a father giving his young-
est daughter Ronstadt’s album entitled Songs of My Father, the relationship be-
tween Ixya and her father is a very special one. With her father as accompanist,
producer, language-coach, and agent, Ixya’s career could be expressed as songs
with my father. As Ixya entered the professional world at twelve years old, she
took Ronstadt’s recommendation to receive lessons. With the advantage of
living near Los Angeles she took lessons with major singing teachers, always
with her father in attendance. To this day her father continues to accompany
her musically on harp for many of her performances. Commenting that he is
a very caring dad, Ixya explains how she values her father, appreciating that
he is very objective, always having her best interest in mind.
Ixya’s musical career has been embedded in family life. Even when she
was a child, once her parents realized that this was not simply a childish fad,
they began to support her unremittingly. Mother, father, brothers, and sisters
have all undertaken roles to assist and facilitate her choices, acting as agent,
engineer, and advisor in shaping her vocality, stage presence, and repertoire.
Her brothers play requinto jarocho, guitar, jarana, and they sing backing
vocals, often performing as an accompanying ensemble for her concerts.12
We rehearse in the living room, so being the only girl, the only woman with
all these men, sometimes it can be difficult. . . . But there is an understanding
that they’re there to support me. Otherwise we would be a conjunto [ensemble].
“I am”
I just say that I’m Mexican. Yes, I’m Mexican American, but why add the Ameri-
can part? And yes I’m also Chicana—it’s the same as being Mexican, right . . .
I grew up with the term “Chicano” because my family has always used it and
because family members have been historically involved in the “movimiento.”
My grandfather worked with César Chávez in Oxnard. My uncle and father—
also, my mother and aunt—were involved in the Brown Berets.
I learned Mexican music in the USA. My model and idol, Linda Ronstadt
was also a Chicana.13
As Ixya and I sit having lunch at the Arts and Letters Cafe in Santa Barbara,
California, in April 2008, my question concerns self-identification: “Ixya,
do you think of yourself as Mexican American?” Although the issue does
not involve vocality per se, self-identification and representation relating
to ethnicity have multiple and complex implications for her performance
choices. As a young woman singer in the United States of America, and as
a Mexican/Chicana, she places herself in front of a public, and is inherently
performing a political act that is complex, multiple, and dichotomous.
Choice matters. Ixya’s self-identification exhibits ambivalence and confi-
dence in a context where labels and classifications of ethnicity and heritage
have weighty consequences. In narrating Ixya’s decisions and self-crafting
as a singer and woman, knowing and comprehending something of the
political and ethnic context is crucial. An awareness of the possible choices
that have been rejected reveals the potency and agency of the decisions
that she has taken.
borderlandsborderlandsborderlands
What is significant about Ixya as a young Mexican woman singer in the United
States of America is that she does not have any stories and acts of overt rebel-
lion and resistance—that Ixya takes a different path is noteworthy because
they are her choices and her acts of self-crafting. Her acknowledgement of her
heritage and Mexican cultural identity is present as she enacts and envoices
agency and subtle activism on concert stages and in recordings. Ixya’s vocal
and stage aesthetics involve enchantment, grace, nurture, and all the qualities
that she admired in Linda Ronstadt’s performance: power, versatility, strength,
control, and beauty. By her own admission, her only form of obvious pros-
elytizing is in relation to one particular song, “La Borrachita” (“The Drunken
Woman”), a song of social protest.
Yet Ixya clearly inhabits borderlands: it is easy to interpret many elements
of her performance as a singer through notions of convergence, negotia-
tion, contradiction, and multiplicity in genre, vocality, language, and dress.
Some attributes are clear markers of her Chicana heritage. With her chosen
repertoire of Mexican songs of multiple genres she overtly inhabits the past
and Mexico. Singing in Spanish in the United States of America is a weighty
traditional dress for Chicanas in many ways promote gender roles of sexual
partner, childbearer, and nurturer. Anzaldúa 1987 points out that “la gorra,
el rebozo, y la mantilla (hat, shawl, and veil) convey the message that women
must be protected” (2002, 148).23
Yet, when Ixya sings wearing her gown and rebozo, her performances can
be read as playful, powerful, full of nuances, subtleties, and contradictions, as
her garments converge and cohere in sartorial form with her vocal aesthetics,
such as the flip into falsetto and long, sustained notes, creating resonances
other than protection and sexuality.
As for nurturer, Ixya assertively strives to be a nurturer. She nurtures her
audiences and her listeners, caring for them and enabling them. Perhaps
some might critique Ixya’s model, wishing her less stereotypical as nurturer,
heterosexual, and graceful, and yet her sense of creativity and playfulness
are deeply significant.24 In her discussions concerning the “‘acting out’ of
the dilemmas of femininity,” the literary and critical theorist Mary Russo
proposes the idea of the “flaunting of the feminine,” whereby “to put on
femininity with a vengeance suggests the power of taking it off ” (1997, 331),
which, as musicologist Sheila Whiteley has noted, offers “the possibility
of using stereotypical aspects of femininity as a political tool” (2000, 216).
Narrating her choices in terms of womanness and femininity, Ixya’s aware-
ness of her self-crafting in this area is palpable, suggesting an aesthetic of
the hyperfeminine, and also association with the multiplicity of postfemi-
nism. As Ixya crosses the age-border into her thirties and reflects upon her
almost twenty years as a professional singer, she says that she’s always been
very feminine and girly but is open to all options. Moving into her future
she will continue to make bold choices concerning expressions of her own
femininity through voice and body.
• • •
Future Unknown
On hearing Ixya’s voice at a recent rehearsal in Los Angeles, renowned Chi-
cana performance artist and cellist Maria Elena Gaitán exclaimed: “Wow!
You sing with your ovaries!” This expression of vocality is significantly not
adjectival but embodied, and is a testament to Ixya’s vocal power, control,
and inherent womanness. Gaitán was reacting to hearing the sustained notes
and strength of voice as Ixya was rehearsing a performance of “La Llorona”
(“The Crying Woman”), a quintessential Mexican song. Ixya had been in-
vited to sing with Gaitán and two other distinguished Chicano musicians,
Willie Herrón and Xiuy Velo, all of whom have used musical expression,
Acknowledgments
I thank Ixya for her generosity of spirit in taking time to talk with me, and I
look forward to much fruitful collaboration with her in California, wishing
Ixya every success with all her singing projects over the coming years. I also
thank Juan Zaragoza for recommending an initial contact with Ixya.
Notes
1. Huapango refers to a genre of music from the northeastern region of Mexico (known
as La Huasteca) and includes a large repertoire of fixed, composed songs and also son
huasteco, which tends to be improvised and less predictable.
2. “I love the falsettis—for Mexicans if you’re going to sing ‘El Pastor’ you better have really
good breath control, because they’re expecting that long falsetti—that’s your time to show
off, and so when I recorded it I did about ten seconds on each falsetti, but when you’re doing
it live you’ve got to prove to your audience that you’re worthy of singing it. They’re really
expecting you to prolong those falsettos, so that’s what I love about it—I love the challenge.
It doesn’t require a big voice, there are no big chest notes in the song, but it requires a lot of
control in the voice, and your breath control to allow those falsettos to come out beautifully,
purely, the vibrato just has to be very consistent, it cannot waver, . . . you just gotta let it
flow as long as you can.”
References
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“As punctual as an Englishwoman,” she shouted, before I even got out of the
car. “Right on time.” I said hello, and walked with her across the small yard
that led to the kitchen door. It was late morning and the sun was already
burning. The colorful flowers in her garden had just been watered to guard
them against the looming heat of noon. She was wearing an old work dress
and black open-toe slippers. I noticed that her feet and toenails were dirty
with the fertile red soil of the village. “I was in the field,” she said, as if she
had read my thoughts. “I went with my son’s mother-in-law. We all go together
and help.” We entered the house through the kitchen door. Her husband was
sitting at the kitchen table, smoking serenely. I greeted him, and she imme-
diately called me to follow her into the living room. She pulled a couple of
chairs and put them the way she had the previous day, one right opposite
the other. There was a sense of urgency. Noon was just round the corner, and
the food cooking in the kitchen had to finish in time for lunch. I felt that my
interview was something of an inconvenience, meddling in my interviewee’s
daily routine. Anxious not to lose any of our precious time, I awkwardly took
my notebook out of my handbag, and began asking the questions I had so
carefully planned. It was in vain. I was clearly not the one deciding how the
interview would be conducted. This dynamic grandmother in front of me,
who walked out of the room every few minutes to check on her food, inter-
rupting our chat abruptly, was unlike anyone else I had ever interviewed.
radio stations, hundreds of new voices suddenly resounded through the boxes
that for nearly four decades had only broadcast the CyBC.2 The monopoly and
sternness of the state-funded CyBC gave way to a number of light-hearted
radio stations and phone-in programs. This dramatic change from a mo-
notonous and predictable radio schedule to an unprecedented and previ-
ously unimaginable variety had an immense impact on Cypriot audiences
and, following on from that, on Cypriot popular culture. Radio shows were
no longer solely formulated by strict timetables and a handful of presenters
and producers, but by audiences themselves. Virtually anyone, irrespective
of social or educational background, could phone in to dedicate a song to a
loved one, comment on current affairs, recite a poem, or sing a song.
Just as so many others at the time, Kyriakou Pelagia,3 a housewife from
Paralimni then in her midfifties, saw this as an opportunity to express herself
and showcase her village’s poetic tradition on air. Paralimni is the center of
a group of villages in eastern Cyprus collectively known as Kokkinohoria
(literally Red [soil] villages). In addition to sharing the red soil that gives the
region its name, the area of Kokkinohoria prides itself on having the largest
and most talented community of poet-singers of improvised fifteen-syllable
rhyming couplets, tsiattista.4 An integral part of everyday life in Paralimni
in the past (much less so now), being able to improvise couplets on the spot
was seen as proof of one’s talent and skill. Pelagia’s father, Damianos Kouzalis,
was one such poet-singer, adept at improvising rhyming couplets. Ever since
Pelagia was a child, Damianos had challenged her with his witty tsiattista, to
which she had to provide a swift, rhyming, and equally clever response.
Growing up in a village where opportunities for women to sing in public
were very limited, and where being a woman singer was “misunderstood,”
Pelagia’s responses to her father and singing at family events were all she
had.5 For, even though women were not discouraged from improvising and
singing at home or in family events, the public expression of tsiattisma (i.e.,
the art of making tsiattista) in festivals and fairs (e.g., saints’ name days)
was exclusively reserved for men. And that was a cause of great sorrow for
Damianos. He had learned his art from his father, who had learned it from
his own father. But, unlike them, Damianos could not pass his knowledge
on to any of his descendants, because he and his wife, Maria Koutsolouka,
had only daughters—five of them. Kyriakou, his second daughter, shared
his wit for improvising and passion for singing. But she was a girl, and—in
his mind—no self-respecting girl or woman in the 1940s and 1950s would
sing in public. And so Damianos spent his days thinking that his family’s
art and talent would die with him, once exclaiming with frustration: “Too
bad, Kyriakou, that you were born a woman, or you could beat ten men in
tsiattisma.” To this, his daughter, confident of her skills, replied: “I inherited
[my talent in] poetry, my property, from you; and even though you’re my father
I beat you [at it] seven times!” (Papapetrou 2006; Pelagia 2006).6
That same confidence was still present in Kyriakou Pelagia some four de-
cades later. In the early 1990s, with the new radio stations inviting audiences
to take part by reciting or singing, it was time for her to reach out further.
She began to phone in to entertainment shows and to talk to presenters and
radio listeners almost always in rhyming verse. Pelagia was, of course, not
the only middle-aged lady who phoned in to recite her verses or sing on air
(cf. Syrimis 1998, 217–18), but it did not take long for her to stand out from
the rest. Her nasal voice and the way she delivered her witty couplets became
her trademark. Radio audiences soon got to recognize the voice of Pelagia
from Paralimni, whose straightforwardness and dynamism were evident
long before her newfound fans got to know her face (figure 5.1).
Seeing Pelagia’s popularity on her impromptu radio appearances, Mi-
chalis Hadjimichael and Ilias Kouloumis, the founders of the musical en-
semble Mesogeios (Mediterranean), approached her and asked her to record
a song with them for the group’s first CD. Mesogeios, a group playing tradi-
tional music7 from Cyprus and the Greek islands, was only just beginning
Figure 5.1. “I have three loves: poetry, music, and flowers.” Kyriakou Pelagia in her
garden in Paralimni, October 2008. Photograph by Nicoletta Demetriou.
Novelty was also an important factor, says Hadjimichael: she was the first
female traditional singer in Cyprus to release commercial recordings. Her
songs were original too, in the sense that very few, if any, people outside of
Paralimni and the surrounding villages knew them. But Hadjimichael and his
group were, according to him, far from inactive when it came to promoting
their CD to the newly created radio market. Pelagia’s persona also played
a dramatic role in her popularity, Hadjimichael claims: she reminds many
people of their grandmother (or a model of a generic village grandmother)
and her tsiattista—that quintessentially Cypriot form of poetry in popular
imagination—remind them of “old-times Cyprus” with its tradition-bearing
“grandfathers” (Hadjimichael, pers. comm. 2008).
Echoing Hadjimichael’s words, during our meetings Pelagia insisted on re-
minding me that she was first and foremost a housewife and a grandmother—
both of them exclusively female roles—and treated the fact that she was a
singer (and a very successful one for that matter) as something of secondary
significance. She told me how she had been repeatedly asked to sing at private
functions and pose for magazine covers. Her reply was always the same and
equally firm: “I’m a housewife, not a singer.” And as if to strengthen her point,
and to highlight that she is not only a housewife but also a proud mother and
grandmother, at the end of almost every meeting she would show me pictures
of her three children with their families, and glow while talking to me about
her grandchildren.
While dismissing the stardom in which Cypriot media place her as “pel-
lares” (“[an act of] craziness”), at the same time she takes pride in talking about
her fans’ love and admiration: “A woman from Germany came to Paralimni
to see me and brought me a gift. . . . You won’t believe how many people called
By reacting in this way, Pelagia once again put her role as a wife before
that of a singer—or, in this case, a research subject—and aptly demonstrated
where her priorities lay. But her explicit concern about her husband and his
well-being showed much more than simply that. “If I had to argue with my
husband [for being a singer], I wouldn’t [do it],” she says, always being quick
to acknowledge his support and hence his role in her success. She knows very
well that without his complete and utter backing none of her achievements
would ever be possible.
When social conventions relaxed and made it possible for Pelagia and other
women to start singing more publicly in the village (in the early 1980s),15 nega-
tive comments abounded.16 Many—especially older—members of the audi-
ence saw public singing as a typically male activity where women had no place.
It is a story well known in Paralimni (though nowadays told only privately)
that other women who began performing at the same time as Pelagia later
withdrew because of their husbands’ reaction to village gossip. Women sing-
ing in public was evidently something not everyone in the village approved
of. Pelagia’s insistence on emphasizing her role as a housewife could, then, be
read as a preemptive defense against comments directed at women singers.
By labeling herself as a “housewife,” and by making sure that she takes care
of her husband, Pelagia not only keeps the balance of her household right,
but she also publicly announces that her “social duty lies in conformity to her
ideal domestic role” (Auerbach 1989, 30), thus avoiding any danger of being
accused of abandoning her social role in the village.
However, the notion of housewife itself is not a passive one. As Salamone
and Stanton have argued for the case of Amouliani in Greece, “women’s power
and prestige is formalized” in “nikokyrio, ‘household,’” which “historically has
dictated the ‘balance of power’ between men and women in rural Greece”
(1986, 97–98; emphases in original). Tellingly, the word for housewife in Greek,
nikokyra, literally means houselady or housemistress. So being a nikokyra—a
woman in control of her house and family—can be very empowering, and
declaring it only makes the woman’s position stronger: “A woman’s happiness,
sense of self worth, and effectiveness will depend as much on her acceptance
of the ideal of nikokyra as on its public realization” (ibid., 99).
Seen under this light, and despite Pelagia’s protests, being both “housewife”
and “star” (in this case, a woman singer with a public persona) is not neces-
sarily mutually exclusive. Certainly some of Pelagia’s choices confirm this:
in the 2006–7 TV season, for instance, she sang the title song of a comedy
series (Deixe Mou Ton Filo Sou, i.e., Show Me Your Friend) alongside a hip-
hop artist. Her couplets, sung in Cypriot dialect to a traditional tune, served
as the refrain of an otherwise hip-hop song sung in modern Greek. Not only
did Pelagia sing the couplets, but she also appeared on the clip together with
the young hip-hop singer.
Why did she do it? I asked, puzzled by her unlikely pairing with the young
artist and her insistence on telling me that she is only a housewife. Was it
money? It seemed improbable. The amount of money that she received for
composing the lyrics and appearing on the clip was negligible. Recognition—
being recognized wherever she goes, being loved by young people (the likely
audience of the hip-hop singer) and loving them back—was what prompted
her decision. And the empowerment this recognition brought with it, the
contrast between the impossibility of singing in public with which she began
her life and the possibility (or, better, the reality) of her very public career as
a woman singer at present, keeps motivating her day after day.
Pelagia’s successful appearance on Deixe Mou Ton Filo Sou showed that it
is precisely this unlikely—but not incompatible—combination of star and
housewife, old and new, traditional and modern in her persona that makes
her so popular in Cyprus. By successfully uniting these seemingly antitheti-
cal images and by showing—however unintentionally—that one does not
have to preclude the other, Pelagia managed to turn the tide: instead of the
negative comments of the past about women singing in public, she is now
something of a national treasure in Cyprus, and certainly a source of pride
for her village.
Nevertheless, several other women of Pelagia’s generation still see the per-
ceived boundary between star and housewife as insurmountable. Prior to the
extensive urbanization that followed Cyprus’s independence from British
colonial rule in 1960 and the ensuing modernizing societal trends, performing
music professionally—either singing or playing an instrument—was seen as
improper and disrespectful for women. The only known professional female
performers were those singing and dancing in theatres, cafés, and cabarets. As
with other countries in the Mediterranean (see Magrini 2003), the stereotypi-
cal picture of female performers in Cyprus was invariably linked with drink-
ing, smoking, drugs, and prostitution. Hence for most women of Pelagia’s
age, singing in public—professionally or otherwise, outside the family and
village environment—was, and in several cases remains, problematic.
But despite the general disapproval toward women musicians in Cyprus in
the first half of the twentieth century and the public’s customary perception of
them as decadent, oral narratives reveal that some women did become known
for performing music in public without being seen as immoral. What was
important for them, however, was for characteristics seen as typically female
to be left aside—either because of disability (an example given to me was that
of a blind woman fiddler) or because of behavior that differed from that of
the typical female Cypriot. Many of the women performing in public were,
in my informants’ words, antrogenaitzes, literally “manly women,” therefore
certainly differing from the female stereotype. In the case of Pelagia, the very
confidence and dynamism that make her popular are also two of the traits
that make her different from most other women of her generation who sing,
but did or do not dare to come forward. What sets her apart is her extremely
vocal and visible dynamism, a trait that in traditional Cypriot society (and
specifically for women of Pelagia’s generation and social background) is not
stereotypically feminine. The way she speaks portrays no hidden modesty or
fear or—to use a word loaded with Mediterranean associations (see Peristiany
1965)—“shame.”
This very direct way of behaving is also reflected in her singing voice. Even
though vocal aesthetics and delivery are, as yet, a nondiscussed subject in
Cyprus, by carefully listening to Pelagia’s voice and comparing it to recordings
of older, traditional folk poets and singers (such as those on the recordings
of the Peloponnesian Folklore Foundation 1999 [1988]), one can begin to
understand how greatly responsible they are for her success. Influenced by
Greek laïka (popular) singers, in recent years a number of Cypriot traditional
singers sing with a deliberate slight delay—their voice falling right after the
beat, rather than on the beat, something that is perceived as expressive of
love, sorrow, or passion. In contrast, Pelagia’s articulation is crisp and crystal
clear, and her voice always falls exactly on the beat. Even though Cypriot
audiences would not, if asked, readily identify diction (in this case the way
she enunciates words) as one of the pivotal elements of Pelagia’s aesthetic,
it does, somewhat instinctively, strengthen their view of the “traditional” in
her voice. However, contrary to other singers in the Eastern Mediterranean,
such as Zeki Müren in Turkey and Umm Kulthum in Egypt (discussed in
Stokes 2003 and Danielson 1997, respectively), in Pelagia’s case, diction does
not connect her to a higher social class nor does it give her “high prestige”
(Stokes 2003, 315). Rather, her clear, direct way of speaking and singing, the
care—if not the pride—she takes in enunciating clearly the lyrics of her songs,
connects her to a time in the Cypriot past when the dialect was used in all
settings of everyday life without it being connected to notions of peasantry
or illiteracy.17 In turn, this connects her to village life and tradition, perhaps
also to a Cypriot “age of innocence.”
Nasality, a shared aesthetic value in several musical cultures of the Mediter-
ranean, also has a share in Pelagia’s popularity. Discussing the nasal quality
in Umm Kulthum’s voice, Virginia Danielson maintained that many Egyp-
tians saw it as “an important marker of authentic singing” (1997, 138). Later,
however, with the impact of Westernization, nasality came to be seen as
might be seen even as deviating from her prescribed gender role. Despite
their marked differences, however, both singers were equally accepted by
their mainly young audience. Has Pelagia—the housewife, grandmother, vil-
lager, farmer—become so popular because of the contrast she presents to the
overabundance of half-naked, good-looking singers? Does her overwhelming
acceptance mark a turn toward a more conservative neo-Cyprus, or does it
signify a long-awaited (by traditional musicians) turn of the younger genera-
tion to traditional music? And what does it tell us of the associations people
in Cyprus make regarding traditional singers?
If I consider three commercially successful Cypriot traditional singers of
the last fifty years,21 I come to the following conclusions: they were all men;
they have all had conservative appearances/public images; they have all had
conventional lives within the prescribed societal norms (i.e., they have all
had full-time jobs other than singing, and they have all been married with
children); they have all shown some connection with religion (some more
strongly than others); and finally, they have all appeared to be pillars of the
Cypriot music tradition, trying to save it from decay. With the exception of
gender, Pelagia shares all these traits with her fellow singers. (However, as
I discuss later, a crucial difference also lies in how she tries to save Cypriot
music.) I am therefore inclined to ask: Does a Cypriot traditional singer have
to remain within Cypriot society’s prescribed norms in order to be accepted
by the public?22 In other words, is the term “Cypriot traditional singer” syn-
onymous with conservatism? If so, where does this connection come from?
The first major traditional singer in Cyprus, Theodoulos Kallinikos, was not
simply conservative in his attire and looks; he was the chief cantor (protop-
saltis) of the archbishopric of Cyprus for almost seven decades, from 1935 until
his death in 2004. In the minds of older people in Cyprus (those who experi-
enced the CyBC’s exclusivity and could not have escaped his performances),
Kallinikos is Cypriot song. The cantor was the first to produce commercial
recordings of Cypriot songs and dominated Cypriot radio in the 1960s and
beyond (see Demetriou 2008, 75–128). Has the association of Theodoulos
Kallinikos in people’s minds with Church/conservatism/tradition (the triptych
known in Greek as patris-thriskeia-oikogeneia, i.e., homeland-religion-family)
been so powerful that every traditional singer who wants to be successful in
Cyprus needs to comply with this recipe? Most male traditional singers in
Cyprus today certainly admit that, to some extent, they have been influenced
by Kallinikos, with all that this implies.
But also the whole notion of tradition in the Greek-speaking world has
been connected to conservatism, to the past, to the old and peasant. Signifi-
cantly, however, it has also been connected to the creation of the “national”—
in arts, poetry, and, above all, folk songs (see Herzfeld 1982; Beaton 2004
[1980], 10–11).23 At the turn of the twentieth century, folk songs were seen as
“monuments of the word” (also known as zonta mnimeia, i.e., living monu-
ments), connecting the modern Greek world with the ancient via Byzantium
(Herzfeld 1982). In the early 1950s, Kallinikos’s book of folk song transcrip-
tions was seen as providing a “service” that was both “musical and national”
(Michaelides in Kallinikos 1951, no page; my emphasis). More recently, Mi-
chalis Hadjimichael described Mesogeios’s work as “carrying to today . . . the
ancestors’ four gospels” (Hadjimichael 1997, 3).24 Rarely have folk songs in
Cyprus been just what they are: songs.
Similarly to other singers in Cyprus who perform the old songs, Pelagia
exudes a sense of traditionalism or conservatism—in terms of the way she
presents herself visually (conservative clothes, gray hair, no makeup, etc.)
and also socially (married woman, good housewife, mother and grand-
mother, etc.). In a sphere that is still predominantly male, it is this conser-
vatism—along with her very visible and audible dynamism—that put her
on a par with her male colleagues. Contrary to most of her colleagues on
the Cypriot music scene, however, Pelagia does not get involved in theo-
retical discussions—e.g., on the radio, TV, or in written outputs—about
Cypriot tradition and its “preservation” (a perennial favorite among her
fellow singers). Although this followed as a natural effect of her character
and behavior, rather than being a purposely adopted strategy, it guaranteed
her even more success—especially among the youth. Singers’ theoretical
discussions on saving tradition often have the opposite effect of what they
strive for, presenting them as elitist: their theoretical predisposition does
not allow them to become involved in genres (or collaborate with groups
of people) that are seen as responsible for traditional music’s decay. Rather
than lecturing young people about tradition, Pelagia does tradition; what
she wants to say, she says through her verses and songs:
I give my opinion to both poor and rich: they who honor their roots honor
themselves too.
The thieves and the outlaws put up the wires;25 if tradition goes too, Cyprus
will die out completely.
By consistently avoiding preaching at her young audience, Pelagia not only
secured her triumph as a national grandmother, but also, by implication, in-
advertently marked a small victory for Cypriot music. Without ever turning
down her role as housewife/grandmother or her conservative look, she sings
with pop and hip-hop singers. She appears as guest star on TV series (always
as herself), and on TV and radio shows with a modern outlook. She does
not try to be modern, she is always herself (which is itself a role, one could
suggest). Yet at the same time she does not negate pop culture, she becomes
part of it, without getting lost in it. So much has pop culture accepted her as
a result, that Cypriot Eurovision fans debate whether she should represent
Cyprus in a forthcoming contest, being the only one “who can project” the
country and attract votes.26
In keeping with her grandmotherly role, the singer always makes sure to
tell her interviewers—as always in couplet form—how much she loves the
youth, and how much they love her in return. “Youth are right, I don’t blame
them, for we also did what [young people] were doing back then.” That many
young people seem to be more interested in “foreign songs” is not something
that she minds, provided, of course, that they keep loving their roots too:
Whatever a person learns is surely to their honor; but they should certainly
know what their origins are.
They ask us “Where are you from?” We state “Cyprus.”27 So youths should
get to know Cypriot [songs/dialect] too.
But young people are not her only fans; Pelagia’s success also turned her
into a role model for older women, and elderly people in general. In fact, so
great has the effect of her popularity been on collective imagination that she
unwittingly created what Michalis Tterlikkas, another well-known Cypriot
traditional singer, called “the Pelagia phenomenon.” The fact that Pelagia
combined her domestic roles with a very public career as a singer showed
other women of her generation that it is possible to do both. Significantly,
for women who grew up with the notion of “singer-equals-decadence,” she
also demonstrated that being a singer can be a respectable thing. Ever since
Pelagia became popular, Tterlikkas says, several elderly ladies (and a handful
of men) have been hoping to be discovered and promoted, and become “the
new Pelagia” (pers. comm. 2008):
When I meet elderly ladies and ask them to sing for me, they invariably ask
me, anxiously: “Will you play my songs on the radio? Will you make a CD of
me? Will I become like Pelagia?”
The appeal of being recognized in the streets, of being known and admired—
in short the temptation of glory—is hard to resist.
In many ways Pelagia’s case is paradoxical: she is one of the very few stars of
the Cypriot music scene, in a country where women performers of traditional
music are a rarity and where traditional music stars, irrespective of gender,
are even rarer. This housewife/grandmother-star has been able to transcend
borders within Cypriot society, and appeal to young and old, traditional and
modern, folk and pop music fans alike. In examining her popularity, one
should, then, not consider that she became famous in spite of her age, but
because of it: her status as a village housewife and grandmother who—due
to her popularity—has become everyone’s grandmother has provided her
with a nonsexual status that goes well with what is expected from traditional
singers’ conservative public personae. Pelagia’s popularity reflects how ef-
fectively she embodies that persona, and, for that reason, how successfully
she represents “new Cyprus”: one where conservatism is combined with
modernity and what is typically described as horkatiko (peasant), one that is
laughed at for being precisely that, but which, at the same time, is—secretly
perhaps—loved and admired.
Notes
1. In July 1974, following a coup backed by the military government of Athens aiming
to overthrow the Cypriot president, Turkey (one of Cyprus’s guarantor powers, along
with Greece and Britain, according to the country’s constitution) invaded the northern
part of the island. As a result, thousands of Greek Cypriots living in the north of Cyprus
were forced to move to the south and, similarly, thousands of Turkish Cypriots living
in the south fled to the north. Cyprus has been de facto partitioned ever since. The
southern part of the island is governed by the Republic of Cyprus—founded in 1960
following independence from Britain, and a member of the EU since 2004—and the
northern part is governed by the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, proclaimed in
1983 and recognized only by Turkey. In the context of this chapter, “Cyprus” refers to
the southern part of the island, and similarly “Cypriot” refers to “Greek Cypriot.” I do
this not to negate the existence of Turks or other ethnic groups on the island, but simply
to avoid repetition.
2. The Cyprus Broadcasting Service was founded by the British authorities during
colonial times (radio 1953; TV 1957). It was renamed Cyprus Broadcasting Corporation
(CyBC) after independence from Britain in 1960.
3. “Kyriakou” is her first name, diminutive of “Kyriaki.” “Pelagia” is her surname, which
she acquired after her marriage to Giorgos Pelagias in 1958. She was born Kyriaki Kou-
zali on July 8, 1936, in Paralimni, a village on Cyprus’s east coast. With one exception, in
this chapter I chose to call her “Pelagia” (rather than “Kyriakou”), as this is how she is
customarily being referred to in Cyprus.
4. Tsiattista (singular tsiattisto) is a form of improvised verse in Cypriot Greek dialect
that can be either recited or sung to recitative-like tunes. Tsiattista consist of two fifteen-
syllable verses, each of which is made up of two half-lines of eight and seven syllables.
(Hence a complete tsiattisto would be in the form of 8+7 / 8+7.) Even though in their
strict sense tsiattista involve two or more performers exchanging verses of antagonistic
content in dialogue, nowadays in Cyprus the word is commonly used to identify any kind
of rhyming couplet, irrespective of content.
5. All quotations by Pelagia are taken from my interviews with her, unless otherwise
noted.
References
Antelyes, Peter. 1994. “Red Hot Mamas: Bessie Smith, Sophie Tucker, and the Ethnic
Maternal Voice in American Popular Song.” In Embodied Voices: Representing Female
Vocality in Western Culture, eds. Leslie C. Dunn and Nancy A. Jones, 212–29. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press.
Argyrou, Vassos. 2005 [1996]. Tradition and Modernity in the Mediterranean: The Wedding
as Symbolic Struggle. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Auerbach, Susan. 1989. “From Singing to Lamenting: Women’s Musical Role in a Greek
Village.” In Women and Music in Cross-Cultural Perspective, ed. Ellen Koskoff, 25–43.
Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Beaton, Roderick. 2004 [1980]. Folk Poetry of Modern Greece. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Bryant, Rebecca. 2004. Imagining the Modern: The Cultures of Nationalism in Cyprus.
London: I. B. Tauris.
Danielson, Virginia. 1997. The Voice of Egypt: Umm Kulthum, Arabic Song, and Egyptian
Society in the Twentieth Century. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Demetriou, Nicoletta. 2008. “The Fones Discourse: Ideology and Practice in Greek Cypriot
Folk Music.” Unpublished PhD thesis. SOAS, University of London.
Hadjimichael, Michalis. 1997. Ta Paralimnitika 2. Dimotika Tragoudia tis Kyprou ([Songs]
from Paralimni 2. Folk Songs from Cyprus). Booklet accompanying the recording.
Paralimni: Municipality of Paralimni.
———. 2003. Oloaspron Pezouni. Dimotika Tragoudia tis Kyprou (White Dove. Folk Songs
from Cyprus). Booklet accompanying the recording. Paralimni: Municipality of Paralimni.
Herzfeld, Michael. 1982. Ours Once More: Folklore, Ideology, and the Making of Modern
Greece. New York: Pella.
Ioannides, C. D. 1968. “A Short Collection of Cyprus Folksongs.” Kypriakai Spoudai ΛΒ’
(32):265–300.
Kallimopoulou, Eleni. 2009. Paradosiaká: Music, Meaning and Identity in Modern Greece.
Farnham: Ashgate.
Kallinikos, Theodoulos. 1951. Kypriaki Laïki Mousa (Cypriot Popular Muse). Nicosia: Neos
Kosmos, Thomas G. Kyriakidis.
Magrini, Tullia, ed. 2003. Music and Gender: Perspectives from the Mediterranean. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Michaelides, Solon. 1944. “Kypriaki Laïki Mousiki” (“Cypriot Popular Music”). Reprint
from Kypriaka Grammata Θ’ (9):3–14 (originally 115–26).
Papapetrou, Paschalis. 2006. Kyriakou Pelagia. Short documentary for CyBC TV.
Peristiany, John. 1965. Honour and Shame: The Values of Mediterranean Society. London:
Weidenfeld and Nicolson.
Salamone, S. D., and J. B. Stanton. 1986. “Introducing the Nikokyra: Ideality and Real-
Interviews
Hadjimichael, Michalis. 2005. Private interview with Nicoletta Demetriou. Nicosia, No-
vember 2, 2005; Frenaros, December 18, 2005.
Pelagia, Kyriakou. 2006. Private interview with Nicoletta Demetriou. Paralimni, May
11, 2006.
———. 2008. Private interview with Nicoletta Demetriou. Paralimni, October 7 and 8,
2008.
Discography
Pelagia, Kyriakou, and Mesogeios. 1995. Ta Paralimnitika. Tragoudia tis Paradosis ([Songs]
from Paralimni. Traditional Songs). Paralimni: Municipality of Paralimni.
———. 1997. Ta Paralimnitika 2. Dimotika Tragoudia tis Kyprou ([Songs] from Paralimni
2. Folk Songs from Cyprus). Paralimni: Municipality of Paralimni.
———. 2003. Oloaspron Pezouni. Dimotika Tragoudia tis Kyprou (White Dove. Folk Songs
from Cyprus). Paralimni: Municipality of Paralimni.
Peloponnesian Folklore Foundation. 1999 [1988]. Kypros—Dimotiki Mousiki. Cyprus—
Popular Music (bilingual edition). Nafplion: Peloponnesian Folklore Foundation.
hot under the lights, Lexine looked relaxed and as more and more people came
in, her energy lifted and her captivating and smooth voice effortlessly filled
the tent. It was an experience that I will carry with me for a long time.
• • •
Raised in Australia’s North Queensland, Lexine Solomon is a Torres Strait
Islander who has performed nationally and internationally as a singer for
over twenty years. The Torres Strait Islands are a group of islands situated
between Cape York, Australia, and Papua New Guinea. Yet, like many Torres
Strait Islanders, Lexine was born and lives on mainland Australia. Her music
encompasses a diverse range of styles and languages and an overarching
theme is her identity as a Torres Strait Islander woman. I have known Lex-
ine for seven years and have worked collaboratively with her on a research
project to draw attention to the work of Torres Strait Islander women sing-
ers. In this chapter, she is the research subject and I will draw on interviews,
conversations, and experiences to explore how she uses her singing voice to
connect with the Torres Strait Islands. I also examine how she uses her songs
to express her family history and celebrate Torres Strait Islander women. Like
Beverley Diamond and Pirkko Moisala I believe that “moving our usually
untold experiences from the privacy of our memories to the printed page”
is “an important step” (2000, 17; Ellis 1998; Humphreys 2005). Overall, this
chapter is about how Lexine connects with her family, community, and cul-
ture and celebrates her identity through song.
I’ll start off by telling you a little bit about myself, if that’s okay. Then we can
do some singing.
I noticed that a few students shifted uncomfortably while others smiled in
anticipation.
As a child I used to make up songs all the time. But then getting paid to
sing—I have been performing for over twenty years now—since I was eigh-
teen in 1981! One time when I was fifteen or sixteen I was asked to sing for a
double wedding in my church and people kept saying how much they enjoyed
it. Then in Bible College I was backup singer with a band then became the
lead singer and did solos in the church—singing in the church choir—I guess
I just loved to be part of the joy that people enjoyed whenever I sang—it’s
been an amazing journey.
Lexine clicked to another slide that showed her two album covers (figure 6.1).
These are my two albums that I’ve released independently. This Is Woman I
released in 2002 and Strike a Pose in 2006. There are original songs and covers
of songs from other artists on both of them. I’m really inspired by the people
around me and it is community focused. I received some funding from the Aus-
tralia Council to record the first album and saved up my own finances. I wrote
eleven of the tracks, there are three on there that I co-wrote with Aboriginal
performer Warren H. Williams, then there’s a song that belongs to Torres Strait
Islander Miseron Levi called “Baba Waiyar,” and “Amazing Grace,” which has
become a signature song for me. The second album was part of a research project
I undertook where I interviewed women family and friends to produce a DVD
collection of interviews with Indigenous Australian women who have had an
impact on my life to encourage and empower other Torres Strait Islander and
Aboriginal women to reflect on their own life experiences.
I interrupted, “Lex, can you tell the students about why you release your
songs independently rather than through a record company?”
Well, I’ve found that for myself as a songwriter/singer I just have more control.
It just means I can decide where the music goes. As a female, and Indigenous,
it’s really important that I’m creating my own music—only I know what I’m
looking for—I become executive producer of my work. I recorded that album
of mine This Is Woman in a small home studio but I got to achieve the sounds
I was looking for.
She took a sip from her water bottle and then clicked to the next slide that
showed a photo of her working at the Central Australian Aboriginal Media
Association.2
I was the first Torres Strait Islander woman employed as music manager/
producer at the Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association (CAAMA) in
Alice Springs, Northern Territory from 2002 to 2005 which was a great experi-
ence, I got to work with some great artists. I’ve performed in New Zealand, the
United States of America and across Australia. I manage myself and organized
the tours myself. In 2007, I was featured in the documentary “Canberra’s Best
Kept Secret” where the director won Best Senior Director of the competition.
You can check it out on YouTube can’t you Katelyn?
“Yes I think so,” I answered.
The next slide was a picture of Lexine and me (figure 6.2).
Ah, my life with Doctor Katelyn Barney.
She giggled and I wondered what she was going to say.
I first met her in 2004 when she came to interview me for her doctorate, then
in 2006 I asked Katelyn if she’d like to work with me on a project. We secured
some funding and over the last three years we’ve been working on a research
project together interviewing my fellow Torres Strait Islander women singers.3
It’s been quite a journey and it’s become a strong friendship, hasn’t it Katelyn?
“Yes, it has. I’ve given the students a couple of our articles too,” I said.4
Figure 6.2. Lexine and Katelyn at the Dreaming Festival, Australia’s International
Indigenous Festival in Woodford, Queensland, Australia, 2008. Photograph by
Patricia Barney.
Alright let’s do some singing. I wrote the title song on the album This Is
Woman for an International Women’s Day Dinner in 2000. I wanted to write
songs about women and who they are to us—and why they make us who we
are. I’ll sing it through and then you can try it too.
She started the backing track and her uneasiness about being a lecturer im-
mediately disappeared as she confidently sang:
What is woman made of?
A question of all time
A woman found with virtue
This is not a rhyme
She has purpose
She gives love
She has all she needs
This is woman, and she loves
This is woman, and she lives
This is woman, and she believes
Singing to Connect
with the Torres Strait Islands
I was raised by a Torres Strait Islander father on the mainland of Australia.
Since I was not raised in the Islands I only have a kindergarten understand-
ing of language but my understanding of culture and custom, and some of the
traditions make up who I am because of my father. There are lots of cultural ties
back to the Islands that I have, and without “living” parents, my connection is
only as strong as I make it. I first went up to the Torres Strait Islands in 1992. I
went up not sure where I was going. . . . I went to St Pauls on Moa Island and
I just soaked it in. I just took it in. This is where my father was, he walked on
this beach, he saw these coconut trees. It was worth it.
• • •
Jeremy Beckett writes that “to be an Islander you must have an island, but
for the mainland-born this ‘island’ has to be discovered all over again, and
The notes to her CD state that “I Belong” is about “heritage and a yearning
to identify with people and culture and how generations carry memories
and stories handed down through me.” In October 2001, “I Belong” was
the theme song for the inaugural National Gospel Happening in Canberra.
I’ve taken that around the world actually, and a lot of races have said that it’s
like it was written for them. I took it to New Zealand, to New York and Chicago
and sang it for different races of people. . . . I took it to the Islands, and they were
like, “this is about us!” you know, so that’s been pretty amazing, yeah.
Singing gives me an opportunity to tell a story of how I fit and connect to
the Islands.
Lexine’s connection to the Torres Strait region is also expressed through
singing a Torres Strait Islander kores (chorus) called “Baba Waiyar.” Kores are
one major strand of Islander sacred music and are post-1960s evangelical songs
sung in Torres Strait Islander languages Meriam Mer, Kala Lagaw Ya, Kriol,
along with English and other languages such as Tok Pisin from Papua New
Guinea. Kores are usually simple in structure with a single brief stanza that is
repeated a number of times. Karl Neuenfeldt points out that “new melodies
are composed or old ones recycled, including the melodies and sometimes the
words of well-known and copyrighted contemporary popular songs” (2008,
170). Lawrence suggests that because kores are easier to remember and learn,
they are performed more frequently than the older language hymns, which
were introduced from Pacific Islander missionaries who introduced or in some
cases banned particular styles of music (2004, 47). Certainly Christianity be-
came the main religious and social force throughout the Torres Strait. Following
the arrival in 1871 of the London Missionary Society (LMS), the introduction
of Christianity to the Torres Strait Islands is referred to by Islanders as the
“Coming of the Light” and is celebrated annually (ibid.). Lawrence notes that
Christianity has not completely replaced the old religious beliefs, for Chris-
tian ideals and some of the older spiritual beliefs and cultural practices continue
to coexist, especially in the eastern islands. . . . In attempting to wean the Torres
Strait Islanders away from pre-Christian music and dance, as practised during
cult ceremonies, the LMS missionaries forbad[e] the use of the skim drum
(warup) to accompany hymns. (ibid., 46, 55)7
Although “Baba Waiyar” is the only identifiably Torres Strait Islander song
that Lexine has recorded, she leaves open the possibility and the creative
freedom to draw on her Torres Strait Islander heritage in her songs.
I included “Baba Waiyar” on my album This Is Woman with the Island style
of guitar and the drum because it’s still a part of my heritage. And I still should
be able to have access to it even though I live in the today world.
“Baba Waiyar” and her own song “I Belong” allow Lexine to express her
“Islanderness” and illustrate that an Islander identity can be constructed and
maintained through song.
I have been very candid and revealed some home truths—my big brother
had some problems with me doing this—but I let them have input into the re-
cording and revealing who we are—because of the women in our “past”—who
are really in our lives ah! You know things like a dysfunctional family, like lots
of people I suppose, but I decided that I could tackle some of the issues about
what mothers expect of others . . . there’s lots of history we don’t have—it’s gone
with our parents.
Yet at the same time, it has become an important source of information for her
siblings and a way of finding out more about their family history.
I’ve had my brothers and sisters ring me “oh Lex . . . ” they remember some-
thing from their childhood and I’ve said “listen to that song and read what I
wrote in the CD notes.”
The album opens with a song called “Cut to the Chase” which is about
Lexine asking her mother to give her strength to raise her brothers and sisters
on her own:
I know I’ve done you wrong.
You died when I was 17.
Did I turn my back on you?
To do my own thing.
But how do I say the words?
Help me cut to the chase, to speak the words
I failed you once again.
My heart is longing to hear you say
Everything’s okay
Help me cut to the chase.
How can you love me now you’re gone?
Help me cut to the chase
So we can carry on.8
Singing her songs, and particularly recording her songs, allows Lexine to
express her family history and preserve her families’ stories for future gen-
erations. She uses her songs to document and tell history to her siblings and
celebrate important family members, particularly her mother.
women. Lexine also attempts to celebrate women in her family through song.
As Lexine highlights, the song “This Is Woman” also refers to herself.
This is what I can become, the chorus talks about I’m a woman of purpose,
I give life, I am loved and I’ve tried to remain true to that.
• • •
Lexine Solomon sings for many reasons. The overarching motive is for both
connection and celebration: connection with the Torres Strait Islands as an
Islander woman born and raised on the mainland; connection with family,
and particularly siblings whom she raised as a result of her mother passing
away; and celebration of Torres Strait Islander women who have been histori-
cally marginalized. She also sings for herself.
No matter what happens to me, despite whatever adversity I face and rejec-
tion I experience, I still have song.
She chooses to release her albums independently with the assistance of Com-
monwealth or state government funding. While this could be read as margin-
alization of a Torres Strait Islander woman by the music industry, she asserts
that she consciously chooses not to release her songs through major record
companies in order to retain artistic control over her sound. She manages
her own music career and sells her albums herself directly to audiences at her
performances. Torres Strait Islanders living all across Australia, including those
in the Islands themselves, buy her CDs, as well as non-Indigenous people who
see her perform and run workshops at festivals such as the Dreaming Festival
of Indigenous Performance. She is well known within the Indigenous com-
munity in Australia, performing at community events such as annual National
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Day of Celebration (NAIDOC) events.
Our relationship over the years has grown into a strong friendship as we
have undertaken research, traveled, presented, and written together and I
continue to be amazed by her singing voice and her life experiences as a
Torres Strait Islander woman. Her guest lectures and workshops in courses
I’ve taught at The University of Queensland to (mostly non-Indigenous)
students gives them an opportunity to hear about the voiced experiences
and contemporary songs of a Torres Strait Islander woman and enter into a
dialogue about a wide range of issues facing Torres Strait Islander women
on the mainland. Lexine is part of the diasporic population of approximately
two-thirds of all Islanders “separated by time, place and situation from their
origins” (Lawe Davies and Neuenfeldt, 2004, 137). Yet like other mainland-
born Torres Strait Islanders, it remains essential to Lexine to maintain con-
nections with the Torres Strait Islands. She uses her songs to celebrate and
make ties with the Torres Strait and affirm for other mainland Torres Strait
Islanders that constructing an Islander identity is possible and can be lived
out through song. As Helen Reeves Lawrence notes, “wherever Islanders
live—whether on the home islands or in mainland cities—they express their
culture and identity through music” (1998, 4). Singing remains a key platform
for Lexine to maintain and sustain her identity and celebrate proudly and
loudly that “this is woman, and she loves, lives and believes” in herself and
in the importance of her fellow Torres Strait Islander women.
Acknowledgments
Thank you to Lexine for your continuing friendship, research collaborations,
and lots of laughs.
Notes
1. In the Australian context, it is accepted practice that the first letter of Indigenous is
capitalized. Not doing this is regarded by many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people
as being “racist, offensive and belittling, a way of negating our identity and nationality and
can be similar to misspelling a person’s name (gail or dianne) or another country name
(chinese, european) by not capitalising” (Huggins 1994, 14; see also Heiss 2002).
2. See Ottosson (2007) for more information on CAAMA.
3. From 2007–10 Lexine and I worked together on the Australian Institute of Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander Studies funded project “Performing on the Margins: Torres
Strait Islander Women Performers.” For further information in the project see Barney
and Solomon, 2009a,b, 2010.
4. See Barney and Solomon, 2009a,b.
5. Copyright Lexine Solomon. Permission given to reproduce lyrics.
6. Copyright Lexine Solomon. Permission given to reproduce lyrics.
7. See Lawrence 2004 for more information about the influence of Christianity in the
Torres Strait.
8. Copyright Lexine Solomon. Permission given to reproduce lyrics.
References
Australian Bureau of Statistics. 2006. Census. Canberra: Australian Government Print-
ing Service.
Barnes, Ketrina. 1998. “Torres Strait Islander Women.” Australian Journal of Indigenous
Education 26(1):25–30.
Barney, Katelyn, and Lexine Solomon. 2009a. “Looking into the Trochus Shell: Auto-
ethnographic Reflections on a Cross-Cultural Collaborative Music Research Project.”
In Musical Autoethnographies: Making Autoethnography Sing/Making Music Personal,
eds. Brydie-Leigh Bartleet and Carolyn Ellis, 208–24. Bowen Hills, Qld.: Australian
Academic Press.
———. 2009b. “‘The Memories Linger On, but the Stories Tell Me Who I Am’: A Conver-
sation between an Indigenous Australian Performer and a Non-Indigenous Australian
Music Researcher.” In Musical Islands: Exploring Connections between Music, Place and
Research, eds. Elizabeth Mackinlay, Brydie-Leigh Bartleet, and Katelyn Barney, 70–93.
Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
———. 2010. Performing on the Margins: Conversations with Torres Strait Islander Women
about Music. St. Lucia, Qld.: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Unit.
Beckett, Jeremy. 2004. “Writing about Islanders: Recent Research and Future Directions.”
Discography
Solomon, Lexine. 2002 This Is Woman. Lexine Solomon, LS1000.
———. 2006. Strike a Pose. Lexine Solomon, LS2000.
“Who am I?” “What kind of person am I?” Marysia is prompted to ask herself
when explaining the contemplative process that contributes to her creativity
as a singer. She reflects that she needs to stand—to stop—and think about
her current life before being able to effectively capture it in her songs. Rather
than implying any misgiving about her own identity, however, such provoca-
tive self-questioning reveals a self-conscious and deliberate consideration of
her current life in Canada as opposed to her past in Poland. In fact, Marysia
is confident in who she is, on the one hand drawing on her strong roots to
proclaim that she remains Górale1 (or Highlander; from the Podhale region
of southern Poland) with her entire being, and on the other remaining secure
in an assured womanhood founded on years of active motherhood and happy
marriage. In this chapter I explore the ways in which Marysia’s fundamental
question has informed her vocality across migration and its contingent memo-
ries to locate her unequivocally in today’s world. In using the word vocality
here, I include what Dunn and Jones have identified as “the performative
dimension of vocal expression, that is . . . the dynamic, contingent quality of
both vocalization and audition” (1994, 2). In doing so, I consider primarily
the “literal, audible voice” (ibid., 1) as the site of potential agency, even while
taking as my point of departure a silence that has been associated with broader
concepts of the voice denied, as derived from its use as a metaphor in feminist
discourse (Bernstein 2004, 4).
This introduction to Marysia addresses the silence of the story often left un-
told, and reflects on the extent to which the individual woman’s voice may have
been lost within a discourse surrounding globally mediated sounds. Within
these stories unwritten or unheard, the musical experiences of women whose
This text was the first sung to me by Marysia and her ensemble during a re-
hearsal after I met her in 1985. She may well have been wondering why I had
“come there” at the time, in this way accessing potentially personal feelings
in the opening before moving to the poetic images of a familiar landscape
in the closing. At the time, Marysia (born in 1963) was twenty-two, with two
children and pregnant with her third (figure 7.1). Despite trying to farm an
inhospitable piece of land in the village of Stare Bystre in the northern area
of Podhale (the southernmost region of Poland on the fringes of the Tatra
Mountains) and building a new home, Marysia and her husband Jasiek coor-
dinated and taught the local song and dance troupe for the area. During this
era of the communist-led government in Poland, the formation of ensembles
was encouraged in the region, and the pay provided to Jasiek (as leader) of-
fered a valuable supplement to an otherwise meager income. The daughter
of a well-known village fiddler, Marysia grew up with music around her and
continued to make it an active part of her life, singing for special occasions
Figure 7.1. Marysia and two of her children, Peter and Anna, in Podhale, Poland,
1989. Photograph by Louise Wrazen.
voice located her unequivocally as being of this region, where singing voices
could be resplendent among the acoustics of the outdoor expanses of hills
and valleys. The singing voice is here produced with the intent to engage with
its surrounding landscape—the physicality of the sound embedding itself in
the contours of the land to offer the chance to extend and echo beyond the
immediately audible. Where this sonically expansive gesture is able to gener-
ate an intimacy between singer and landscape, it can also draw the attentive
listener into a visceral response to the physicality and grain of this voice
(Barthes 1988). Standing close to her as she sang, Marysia’s voice reached me
as it might have entered an expansive landscape and, when combined with
her deeply personal engagement with the singing, created a sense of intimate
connection that has stayed with me ever since.
Marysia’s family had grown to five children by the time I returned to Pod-
hale in 1989. Quickly outgrowing their tiny two-room home, she and her
husband were trying to finish building a new house. Frequently cooking for
a group of about ten workers in addition to caring for her own family when
I was there, Marysia continued to enjoy singing and teaching others to sing.
On several notable occasions, a group of five or more young girls came to
sing with her. Despite tight quarters, frequent interruptions, and ongoing ex-
amples of multitasking stretched to new limits, Marysia patiently and expertly
guided them through their repertoire. Opening her home to these girls (as
well as to me), even in the midst of a domestic life challenging in its demands
on her, Marysia shared her small kitchen as well as generous voice with us
all. It was also here that she and her husband sang for me, so that I might
record her singing for her father. Ongoing economic hardships combined
with the changing politics of Poland in subsequent years led Marysia to move
to Canada in 1992, following her husband, who had left in 1990. Their home
in Stare Bystre remains unfinished, though in Canada, where they now live
just outside of Toronto, their family has grown to twelve children.
When in her twenties, Marysia spoke of both tunes and texts as though
developing a personal relationship with them. Though tunes and texts are
interchangeable in Podhale, Marysia explained how she would learn a new
tune by singing it with a single text until she became fully accustomed to it.
Similarly, she contemplated the words intensely when singing. For example,
when singing of regle (small hills), as in the above text that she sang to me,
she would let the words ring out through her voice in a manner befitting
their evocative quality. In so doing she would strive to create some of the
acoustic resonance that a voice might achieve when actually singing amid
such hills. Poetics, therefore, here assist the performer in vocally inscribing
the acoustic implications of the landscape mentioned in the text onto the
performance itself—wherever it might be performed. In contrast, Marysia
admitted that she might sing other texts more provocatively. Through the
public use of her voice in performance, the singer, therefore, is effectively
inviting others to participate in this, her more personal, vision of the world.
Insofar as the concept of intimacy can be understood most broadly as a very
special sort of knowing4 among persons, that (as a corollary) requires a very
special sort of sharing, the voice here serves as an invitation to intimacy,
enjoining the listener into the possibility of a special relationship with the
singer. Its strong viscerality and association with poetics allow it to serve
this role particularly well (Barthes 1988, 2008 [1985]).
This deliberate manipulation of her voice and feelingful association with
the poetics of song have remained with Marysia. Now in her forties, she
has continued to nurture this vocal and poetic sensitivity to the extent that
she has become increasingly active in composing. Most frequently, Marysia
composes new texts to known tunes, and often does this for special occa-
sions. She laughs when she admits that when a special occasion arises, people
now frequently expect her to have composed something new to sing for the
event. As she explains it, she composes within a contemplative process in
which she is aware of asking herself three main questions. First, she asks
“Where am I?” In doing so, she is aware of deliberately positioning herself
within a present, rather than a past, reality. Although she roots herself musi-
cally within the structures of music-making from Podhale (including tunes,
polyphonic singing style, vocal timbre), she strives to orient her texts to the
current world that her children know in Canada—as opposed to that which
she and others may remember from Poland. Second, she asks “What would
I like to change?” Insofar as she even asks such a question, she views her role
as having great potential influence. Music links people, she advised me. As
one able to touch others with this music, she therefore occupies a position
of strength insofar as she is able to participate in instigating changes. Where
life may be difficult or challenging, she wonders what she can do to help. Not
only does she speak of framing a broader relevance for her own children,
but of helping others who may be at a loss (for reasons of unemployment or
alcohol, for example). Significantly, her optimism for the possibilities inherent
in this position overrides any feelings of insecurity that she might otherwise
have as a relatively new participant in a foreign country.
Third, Marysia asks herself how the world feels—that is, how do people
feel. In framing this question, she seeks to understand the current mood in
the world around her, and the human experience within it. In trying to feel
the pulse of human emotion around her, with the possibility of helping to
change it if necessary (question 2), she approaches composing not unlike
motherhood: if a baby is hungry, she feeds it; if a child has a fever, she seeks
to guide it to health. Therefore, Marysia’s role as the empathetic nurturer,
arising so naturally out of her long experience of motherhood, here also
compellingly guides her approach to composition.
Marysia actively perpetuates her regional Górale roots both inside and out-
side her home. The strong local identity associated with the Tatra Mountains
and Podhale (with its distinctive dialect, material, and expressive culture),
has long animated Górale both in Poland and abroad, as well as contributing
to a broader nationalist discourse (Cooley 2005; Wrazen 2008). Górale have
no difficulty in understanding who they are, Marysia suggests. Maintaining
Górale traditions is not optional for her, but the result of an inner need or
compulsion rather than a conscious choice. Such sentiments are inflected
not only with Marysia’s strong sense of regionalism and responsibility, but
also with a clarity of purpose that is driven by a confident and personal
self-awareness. This locally derived identity is foundational for Marysia
and provides her with a self-assurance that is sustaining even amid some
of the uncertainties and contradictions that she experiences in raising her
children in their Canadian surroundings.
Together with her husband, Marysia nurtures a family life built on tradi-
tional values now carried into new settings. A strong belief system revolving
around the structures of the Roman Catholic Church is fundamental. Sun-
days, holidays, and special feast days, including those particularly noted in
Poland if not in Canada, continue to guide their family’s life; these are often
marked in their parish by Górale music that includes Marysia’s singing—
frequently of her own compositions. Nature and rural ways also continue
to guide their lives. Despite now living within the boundaries of a quickly
expanding greater Toronto area marked by urban development, Marysia and
Jasiek have settled into a home on a road that remains relatively secluded. As
a self-employed builder, Jasiek has worked to expand this home to meet the
growing demands of their family. They also own property outside the city
where they plant a large garden and frequently go to provide some freedom
for their children to run around, and to offer Marysia some respite.
Ongoing and active engagement with a larger community of Górale has
included providing opportunities for their children to experience the tradi-
tional music and dance of Podhale here. Over the years, Marysia and Jasiek
have initiated a number of different local ensembles, with Marysia teaching
singing and her husband teaching dancing. She has explained that her con-
fidence in her own Górale identity leads her to want to spread this among
others. The text that opens this section, composed by Marysia for the oc-
casion of a Canadian visit by Cardinal Stanisław Dziwisz in 2008, proudly
locates the young people singing and performing as now effectively bridging
two realities that contribute to their emerging identities. As distinct from
most Polish ensembles, Marysia focuses exclusively on the Podhale region
with her members. This is not about changing costumes, she explains rather
dismissively when comparing what she wants to do with other performing
ensembles of young people, who present medleys from a variety of regions
of Poland. When organizing any ensemble or performance, she believes in
the need to begin with the music (that is, the string ensemble of fiddles and
basy (three-string cello-like instrument) that is characteristic of Podhale),
not with the dancers. In this way, she deliberately wants her ensemble to be
different, even though she admits that it may be more modest in other ways.
In particular, Marysia wants it to be authentic. Her aim of including stories
and spoken texts that represent a larger segment of life in performances would
assist in creating a sense of authentic culture in the children, she suggests.
This authenticity, therefore, is not defined by Marysia in reference to codified
performance practices that might serve as criteria for evaluation—such as
found, for example, at some of the festivals in which ensembles may partici-
pate (Cooley 1999; Wrazen 2005). Rather it derives from the immediacy of
deeply felt personal experience. She strives, therefore, to assist in recreating
this total experience for the children both inside and outside the performance
arena. Marysia is eloquent when she describes that she wants the children
themselves to feel what is deep within them; the authenticity of this Górale
experience does not reside in the act of performing or playing, she maintains,
but in the very state of being. In this way she brings the certainty of her own
understanding of herself, and her past, to influence the growth and future
of the children around her, whether her own or those of fellow Górale who
may be less committed to this process.
that includes poetry. She believes that she has a natural sensitivity to what an
audience might want to see—in particular one that has already seen numer-
ous performances structured around the usual sequence of songs and dances.
She also wants to establish a connection with the audience that is based on
the present. These concerns find their way into the composition of specific
texts as well as in longer episodes that she conceives for performance. In
rewriting the story of the Nativity, for example, she sought to explore some
of the human emotions that could be associated with a story so well known
and yet often told in a formulaic manner. Using known tunes, she composed
a narrative based on some poetic recitations and a variety of Górale tunes.
With several of her own family members participating in the performances,
her version aimed to stress the intimacy of motherhood and infant life in
a manner that might reach both audience members and her own children.
And so, for example, she sang the following (drawing concisely on her own
maternal experiences):
Synku mój malućki, Son, my little one,
pociesynie moje; joy of mine;
widzem zapłakane, I see tear-filled,
ślicne łocka twoje. your lovely little eyes.
More recently, Marysia has been exploring the possibility of rewriting the
story of Janosik (born Juraj Jánošík 1688–1713), transposing the legendary
Robin Hood–type brigand from the Tatras to North America, where he
would address moral issues related to how to live a good life (addressing
drugs and violence, for example), rather than fight against physical and
economic oppression as he is said to have done in the eighteenth century.
Much of this seems to be written, at least in her mind, though it is not certain
when she will find the time and commitment from others necessary to see
this ambitious project through to its performance.
Life in Canada provides a distinctive framework for Marysia—one that
she chooses not to ignore in her creative life. She states explicitly, for ex-
ample, that she does not like to sing about what is not there. To this end,
she questions what relevance some of the older song texts can have to those
who have never been to Podhale, wondering how anyone can sing about
sheep if they have never seen any. Further to her belief that culture is inte-
gral to lived experience and that it should help one to live better, Marysia
wants to ensure that song texts have relevance to those now singing them
here. Her own compositions reveal that she fully understands how these
traditional songs capture the everyday in their texts while also poetically
addressing the more broadly universal and compelling. But where these
have been defined by trees and mountains, sheep and shepherds in Podhale,
the reality in Canada requires a different poetic vocabulary, which she is ea-
gerly exploring. This commitment to reorient poetics through images more
germane to the experiences of Górale now living outside Podhale suggests
a progressive attitude that is not necessarily shared by others. She recalls
that when explaining to a friend how important it is to compose texts that
would be of relevance to those participating in Canada, he responded with
some skepticism, wondering aloud what he might write about—going to a
bank machine? In contrast, she questions why those here should always be
singing about shepherds when there are more common frames of reference
beyond the mundane, like birds singing and love.
The poetic content of Marysia’s songs, therefore, aims to locate her sing-
ing voice compellingly in today’s world. Just as the timbral resonance of her
voice may draw others into the intimate acoustic presence of her singing,
her texts seek to refer listeners to their current experiences. Where others
may become preoccupied with the vast differences between modern life in
a global age and the pastoral lifestyle of a time past, and relish in nostalgia
or folkloric authenticities, Marysia understands the value of embracing the
present. She has no patience for nostalgia, claiming that it is equivalent to an
illness that prevents people from fully appreciating the current possibilities
around them. Marysia has full confidence in her life here despite its hard-
ships. This is reflected in the song that she wrote in honor of Pope John Paul
II’s visit to Canada in 2002. Two verses from this longer strophic song open
this section: although the first opens with a sobering realization, it continues
more optimistically by searching for the familiar and recognizing the ongoing
presence of trees so beloved (even if not mountains) in this new land; and
it concludes with a strong affirmation of the numerous merits (presented
even as advantages) of this new home. Raising a growing family without
a solid knowledge of English under uncertain financial circumstances in a
foreign country has not diminished the steadfast resilience and energy that I
recognized in Marysia in Podhale. Remembering her cramped kitchen in the
small isolated house on the far side of the river in Stare Bystre and marking
her determination even then, I’m not surprised by her current optimism or
tenacity. Life is better here according to Marysia—even the blueberries are
bigger! This is the new home that she now claims, and that she also strives
to reflect in her singing (figure 7.2).
A naturally outgoing manner also assists Marysia in finding new places
for her voice. Despite restrictions placed on her by her children, she enjoys
those parties and occasions where musical conviviality is socially embedded.
Figure 7.2. Marysia singing with her husband, Jasiek (on her left), and Bolek Mąka
(on her right), with Józef Siuty accompanying in the background, in Brampton,
Ontario, Canada, 2008. Photograph by Louise Wrazen.
At a recent St. Andrew’s Day party Marysia’s voice animated the evening,
first in some unaccompanied polyphonic singing around supper and then as
accompanied by the string band that played for some general dancing after
the meal. On another occasion, Marysia organized her family and friends
to perform at a larger celebration of multiculturalism, where they provided
an informal welcome to arriving guests with their music and dance. She
coordinated the performances and sang exuberantly with the band while
others listened or danced. Such occasions not only illustrate how Marysia
engages others meaningfully through her singing and confirm the performa-
tive vitality of her vocality, but they also assert her vocal presence in a larger
public space. Although she has sought to embrace a broader conception of
poetic relevance through a distinctive compositional voice, her singing also
has provided Marysia with a valuable entry into a broader social and musical
world. Easily defined by her robust maternity, Marysia’s self-assured public
vocality extends her beyond the potentially confining isolation of mother-
hood to assert a more broadly defined womanhood.
Closing Reflections
This chapter arose as a direct response to the challenge posed by Ellen Kos-
koff to “put real people and the truth of their musical lives back into the
picture” (2005, 98) that has contextualized this entire volume (as already
articulated in the editor’s introduction). The value of relating music to real
lives is similarly promoted by Suzanne Cusick when she notes that feminist
musicologies “provide a theoretical legitimacy for reconnecting ‘the music
itself ’ with the fabric of human life. Thus, feminist musicologies provide an
opening for us to rethink music as something that matters—and matters very
much—to “‘real’ life” (2001 [1999], 498).
In turning to the local, the specific, and the individually meaningful, I
have focused on the musical life of a woman who forms no part of a broader
global, national, or even regional musical presence (in contrast to some
of the other chapters in this volume). Marysia’s life revolves very much
around her home, family, and narrow local community. As consistent with
this volume, for Marysia the intimacy of a rich home life intersects con-
spicuously with an active community-based public presence in her singing
voice—through which her womanhood as circumscribed by her roles of
daughter, wife, teacher, artist, and mother converge. While Marysia has
admitted that it is very difficult being a mother because of the need to give
so much of herself—you have to “give of your heart”—this very generosity
and potential intimacy similarly guide her vocality. Combining its strong
natural timbral resonance with an ongoing poetic and musical sensitivity,
Marysia explicitly and consistently engages her voice to reach others. Her
generous vocality creates, elaborates, and sustains a variety of relation-
ships (between past and present; performer and musical-poetic text; and
herself and others) in ways that offer memorable lessons in compassion and
optimism even while it also asserts her own acoustic presence onto a new
landscape. While transnational structures of corporate power may influ-
ence the musical marketplace to swell arenas and concert halls with adoring
fans, it is often a more intimate single voice that remains most compelling
in individual memory. As Barthes has suggested, the voice is the privileged
site of difference: “there is no neutral voice” (2008, 80). This chapter asserts
the ongoing significance of the musical, gendered voice in constructing
spaces of comfort, opportunities for agency, and markers of resilience in
times of hardship and change. Within the larger global construct of musical
exchanges and influences, it remains particularly important, therefore, for
us to continue to address the fundamental question of who is singing.
Notes
1. I adopt the plural “Górale” as both noun and adjective, singular and plural, masculine
and feminine, in an effort to avoid the complexities of declensions and also as a way to
promote gender-neutral designations.
2. Much of my time with Marysia has been in informal conversation. My research with
her began in Podhale in the summer of 1985, continuing in 1989, with more intensive re-
search in Canada beginning in 2007. Opportunities to observe Marysia perform included a
church holiday (odpust) on September 9, 2007; Górale party (Andrzejki) on November 29,
2008; Górale Christmas party (Opłatek) on January 7, 2009; multicultural citywide festival
(Carabram) on July 11, 2009. During this period I also visited Marysia in her home and had
numerous phone conversations with her. I thank her for her kindness and generosity.
3. Translations of song texts are my own and tend toward a literal translation, thereby
hardly doing justice to the poetic quality of these evocative texts (though an even more
literal rendering of the final two lines of this text would read: “Hey, you’ve for me to the
small hill the road hidden”).
4. Although Lynn Jamieson (1998, 1) defines intimacy as “a very specific sort of knowing,
loving and ‘being close to’ another person,” John Scott and Gordon Marshall (“intimacy,”
A Dictionary of Sociology, John Scott and Gordon Marshall. Oxford University Press, 2009,
Oxford Reference Online (accessed March 2012)) replace her word “specific” with “special”
when citing her work—a change that is important for the purposes of this discussion.
5. Although Marysia explicitly mentions Morskie Oko (a famous lake in the Tatras),
she explains that she is actually creating a reference to Lake Ontario.
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In 2002, several years after receiving the words and melody of “Musical
Echoes” in a dream, South African born jazz singer, Sathima Bea Benjamin
traveled from New York City to Cape Town to record the song and produce
a CD of the same name. Her trio included American Steven Scott on piano,
South Africans Lulu Gontsana on drums, and Basil Moses on bass. My point
of entry to her life and music is the cover of the Musical Echoes recording, a
color photograph of Sathima at home, alone at the edge of the Atlantic Ocean
in Cape Town as the sun begins to rise. Sathima’s name and the disc title
are italicized silver lines in the clouds. Her trio has no visual counterpart:
their names are inscribed on the right side of the image. Sathima stands to
the left of the frame, facing right, staring outward to the expansiveness of
the ocean, an ocean that eventually connects her to the Americas, her other
home. Her hands are clasped at her breast, layers of white chiffon envelop
her small frame, and an opaque shawl hugs her upper torso. She is barefoot
on freshly washed white sand.
A profound feeling of solitude, of deep reflection at the dawn of a new
day pervades the image. The tide is low: long, languid waves gently ebb and
flow. The echoes of the ocean caress the ears, the wisps of an early morning
breeze touch lightly without disturbing the peace. She knows where she
is, but there are not the usual topographical or tourist markers in the im-
age—the close-up view of the level top of Cape Town’s Table Mountain,
with Devil’s Peak on the right, the cableway lining the mountain slope; or
the view from Blaauwberg Strand—the Table Bay View or the sight of the
Twelve Apostles mountain range. In Sathima’s photograph there is a “this
could be along any coastline in the world” feel to the scene. Ambiguity. Here
the local and personally significant merge with the universally familiar. So
too does Sathima’s voice elide into the globally constituted, though still
American-centered, world of jazz.
Standing at the edge of the ocean reminds us of Sathima’s approach to
jazz and to life itself: she is the romantic, the woman who privileges the
natural, and the unprocessed but subtle, in her sound. We have no inkling
of the intrusion of the noises of modernity, the bustle of the city, or the
emotional stresses that come with everyday life. Rather the solitariness of
the moment gives the singer the space to let her heart and mind roam freely:
to imagine, remember, to dream, envision, and to return to the sounds of
her childhood—family visits to the beach, the movies, to the sounds of
radio and record, live and mediated, copies and originals, on stage and in
the streets. As she revisits the echoes of sound she has carried inside for so
long, the real and the remembered merge: it is this singularity, captured in
the photographic moment, a coming full circle, uniting past and present,
home and elsewhere, which ultimately heals.
To situate Sathima’s music, biography, and ways of thinking about jazz
into a more general discourse on women in jazz I begin with Margery Wolf ’s
Thrice-Told Tale (1992), which provides a model for placing the South Afri-
can–born singer in a larger lineage of jazzwomen using three textual forms.
In the first part, I use the biographical to examine the formation of Sathima’s
“jazz self ” in five distinct phases of her life. In contrast to the generalizing
impulse of the opening discussion, the second part stresses the particular and
idiosyncratic. We hear from Sathima “in her own words” to gain insight into
how she has shaped the discourse of jazz to her own purposes, thereby placing
herself firmly into its community of performers and composers. I conclude
by reflecting on how Sathima has imagined herself as a woman in jazz by
drawing on Nadia Serematakis’s ideas about the poetics of the everyday and
a self-reflexive femininity. I position her femininity in contrast to the forms
of masculinity that Hazel Carby (1998), writing about Miles Davis, argues
jazz instills for many male musicians.
apartheid imposed upon people of color like herself; she desires to be a sup-
portive wife to Abdullah, though few jazz musicians survive as couples for
extended periods of time; and by her own admission, she is traditional, even
old-fashioned in her beliefs. Strong and passionate, her values are intense
and uncompromisingly articulated in her life and music.
I have divided her life story into five major moments: formative years,
falling in love, diasporic reflection, becoming a woman in jazz, and going
home. In many ways the pieces of Sathima’s life have been shaped by South
Africa’s political history from the 1930s through to the present. Even when
she went abroad, daily life for those in exile was shaped by the ups and
downs, and the pressures and struggles of the international antiapartheid
movement. In this sense, her life story differs from those of many other
women jazz musicians.
Figure 8.1.
Bea Benjamin in
Johannesburg,
South Africa, ca.
1958–59. From
Sathima Bea
Benjamin private
collection.
Figure 8.2. Sathima Bea Benjamin and Carol Muller meet at Penn Station in New
York City, August 2010. Photo used with permission, taken by Dan Yon on Carol
Muller’s camera.
in women the feeling that they have the capacity for deep emotional connec-
tion, strong feelings of intimacy, attachment, and the freedom to be oneself.
Falling in love means finding companionship; it fulfills a desire for a sense
of security, and of course, enables women to move out of the controlled en-
vironment of being children in a patriarchal household into a space where
the couple—the man and the woman in love—is autonomous and free to
make decisions about their lives without interference from anyone else. In
this model, nevertheless, there is also a moment of counterrevolution when
disillusionment and disappointment in the male partner often sets in for a
woman. At this point they fall back into the wife as mother figure in their
relationship, rationalizing the incompleteness and weaknesses as would a
mother her own child. The man in the relationship will then begin to view
his spouse as either a good mummy—who is always forgiving and filled with
unconditional love—or the bad mummy, one who tricks, teases, and makes
demands he cannot hope to satisfy. In this model men ultimately begin to
exert demoralizing control over their spouses, and women try to figure out
what makes their partners tick.
The alternative model is the more democratic practice based on reason.
In this model, individual women and men both know what they want, what
is good for them, and how to negotiate an equitable place for themselves in
the relationship. Despite the ideals of equality and freedom that a democratic
model would appear to embody, Langford argues that this model produces
similar outcomes to the romantic love process. She concludes her book sug-
gesting that “love” remains a dubious ideal for most of heterosexual women
in the contemporary world as it is elevated to the level of the spiritual and
mysterious. Despite their best desires, love remains in Langford’s model a
form of dystopia.
The two models of romantic and democratic relationship, articulated as
a kind of “revolution of the heart” are useful for framing the two moments
in Sathima’s early life of “falling in love.” The first was when she chose to
form a lasting relationship with Abdullah Ibrahim/Dollar Brand and not to
pursue a marriage with then fiancé Sam Isaacs; and the second was her sense
of “falling in love” with the music. There is no doubt that the two processes
were intertwined, because as Sathima often recalls, it was the music of Duke
Ellington and the song “I Got It Bad and That Ain’t Good” that brought her
and Abdullah together. These were two individuals who were truly in love with
the music: it was through their passion for jazz that they formed a long-term
relationship. Their romantic relationship was as much a rebellion as was their
move into jazz. Love for the music, like love for each other, instilled feelings
of freedom, intimacy, the capacity to be true to themselves, to take risks,
and to move from one social status to another. Although theirs was a largely
romantic revolution of the heart, much later in life, Sathima would begin to
move toward the more democratic model particularly in her relationship
to jazz performance. This is outlined in her discourse on jazz composition,
performance, and recording later in this chapter.
his moments of deepest diasporic despair. She loved the idea of “Sathima”
and so began to call herself Sathima Bea (short for Beatrice) Benjamin. She
spent her time on the road wood-shedding and honing her vocal craft; her
first compositions were “given” to her, and she began to formulate a set of
ideas that would link her to the larger African diaspora and its community
of jazz performers. Sathima recorded several times, but there is little com-
mercially available beyond the Morning in Paris recording made with Duke
Ellington in 1963 and released in 1996.2
Do you remember I told you we had the local bands, and this Cape Town sound
of the saxophone stretching the lines? I sing those old songs from the 1920s. When
I teach these songs to American musicians they say “Where did you find this,
what is it?” They don’t even know the music and it is actually from here. It went
to Cape Town, and I am bringing it back to musicians in New York City. We give
the song jazz changes, really hip changes underneath the melody, and I swing
it. And then it sounds like I wrote it, but I didn’t. It’s just my memories of Cape
Town that come back to me in New York City. Jazz is also a forward-looking, all
encompassing music. It gives you freedom to do whatever you can imagine pos-
sible. All these musicians have this “fake” book. And they go through it and choose
a song. I don’t have a fake book. I don’t even own one. Whatever I’m singing is
in my repertory because I have heard it before and then it comes to mind again.
There’s a reason it comes to mind, and then you have to sing it.
On another occasion she explained:
The reason I am doing jazz is it affords you a certain amount of freedom of
thought, freedom to be different and unique. And it dares you: it lets you pull
out whatever courage you have. You have to take risks. That’s the whole thing.
I could have inherited this courage, I think even things like that come through
in the genes. My mother had to take risks. Just growing up in South Africa not
being White, you learnt how to survive and take risks. My grandmother taught
me to be careful and stay out of trouble, but eventually I rebelled against that,
that whole rebellion thing led me to jazz, I saw that as music of rebellion: maybe
it wasn’t but I think it really was. The music doesn’t speak to my head, it speaks
to my heart, and I listen only to that. I have never been able to listen to what
my head tells me.
When I asked her how she sees herself in the American-centered jazz singer’s
lineage, she responded by saying that in addition to Billie Holiday, she sits
between Betty Carter who inspired her to form her own record label, and
Abbey Lincoln.6 Why Abbey, I wondered? “What I like about her is that she
is just honest and forthright. But she has a very different approach from mine.
When she sings she just goes on to the stage, and she’s Abbey! It’s like her audi-
ence is there, but you get the feeling, ‘Listen, this is me here, I don’t care if you
don’t like what I am singing because this is my show.’ She takes total control.”7
It is curious, nevertheless, that while Sathima inserts a woman at the start
of history—and it was Billie Holiday’s voice that provided a feeling of place
for the Cape Town girl—she never performs with other women because she
sees her performance as a kind of musical unity formed between the heart of
the female singer and her male trio, who in turn communicate to the hearts
of their listeners. She explained:
What I know is that I love performing with men, combining the yin and the
yang. You see I am an old-fashioned romantic. That is why I don’t perform with
other women—the struggles for women are too great—it is better to relax inside
the music with male performers. I am always amazed at what happens when
men blend their musicality with mine in performance. To do so they have to be
spiritually inclined, have worked with themselves, and not allow their egos to
get in the way of the music. My grandmother drummed into me that I had to
be submissive to men: I had to fight hard to overcome that. I’ve changed but it
took a very long time. I was raised to believe that men are the most important,
and that I have to serve them. I love to serve all people—though a woman
serving others is looked down upon in America. There is submission to each
other in the music—we are a completely democratic unit.
While Sathima doesn’t perform or interact much with other women in jazz,
her approach to jazz is clearly as a woman. In this regard, she embraces the
ideas traditionally associated with the Otherness of women—the spontane-
ous, intuitive, spiritual, and loving—and claims them as a core part of her
personal strength, her voice in jazz, and her place in the world at large. It is
a way of being that often brings her into conflict with those who seek out a
more systematic and rational approach to life.
I am a complete romantic, jazz rules my life, and I live intuitively.
While living intuitively has cost her in personal ways, musically speaking,
intuition and spontaneity have become the cornerstones of how she hears
herself as a singer:
The older I get and the more I care about integrity, the more resonance I
hear in my voice. I have turned into an artist. I am not just a singer. There
are times when there is a lot of suffering going on in my soul, and I am not
singing. I have to take care of the things with my family that you couldn’t pay
anyone for because no one would do it for money. It seems like such a life of
self-sacrifice sometimes. I suppose every experience is thrown at you and you
are supposed to run through that, and you get your heart squeezed. The next
time I sing it will sound different. If I get squeezed too much, though, that will
be the end of my art. But these are the times that I want to bring something
musically new again. And it doesn’t mean standing in front of an audience, it
just means spending a couple of hours in a studio with me. That is the happiest.
Those are the time[s] I don’t feel like being visible as a physical person, because
they are not going to see my soul. I am an unconditional lover.8 The music has
never let me down. What I get out of this is I get love back.
Remember, I am an interpretive singer. I love working with sound, its subtle-
ties and nuances. I have a natural gift much like Billie Holiday’s approach. I urge
musicians to feel free within a format. There is so much freedom and space within
the music: you have to weave your voice in and out. Listen to what is happening
and breathe your own thing into it. I heard Abdullah tell someone once that I
am a renaissance woman. The jazz musicians will say, well you know, Sathima
you have got to pay your dues. This jazz music that you do with your whole self,
it is about total surrender to yourself. This is what its about: total surrender to
the beauty inside so that you can bring it out. Ben Riley once said that you can’t
have too many people loving jazz because it’s a very improvised way of looking at
things: it makes you think for yourself, to be very free. If people aren’t ready, you
can have all the freedom in the world, but you have to be able to handle it. You
have to listen with your heart. If your heart’s open everything will tingle, that’s
why you hear the resonance in my voice. Some people will never hear it.
Sathima adds to her list of processes that define her musicianship: in-
tuition, spontaneity, and inspiration (i.e., coming from the heart, in the
moment, and without the mediation of music-writing).
I am just an inspirational composer, I don’t sit down at a piano and say, I
am going to write a piece. It just comes, and sometimes it doesn’t come for a
long time. I don’t write down my own music. When I have a song, I have to
ask somebody to write that down and you go through that whole process. But
I think if I learnt to write, I would be interfering with my antennae and I don’t
want to do that. I gravitate to musicians like drummer Billy Higgins because
he can hear subtleties and nuances, and he can help you punctuate them. It’s
wonderful to have someone like that in your orbit. And he’s paid his dues.
How do I compose? I find that when I am walking through the streets and it’s
crowded, I get a lot of things because people impact on you. I don’t have to walk
down a lonely country road. It works for me to take long walks, even a subway
ride. When I am standing on the platform waiting for a train, nobody can hear
me singing. If I want to try something out, I try it out there and nobody hears it.
Remember, Carol, when my children were young I used to take them to school—for
almost ten years I did this every day during the school year. I had to go by subway
or by bus, but always chose the subways to take them there, and then I would
walk back at least a mile and a half each day, early in the morning. There were
never many people about, so you are fresh, and then lots of things come to you.
My music is about essence and feeling. Betty Carter was very much like that
too—I don’t know about Abbey Lincoln. I can’t write the feeling in the music
down. The musicians, when they look at it, and they start dissecting it, and say
“Oh my goodness!” Even my husband will say to me, “This is a really expensive
song, Sathima.” It’s very difficult because I get impatient if I have to take some-
one on a gig when I can’t get the real guys, and they can’t play my music. And
I say, “But it’s so simple” and my husband says, “It’s not so simple. Besides the
feeling, what is required technically is not that simple.”
It’s hard to explain how I write my music. The only way I can is to say that
you have your antennae ready and they have to be clean. They have to be like
laser beams so they attract—it’s like what I call a lovelight. In the windsong,
there’s a lovelight. I don’t have any control, I am just a channel of the music from
the Creator. The antennae are actually inside. They have to be inside and then
it comes. I think we are dealing with something that is very divine, that’s not
something that you can study. I don’t know when a song will come. I just keep
living my life until the Creator sends me something. So my heart must be clean.
People have ideas about singers, that they should be pretty and stand there
looking great. That is an approach that people have come to expect, and I am
not trying to be openly defiant, but I don’t think it’s necessary. I try to look less
dramatic in the way I dress: I don’t want people to come to see how I look. I
really am very shy. Singing has helped me to overcome shyness.
People ask me about my sense of timing. The musicians ask about where
in the measure they should come in. With me it is just between beat one and
two, they count and so want to know exactly, but I can’t tell them. Everything
I do is completely intuitive. When I sing, I imagine myself dancing, and bass
player Buster Williams, he knows just how to dance with me. The way you turn
a corner in ballroom dancing—that is how his playing feels to me. I did a lot
of ballroom dancing when I was young. I think that’s got a lot to do with my
sense of timing. Somewhere between one and two, before we get to that two I
am going to be sliding in there.9
When I sing the words of a song, for me it’s a story being told with the lyrics
and the sound. It’s a story you are telling. Everything has to make sense. I don’t
suddenly just sing a song. I will figure out what the story is here. That impacts
on where I am going to put the accents and which word is more important in
the line. Every song is a story. You might wonder, how on earth did you get this
gift of storytelling in song? It comes to me when I am meditating in motion. I
think about songs when I am walking in streets here amidst all kinds of people.
I do not retire to some place and say, “OK, I am gonna write a song.” It’s not
about that. It’s very divine and inspirational.
intuition, caring, respect, love, and beauty, though she doesn’t restrict these
attributes to women. These are the qualities she looks for in the male musi-
cians she invites to perform with her. She creates space in the musical fabric
for each to express himself by performing feminine qualities; she urges them
to embrace the freedom she offers to find the softer sides of their musical
selves, and even to flirt a little in the moment of performance.
The depth of emotion Sathima feels toward the music parallels the passion
evoked when a woman falls in love with a man. In her ensembles music-making
is sensual in the moment of performance but never spills over into after-hours
sexual pleasure. Of course, reaching the state of perfect union in the moment
of performance is challenging: nothing comes easily; everything requires a
level of struggle and the strength and courage to survive the difficulty. But once
Sathima and her musicians have overcome the difficulties creating the charts
for the sounds she hears; after she has convinced her musicians to listen closely
to each other and to uncover the beauty inside themselves; and when they are
in tune with each other musically and emotionally, they are able to make the
most thrilling music together. At the end of an evening of live performance or
a session in the studio, there is in Sathima’s mind, a feeling of having reached
a climactic moment of pure joy, akin to the momentary ecstasy that many
experience when they have “fallen in love” or felt the pangs of romance.
Sathima’s stress upon the feminine dimensions she expects her musicians
to embody is juxtaposed with the more masculine elements of risk-taking that
jazz improvisation and performance characteristically requires. In this sense,
for Sathima jazz constitutes a place for exploring, even performing a mixed
or yin and yang gendered self—its masculine and feminine dimensions. She
would argue that her kind of music-making enables men to explore parts of
themselves they would never dare to if they were in exclusively male ensem-
bles. As such, Sathima’s ensemble style provides a powerful counternarrative
to the discourses of masculinity in jazz articulated in the autobiographies of
some male musicians.
Hazel Carby, for example, characterizes Miles Davis’s book Miles: The Au-
tobiography (1990), in ways that overlap with, and diverge significantly from
Sathima’s story. At eighteen Davis travels to New York City from his home
in Texas because, like Sathima, he believes New York City to be the center of
jazz performance in the United States. He arrives there to explore the freedom
that a major urban area like New York provides. Unlike Sathima, however,
Carby argues that Davis’s “concept of freedom remains limited to the misogy-
nistic world of jazz, and it manifests itself principally in the musical relations
among the male instrumentalists with whom he worked” (Carby 1998, 136).
Davis’s ideas of freedom include breaking loose from the confinement that
women create for men, and he insists on the freedom to operate in a world
defined by male creativity (ibid., 138). This is a world in which men and not
mothers are his mentors and nurturers, and his lineage in jazz is a patrilineal
one. Carby goes so far as to suggest that Davis thought of women, including
his mother, as obstacles to his growth as a musician. His relationships with
his first wife and child, and subsequent wives, are all tinged with a taste of
disgust. For Davis, when his life with women thrives, the music goes badly.
When the music is good, the way with women is rough (ibid., 141). Men are
his resource for creativity, nurturance, and stimulation; women “exist to be
exploited and to service his bodily needs” (ibid., 143).
Davis hears in one of his first experiences of live jazz performances in
1944, an intensity of emotion and passion that he likens to desire in a sexual
relationship. While Sathima doesn’t go quite this far in her description of the
unity constituted in performance with her trio it is tempting to read that into
her words. Nevertheless, Sathima’s goals in performance are sensual more
than sexual; possibly even maternal: she creates a musical space for her trio
that she hopes will set them free, to find the vulnerable, feminine dimensions
of their maleness. In return, she demands that they listen to her, enable her to
perform her music by coming to understand her sense of timing, her intona-
tion, and, indeed, to come to know something of her past from a place that
is literally worlds away from theirs. This is not a position achieved without
risk, pain, and struggle, but it is a place she hopes will ultimately produce
real love, deep joy, and beautiful music.
In sum, Sathima is a woman in jazz who lives intuitively, with her heart,
mind, and eyes open to new ways of doing old songs. She breathes life into
songs from almost a century ago that intervene in the present as living wit-
nesses to a past that cannot be simply forgotten. Each new rendition of a tune
from turn-of-the-century British music hall, an early Hollywood musical, or
a Strayhorn or Ellington composition, serves to remind its listeners of the
fragments of a past many never knew. In return, it is Sathima’s dream that
one day jazz consumers in both of her home countries—the United States and
South Africa—will finally find it in themselves to hear the emotive depth or
beauty in her voice, to allow themselves to be decentered by the vocal pres-
ence nested inside the intricate lines of her trio, to come to know her story,
and to relish the echoes of music in the voices of jazz men and women from
the old and new African diasporas, echoes that crisscrossed the Atlantic
Ocean many times in the twentieth century and continue to circulate back
and forth in the twenty-first century.
Notes
1. See Muller and Benjamin (2011) for further discussion of issues of “mixed” racial
heritage.
References
Carby, Hazel. 1998. Race Men. Boston: Harvard University Press.
Davis, Miles. 1990. Miles: The Autobiography, with Quincy Troupe. New York: Simon
and Shuster.
Kofsky, Frank. 1970. Black Nationalism and the Revolution in Music. New York: Pathfinder.
Langford, Wendy. 1999. Revolutions of the Heart: Gender, Power, and the Delusions of
Love. London: Routledge.
Muller, Carol, and Sathima Bea Benjamin. 2011. Musical Echoes: South African Women
Thinking in Jazz, with compact disc. Durham: Duke University Press.
Nakedi, Ribane. 2006. Beauty: A Black Perspective. Pietermartzburg: UKZN Press.
Nuttall, Sarah, ed. 2007. Beautiful/Ugly. African and Diaspora Aesthetics. Durham: Duke
University Press.
Serematakis, Nadia. 1996. “The Memory of the Senses, Parts I and II.” In The Senses Still:
Perception and Memory as Material Culture in Modernity. Chicago: University of Chi-
cago Press, 1–44.
Wolf, Margery. 1992. A Thrice-Told Tale: Feminism, Post-Modernism, and Ethnographic
Responsibility. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Discography
Benjamin, Sathima Bea. 1997. A Morning in Paris. Munich: Enja Records, ENJ-9309 2.
———. 2006. Musical Echoes. New York: Ekapa (U.S.), Ekapa 004.
In a village near the Caspian Sea coast in the northern Iranian province of
Mazanderan, a group of old friends gathers in a private home. These friends
are mostly middle-aged, with adolescent and adult children. They share news,
reminisce, joke, and discuss current issues over kebabs grilled in the yard, with
glasses that are constantly refilled. After eating, the host, Ahmad Mohsenpour,
picks up his kamanche (a four-stringed spike fiddle), and one of the guests,
Sima Shokrani, picks up her tombak (a goblet drum). The talk is soon hushed
by the rich tones of Sima’s singing voice. Her voice’s low register, sustained
notes, and improvised ornamentation shift between heartache and a grace-
ful, knowing pleasure. Sima and Mohsenpour improvise on old Mazanderani
songs that evoke longing, pleasure, and humor. The lyrics recount tales of
love and separation, courage and hard work. These tales are set in the lush
Mazanderani landscape and contain multiple layers of meaning, which ad-
dress political, social, or spiritual matters, past and current, as well as other
areas of local knowledge. As Sima sings into the night, her friends clap, click
their fingers, occasionally sing along, and contribute calls of pleasure and
encouragement between songs.2
Performance Contexts
Sima’s life and musical choices reflect her personal history and her roles and
positions in Iran’s changing society. When she was twenty-one, in Febru-
ary 1979, Iran underwent its most significant modern turning point as its
monarchy was overthrown and the Islamic Republic was established. Before
and after the 1979 revolution, Sima continued singing through various con-
straints. These include a prerevolutionary prejudice against regional music
and a postrevolutionary law against solo female singing in the company of
unrelated men. Sima negotiates performance possibilities that both reflect
and shape intersecting aspects of her identity as an accomplished and creative
singer, a musical collaborator, a Mazanderani, an Iranian citizen, a woman,
presumption has persisted that the more traditional the context, the more
extreme the restrictions. As Holly Randell-Moon suggests, “Because a moral
and cultural superiority is ascribed to Western democracies on the basis of
women’s rights as fully realised, the negation of women’s rights is presented as
only occurring outside of Western democracies” (2007, 21). By contrast, Sima
sees a range of restrictions on the musical choices of women in Western-
ized pop industries, especially singers. For her, even in Iran, with its unique
limitations, the boundaries of traditional music are more easily and more
interestingly pushed than those of Westernized pop singing. For example,
the tradition of improvisation enables experimentation, and the traditional
emphasis on vocal sound and feeling (rather than visual representations,
catchy melodies, and regular or dance rhythms) allows the singer to focus
on her voice and her emotions. Sima grew up in an Iran where popular no-
tions of womanhood were shaped by the sounds and images of Googoosh,
among others. These notions of womanhood intersected with ideas around
emotion, beauty, vulnerability, and class. Sima’s voice—her improvising seda
and her neda, the call she puts out to other women wishing to push boundar-
ies—responds to restrictive dominant notions by reorganizing perceptions of
feminine emotion, beauty, and strength. The woman evoked both by Sima’s
singing voice and the repertoires she chooses is one who feels deeply and
suffers, but also one who resists and overcomes her own suffering, along
with that of others.
while also enabling her to maintain her taste for Mazanderani music. The
latter remained difficult throughout her high school years. She enrolled at a
private singing school in her home town of Sari but left after a few lessons,
when her teacher demanded she give up her Mazanderani songs and sing
only Persian pieces. In her adolescence, Sima’s musical choices—to submit
to her father’s advice against singing pop songs in public and to defy the Sari
singing teacher’s advice against singing traditional Mazanderani pieces—
consolidated the negotiation of her Mazanderani identity that had begun
in childhood. They also initiated her life of negotiation as a woman singer.
As a teenager, Sima determined to work only in equitable conditions, where
collaboration was pleasurable for all concerned.
piece is individual, unlike the black chador. In casual contexts, Sima prefers
the comfort of a Western-style T-shirt and trousers, while at the same time
supporting the Revolution’s rejection of more general cultural Westerniza-
tion, especially in the area of music.
For Sima, the revolution and subsequent extreme political and sociocul-
tural change brought both opportunities and restrictions. Finally, traditional
and regional music had become more popularly acceptable than pop music as
the country celebrated its new cultural independence from the United States
and Europe. Initially, Sima also found a renewed respect for women and an
end to the unethical gender relations that she believed had sustained the pop
industry. She had observed that, before the revolution, many young women
who recorded pop songs were pressured by their managers and producers
to alter their personal appearance and/or to become involved in sexual re-
lationships. Most pop music producers left Iran soon after the revolution. It
was no longer possible for them to carry on their work in Iran because of the
Islamic government’s new laws against most forms of music. In 1980, Iran’s
postrevolutionary euphoria came to an abrupt end with the beginning of the
Iran-Iraq War. Sima completed her university studies and she and her hus-
band returned to Sari, where she gave birth to two daughters during the war.
The war continued until 1988, with devastating effects for both Iran and Iraq.
For Sima personally, these years were taken up with motherhood. Her prin-
cipal singing activity during the 1980s was improvising on lullabies. Singing
for pleasure or entertainment was considered unseemly by the government
and many Iranians during the war. Casualties were very high, and the form
of singing heard most frequently in public spaces was the melodic mourning
performed by male cantors or Islamic reciters as they commemorated the
lives of the hundreds of thousands of boys and men killed at war.
the fields or at a weaving loom, but she chooses to sing work songs in solidarity
with those who are obliged to do such work. Of course, most songs performed
at concerts or recorded and disseminated may be seen as decontextualized in
some way.
While Sima’s Mazanderani repertoire remains the most important in all
her singing contexts, she has also begun to sing Persian art music since 2005.
In 2009 she began to teach Mazanderani singing at Sari’s House of Culture.
Here, she takes great pleasure in the positive atmosphere, which contrasts
starkly with her own childhood memories of singing lessons. She is pleased
that girls and boys now work together in the classroom and learn to respect
each other. Since childhood, Sima has been aware of the potential implica-
tions of musical encounter and difference, including the effects of notions of
gender and ethnicity. Philip Bohlman provides a helpful analysis of these im-
plications, suggesting that “even more than language, music is the key to un-
derstanding and to the power that will turn initial encounter into prolonged
dominance” (2003, 46–47). The power of music, as outlined by Bohlman,
played and plays significant roles in the varieties of “prolonged dominance”
in Sima’s world, including the dominance of notions of Persianness and that
of restrictive notions of masculinity and femininity. Sima’s consciousness of
and resistance to such dominance has remained with her. This conscious-
ness entails a knowledge that neither the Persian and the Mazanderani, nor
the masculine and the feminine, represent binaries. For centuries, there has
been interaction in musical and other areas, resulting in considerable overlap
and constant change. When I ask Sima about the future for Mazanderani
music, she sighs and says that, as in other countries, most young Iranians
are more attracted to popular music than to traditional music. However, she
remains hopeful, especially as Mazanderani music is very well established.
Young and old continue to enjoy it, some young students are discovering it
for the first time, and more accomplished musicians play it in innovative
ways. Although Sima continues to perform, she sees her most significant
future role as a facilitator of women’s singing in Mazanderan. She does this
especially through her teaching and also by organizing gatherings at which
women are encouraged to sing.
The effects of postrevolutionary laws around music varied in different
regions of Iran and in individual circumstances. In general, as outlined by
Ameneh Youssefzadeh, restrictions immediately after the revolution and
during the war were extreme, but they softened after the Revolution’s leader
Ayatollah Khomeini died in 1989 and “music slowly crept back into the broad-
cast programs and concert life of the Islamic Republic” (2005, 4325). In Sima’s
case, the main ongoing restriction is that when she performs in public in Iran,
With its praise of a red face, red eyes, and a tired body, this song rearranges
conventional notions of feminine desirability and beauty. While the imagery
of Westernized popular music generally promotes the aesthetics of wide, clear
eyes, and a pampered, fit body—especially for women—this song represents
beauty as the effect of the working woman’s devotion, strength, and love. It
articulates an appreciation of those women whose bodies show the effects of
a life fully lived, in all its beauty and brutality. As she sings this song, Sima’s
voice deepens and its volume and pace increase, reflecting the struggle of
a working life. The song’s melody and rhythms, especially toward the end,
reflect the repetitive and tiring motions of weaving, provoking empathy with
the working woman. Another piece in Sima’s repertoire includes these lines:
The dog is tied up - My love, come over tonight
My grandmother is quiet - My love, come over tonight
My little brother is asleep - My love, come over tonight
My big brother is out with his friends - My love, come over tonight
Our rice is cooking - My love, come over tonight . . .
Your fiancé/e is the one reclining against the wall - My love, come over
tonight.7
would find this a little subversive because the most common and “respect-
able” pieces with the theme of desire tend to have male narrators and sing-
ers. On hearing an officially approved recording of Sima and the ensemble
performing this song, a colleague who researches music in another Iranian
province suggested to me that such a performance would be unlikely to be
granted permission there, mainly because the two women’s individual voices
are clearly audible. Thus, it seems that Sima and her colleagues in Sari have
successfully negotiated a relatively open musical environment in Mazanderan.
In his discussion of music and identity, Simon Frith suggests that music
“articulates in itself an understanding of both group relations and individual-
ity” (1996, 111).8 Sima’s musical life and the voices she has adopted represent a
rich example of such articulation. As with her singing, her life story is singular
but carries collective significance at every turn. Sima’s persistence with the
hard work and the pleasure of singing, in the face of recurring obstacles,
brings to mind novelist Shahrnush Parsipur’s comment that “inevitably Ira-
nian women have arisen” (2007). Singing has been crucial to Sima’s capacity
to “arise.” As an Iranian woman, a Mazanderani granddaughter and mother,
an artist, friend, and teacher, Sima negotiates her identities and repertoires
with optimism, humor, generosity, and love. To reiterate Martin Stokes’s no-
tion, her singing voice “reorganises and manipulates everyday experiences of
social reality, blurs, elides, ironises and sometimes subverts commonsense
categories and markers” (2004, 101). Sima’s particular modes of reorganiza-
tion have adapted to exceptional historical circumstances and continue to
inspire diverse musical communities.
Acknowledgments
Many thanks to the inspiring Sima and her husband Mr. Mazaheri for their
generosity and warmth, and to the indefatigable Ahmad Mohsenpour and
his family. Without the guidance, translation, and support of Sasan Fatemi,
this research would not have been possible. I am grateful to Rezvan Khad
jekan Ghalleh and the Mokhtabad family, who helped introduce me to Ma-
zanderani music, and to Veronica Doubleday for putting us in touch and
for her encouragement. Thanks also to Margaret Kartomi and the Monash
University School of Music–Conservatorium for support.
Notes
1. Translated from the original Tabari, Sima’s first language, by Sasan Fatemi and author.
2. Most of the information in this essay is based on my participation in such gatherings
and on my interviews with Sima, conducted from 2006 to 2010. I am grateful to Sasan
Fatemi for introducing me to Sima and assisting with all aspects of my fieldwork.
References
Abrahamian, Ervand. 2008. A History of Modern Iran. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Ansari, Ali M. 2007. Modern Iran: The Pahlavis and After, 2nd ed. Harlow, U.K.: Pearson.
Bohlman, Philip V. 2003. “Music and Culture: Historiographies of Disjuncture.” In The
Cultural Study of Music: A Critical Introduction, eds. Martin Clayton, Trevor Herbert,
and Richard Middleton, 45–56. London: Routledge.
Doubleday, Veronica. 1988. Three Women of Herat. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Doubleday, Veronica, and John Baily. 1995. “Patterns of Musical Development among
Children in Afghanistan.” In Children in the Muslim Middle East, ed. Elizabeth Warnock
Fernea, 431–44. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Emami, Karim. 2007. Farhang Moaser Kimia Persian-English Dictionary. Tehran: Farhang
Moaser Publishers.
Fatemi, Sasan. 1997. La Musique et la Vie du Mazandaran: Le Probléme du Changement,
unpublished thesis, Mémoire de maîtrise en ethnologie, University of Paris X, Nanterre.
———. 2002. Musiqi va Zendegi-ye Musiqâyi dar Mâzandarân: Mas’ale-ye Taqyirât. Teh-
ran: Mahoor.
Feld, Steven, and Aaron Fox. 2000. “Voice.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 9(1–2):159–
62.
Frith, Simon. 1996. “Music and Identity.” In Questions of Cultural Identity, eds. Stuart Hall
and Paul du Gay, 108–27. London: Sage.
Kashani-Sabet, Firoozeh. 2002. “Cultures of Iranianness: The Evolving Polemic of Ira-
nian Nationalism.” In Iran and the Surrounding World: Interactions in Culture and
Cultural Politics, eds. Nikki R. Keddie and Rudi Matthee, 162–81. Seattle: University
of Washington Press.
Koskoff, Ellen. 1989. “The Sound of a Woman’s Voice: Gender and Music in a New York
Hasidic Community.” In Women and Music in Cross-Cultural Perspective, ed. Ellen
Koskoff, 213–23. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Magrini, Tullia, ed. 2003. Music and Gender: Perspectives from the Mediterranean. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
O’Shea, Helen. 2008. “‘Good Man, Mary!’ Women Musicians and the Fraternity of Irish
Traditional Music.” Journal of Gender Studies 17(1):55–70.
Parsipur, Shahrnush, interviewed by Mohammed Al-Urdun. June 19, 2007. “Iran’s literary
ing in the company of women. In Kabul she would meet members of a pre-
dominantly male musical community focused around two locations: Kucheh
Kharabat, the hereditary musician quarter in the old city, with its esteemed
ustads (master musicians), and Radio Afghanistan, with its hub of men and
women singers and male instrumentalists, composers, and arrangers (many
from the Kharabat) all working to create a new popular radio style.2 But it
seems that she was most in awe of her female counterparts, the radio stars
whose songs and names she already knew. Her nephew Amir accompanied
her to the radio station, reporting that she asked, “With Rokhshana and
Parwana and Jila and Mahwash there, how can I sing?” Very likely she felt
her abilities and performance would be measured against them.
The recordings went well, and the ustads and singers were impressed by
her, praising her as a true artist and singer.3 Madadi remembers the occasion
too, saying she was “very quick and good” and “so in tune.”4 She recorded
five songs,5 among them her famous chaharbeiti lament, “Shirin Dokhtar-e
Maldar” (“Sweet nomad girl”). Chaharbeiti is a plaintive and ancient style
of sung folk poetry, performed in a free rhythm,6 and this piece received
particular praise, being commended as totally authentic and original. Ma-
dadi subsequently took it into his own vocal repertoire, and in the light of
its reception in Kabul this became Zainab’s most prized song.7
Madadi offered contracts for work at Radio Afghanistan to Zainab and
a few other selected singers. She was honored but did not accept. Her hus-
band opposed the move, and she told me that in any case she was not fond
of Kabul—it was “dirty and crowded.” Besides, she felt she had too many
children to take on such a formal commitment. Not long afterward another
professional opportunity came: a German radio team offered her a generous
fee to go to Kabul and make further recordings. But Zainab was in the late
stages of a pregnancy and felt unable to travel. In 1973, when I arrived for
my first year’s residence in Herat, Zainab was generally hailed as “the best
woman singer of Herat,” but she had not managed to capitalize on several
career opportunities.
Several obstacles thwarted and impeded her progress. In general terms
these related to gender, religion, and family. Another important disadvantage
was her birth in a geographical location far from the capital city. Working at
Radio Afghanistan would have greatly extended her musical development,
but Madadi told me she made a sound decision because the Radio Afghani-
stan salary was small, and she was making a good income at Herati weddings.
In reality Zainab did not have the resources to stay in Kabul—and she had no
family or connections there. Also, had she stayed, stardom was by no means
assured. As Madadi pointed out to me, a female singer’s fame depended on
other aesthetic criteria beyond vocal ability. “Zainab was not too beautiful,”
he said, noting that “unfortunately, the Afghan public like to hear singers who
are beautiful.” Even for radio singers, this aesthetic discrimination applied.8
Besides this, other aspects of her social background served to undermine
her prospects for national fame.
Doubleday and Baily 1995, 440). Baghban’s assessment of the related tradition
of Jat buffoonery broadly supports my conclusions, stressing two main ideas:
learning from a young age and learning from a skilled elder (1977, 59).18
Singers like Zainab grew into confident performers, but they had no theo-
retical understanding of their craft. In terms of musical apprenticeship and
training, there are interesting parallels with sazandeh traditions in neighbor-
ing Bukhara, in Uzbekistan. Theodore Levin notes that the musical culture
of Herat “shares many features with that of Bukhara” (1996, 300 n.31), and
he quotes a venerable Bukharan musician Tohfaxan (born around 1928) de-
scribing her apprenticeship: “Older sâzandas took me on as a pupil. They’d
be going to a wedding and they’d say, ‘Come with us.’ And I went. They didn’t
teach me. I just watched them dance and absorbed what they did” (ibid., 119).
Across a broad cultural area extending well beyond Afghanistan’s borders,
entertainment singers and performers learned in this way, inheriting pro-
fessional expertise through long hours of musical exposure. The apparent
emphasis on apprentices learning to dance is interesting and similar to the
situation in Herat, where young band members developed a song-and-dance
act as their first performance piece.
As a young apprentice, initially Zainab simply watched and listened, run-
ning errands and minding the older band members’ children as necessary,
but before long she was allowed to sing. Fledgling band members were en-
couraged to display their talent as early as possible, and Zainab was naturally
extrovert. Speaking of those early days, she described herself as uninhibited,
comic, cheeky, and outward-going. She was a natural entertainer and good
at making the guests dance. She used to do comic naughty dances herself,
thrusting her bottom from one side to the other, and she also amused her au-
dience with vocal imitations of instruments.19 Sometimes the women laughed
so much they told her to stop.
Usually held in the lavishly decorated courtyard of a large house, the wom-
en’s parties lasted almost twenty-four hours and required considerable vocal
and physical stamina. Musically, the women’s bands imitated the sound of
male urban Afghan music in their use of the hand-pumped portable Indian
harmonium and tabla (North Indian drum pair), to which they added one
or two frame drums (daireh) as the rhythmic backbone of Afghan women’s
music. All the band members sang, providing a varied repertoire of popular
and ritual songs (figure 10.1).
The atmosphere was crowded and chaotic, with children running around
and a lot of noise. Musical precision was not emphasized. Hosting a family
event, Zainab’s female employers required a vibrant atmosphere and plenty
of dance music. The numerous guests wanted to chat, admire one another’s
Figure 10.1. Zainab Herawi (on the right, in a white headscarf) with her band,
taking a break at a wedding party, Herat city, April 1977. Photograph by Veronica
Doubleday.
colorful new dresses, listen to a bit of singing, watch some lively dancing,
and make detailed mental notes about the relative expense and grandeur of
the occasion. In such settings they were easily distracted and not particularly
discriminating listeners. As city dwellers they were alert to new fashions,
and they might request the latest radio songs, so new musical material was
always coming into the repertoire. Zainab developed an excellent ear. As a
mature musician she was able to learn new songs very quickly by listening to
the radio, to recordings, or to other performers she might hear. These skills
would have served her well in radio work.
Zainab had no interest in musical terminology, abstraction, or theory, and
no command of the standard terms for rhythms or modes employed by male
professional musicians. Her male professional counterparts did not share their
specialist knowledge with their female sazandeh relatives: in an intensely com-
petitive male musical hierarchy, they were presumably keen to retain a position
of authority and superiority over them.20 When I asked Zainab about technical
terms, she dismissed such talk as “a matter for the ustads.” She did not want
to play the men’s game of intellectual one-upmanship and apparently had no
use for their jargon. This closed intellectual mindset left her ill-prepared for
potential activities at Radio Afghanistan. Recording her own songs was one
matter; following the demands of music directors might be quite another.
218–22, Doubleday 2000, 815). Many Herati men held a general conception
that Zainab’s female musician milieu was implicated in sex work. This was
certainly not true of Zainab and her family, but she was vulnerable to spiteful
or misinformed rumors and accusations. In general, the image of women per-
formers in Islamic cultures has long been problematic, especially for dancers,
because dance places its central focus on the body and Zainab’s disapproval
of the theatrical women relates to this.23
But in Afghanistan and other Islamic societies women singers are strongly
implicated in issues relating to personal allure. Codes about female veiling
and seclusion heighten public interest in a woman’s face and body and in
the erotic power of the voice. Added to this is the dominance of romantic
themes in song lyrics.24 To achieve success, a woman Afghan singer needs to
harness more or less all these alluring qualities, but in so doing she attracts
disapproval and censure. Strictly speaking, it is not necessary to have a really
beautiful face: a singer may create this allure through the sensuous qualities
of her voice and her ability to infuse the lyrics with heartfelt meaning. In
Zainab’s case, her wedding audiences were female—or primarily female—
and the few men that attended were normally respectful, keeping their eyes
fairly downcast. Accordingly, the erotic content of the vocal repertoire was
not a cause for shame or embarrassment: it was not as though Zainab was
singing about love while maintaining eye contact with a male patron, thereby
arousing sexual desire, as in the courtesan traditions of North India.
According to Afghan aesthetics, a woman singer needs to dress glamor-
ously, with glittering clothes and fashionable makeup and jewelry (even if the
clothing is modestly long and loose). For their audiocassette covers, Kabuli
women radio stars tended to cultivate elaborate hairstyles and exaggerated
makeup, influenced by the image of Hindi film stars. Artificial coiffures and
heavy makeup are also standard features of an Afghan bride’s appearance on
her wedding day.25 But Zainab was rather diffident about self-adornment.
By the time I knew her she was already a mother of eight, and she normally
dressed for weddings in a relatively quiet style, although the other band
members compensated with boldly colored eyelids and shining lip gloss.
Zainab’s perceived unpolished appearance detracted from her commercial
success in Herat. Wealthy female clients wanted glamour, and some were
more concerned about visual impressions than musical standards. Young
elegant dancers were a great attraction, and the most successful musicians
invested in flashy gold jewelry and rich dresses. The need for good looks—a
pretty face and lithe, sexually appealing body—in a singer is hardly confined
to Afghanistan and has frequently been discussed and documented in other
cultural contexts (e.g., see Koskoff 1989; Kimberlin 1990).
extra rewards or money. Overall, her voice commanded attention, and was
assertive rather than modest.
However, for all her brazenness at weddings, Zainab was wary of gaining
too much public exposure. In 1977 a Herati music shopkeeper invited her to
make some commercial recordings, but she refused. Probably the financial
offer was not particularly enticing, but other factors came into play. “What do
I want with a cassette with my photo on it?” she asked me. The photo seemed
to be a real issue. Herati veiling involves the action of covering the face with
the burqa—it is called “ru gereftan” (to “take” or cover the face)—and the
act of publicly revealing her face apparently concerned her. One wonders
how might she have projected herself? She had no truck with eye makeup
and contrived hairstyles, and in company always wore a loose head covering
over her hair. Perhaps she thought: why should I reveal my face anyway?
Belief in the evil eye is widespread in Afghanistan: it is thought that an
admiring gaze may inadvertently damage or destroy the object of admiration,
and I think in this instance Zainab was wary about attracting the destructive
impact of an evil eye. Added to this, she felt beleaguered by the presence of
so many rival women musicians around her, all vying for work. “They’re all
jealous of my success, and they want to steal my patrons,” she told me. She
was comfortable in all-women or family contexts, but her sense of Islamic
modesty made her nervous about launching herself into the world. It is not
surprising that the prospect of living and working in the unfamiliar liberal
atmosphere of Kabul did not appeal.
Family Constraints
Many factors deterred Zainab from accepting the Radio Afghanistan offer:
concerns about Islamic modesty and public exposure as a woman; distrust
of the libertarian values of Kabul, and perhaps fear of prejudice against Jats
in an unfamiliar environment. But financial concerns were probably para-
mount. Zainab was the main breadwinner of the family. Her barber husband
earned rather small daily sums of money—just enough to pay for some gro-
ceries—but he insisted on relative comfort and luxury. Over the years, he
was a serious drain on her financial resources. In particular he entangled
her in a hard legal battle, by tricking her into accepting a co-wife in a deal
involving the marriage of their eldest daughter. The arrangement misfired
and the daughter was whisked away to a remote village, barred from contact
and unavailable for work. Zainab spent large sums of money on legal fees
before finally managing to regain her much-loved and much-needed band
member.28 Hard-won earnings were wasted and Zainab was forced to sell all
her gold jewelry. Among Afghan women gold is a great indicator of prestige,
and the loss of this diminished her public image. Not only was Zainab short
on gold and glamorous clothes, she could not even afford good instruments.
Her tabla drums were often in poor repair, and for a time her harmonium
had several notes that stuck. By contrast, one of her rivals had a loudspeaker
system for the band—a great attraction for clients.
Physical constraints also loomed large with regard to Zainab’s career pros-
pects. She was a fertile woman unable to control the size of her young family.
“I’m unlucky,” she told me. “I conceive even when I’m still breastfeeding. I
get pregnant every two years.” Many Afghan women breast-feed their babies
for a good two years: breast-feeding often delays the return of menstruation,
thereby offering a natural form of contraception. This was not the case for
Zainab, who quickly became pregnant again. When I met her, one of the
first things she asked me was whether I could give her contraceptive pills.
Motherhood was sapping her energy and financial resources. Her breasts
sagged and her abdomen was distended by many pregnancies, causing her
to lose interest in self-adornment and glamour.
Another family constraint hampered Zainab’s career. Band membership
was based on family connections, and Zainab’s kinship network was limited.
Figure 10.2. Zainab Herawi with her daughter Anar Gol and one of her sons,
relaxing at a social gathering with music, Herat city, May 1977. Photograph by
Veronica Doubleday.
“It would have been good if I’d had lots of daughters!” she said to me. By
the mid-1970s she had two daughters working, but the younger one was still
only a promising apprentice. Her other two band members lacked vocal
talent, but she had no other relatives to recruit. In 1972, when she recorded
some pieces for Lorraine Sakata, she used male accompanists: her nephew
on goblet drum (zirbaghali), and Sakata’s teacher, Ghulam Haidar, on dutar
(Sakata 2002 [1983], 129–32 and 144–45). Zainab obviously appreciated the
precision of polished male accompanists, but the all-women context of her
normal work precluded such collaborations.
By this point, the one person who inspired Zainab had died—Sabo, her
mother-in-law. She had no one to help her develop her career. If you look at
any successful Afghan woman star, you’ll find a male sponsor has worked
to support her. This is true of Afghanistan’s most famous woman singer, Us-
tad Mahwash, who now lives in exile in California and enjoys international
fame. Her husband is a music-lover and a good businessman who strongly
promoted her career.29
Dreams of Fame
Despite her apparent diffidence, Zainab still entertained faint dreams of
greater fame. One day, when I was visiting, she fantasized that when I went
back to England maybe (through me) someone would invite her to come
and make some recordings. She would take her husband and elder daughter
with her, she said. Then, in the next breath, she said she did not know when
she would go to Kabul to record more songs on the radio. She planned to
sing more of the traditional folk material that people like Madadi had ap-
preciated so much.
But she had lost her opportunity, and events took over. With the Marxist
coup d’etat of 1978, the onset of civil unrest in Herat affected all musicians,
making working conditions dangerous. Women musicians were especially
vulnerable to criticism and harassment from Islamist factions. At the same
time, under communist rule, music flourished in Kabul, and another Herati
girl did go there and became a national star. Setara (meaning “star”) was an
actress, singer, and dancer from the local theater. Her singing was not es-
pecially distinguished: it was her pretty face, tender smiles, slim figure, and
delicate, precise, and understated dancing that made her famous. Around
1980, when television transmissions began, this sweet-faced girl made her
name with a signature song: “Man dokhtar-e Heratam” (“I’m a Herati girl”).
Footage exists of her performing this song on Afghan television. She stands
demurely dressed with a cap and filmy veil, sequins pasted on her brow, in
front of a semicircle of seated musicians who are the cream of Kabul’s male
performers. Her enduring fame is fueled by a persistent but incorrect rumor
that she was murdered for her dancing by the mujaheddin. Symbolically it is
almost true: she fled from Afghanistan in the 1980s and has shunned public
life. Today she lives in privacy with a Canadian husband near Toronto, but
she is fondly remembered, and her televised performances are available on
YouTube. Zainab was a more talented singer, but she never even achieved
national fame. Although audio recordings of her songs exist, including
those in the Radio Afghanistan archive, very little has remained to keep
her memory alive.
In the 1980s, as violence and political instability spread across the country,
the role of music was a hotly contested issue. All women professional singers
were in a perilous position. Well before the advent of the Taliban, women
radio and television stars were in real danger of assassination, so they escaped
to other countries, preferably ending up in Europe or North America (see
Baily 2001, Doubleday 2007). Zainab stayed in Afghanistan, but her luck
turned. One of her children was killed, caught in cross fire and shot in the
head. Her husband became ill and died. Patrons were leaving to take shelter
in Iran. She herself became ill, suffering from a neurological disease that
paralyzed and eventually killed her in 1985. Her singing career was cut short.
Only members of an older generation of Herati women now remember
Zainab, and sometimes they get confused between her, her sister, and other
entertainers from her Golpasand community. For Herati women, weddings
were important social gatherings: they gave only partial attention to singers
and their music. It was male connoisseurs and musicians such as Madadi or
Ali Ahmad, Sabo’s son (who loved Zainab’s singing), who appreciated Zainab
as “Herat’s best female singer” of the time. Her female patrons were barely
aware that she had the distinction of making the recordings in Kabul.30
Interlaced Stories:
No Fame but a Lasting Legacy
Around a month before my departure from Herat in 1977, Zainab took me
to visit a young woman relative who had recently returned from living in
Russia. She had married a Kandahari man who was studying in Moscow,
and they were making a return visit home. Strongly influenced by Soviet
values, he deplored the bad position of music in Afghanistan. He said in
any other country his wife would have been a singing star—with her stun-
ning good looks and voice. Zainab agreed, but said Afghan people varied
Notes
1. This was her approximate age. I have written extensively elsewhere about Zainab un-
der the pseudonym of Shirin in my narrative ethnography, Three Women of Herat (2006a
[1988]). In that work I used pseudonyms (and modified certain details of the action) in
order to mask people’s identity and protect their privacy (see author note, Doubleday
2006a,xi).
2. For further information on the activities of Radio Afghanistan, see Baily 1981, 1994,
and 2001. There is also much relevant information in Sarmast 2004.
3. Amir, taped interview with John Baily, 1985. Their terms honarmand (artist) and
khanandeh (singer) are polite and appreciative, as opposed to another rather derogatory
term sazandeh (musician/instrumentalist), discussed later.
4. Madadi, pers. comm. 2008.
5. The songs were “Shirin dokhtar-e maldar/Sarhadi,” “Ze hejranat aziz-e man hamishe
cheshm-e taram,” “Ahesteh buro,” “Olang olang,” and “Yar yar yar.”
6. One track on the companion website contains two examples of Zainab singing in
this form (sung consecutively). Also see Doubleday 2011 for detailed information about
the performance of chaharbeiti in Afghanistan.
7. For a recording (as a duo with myself), see Track 10 in Madadi et al. 2005. In 1972
she recorded it for Lorraine Sakata, with the alternative title Sarhadi. The two titles relate
to two different systems of categorization: Shirin dokhtar-e maldar is the chorus line, the
normal mode of identifying Herati folk songs, and Sarhadi is its melodic designation,
as identified by local instrumentalists. Sakata provides an analysis of this song (2002,
129–32 [1983]), and her recording is Example 8 on her accompanying CD. When I first
met Zainab in 1976, she also sang this song for me.
8. Madadi, pers. comm. 2008.
9. For a factual account of the Golpasand musician community, with actual names, see
Baily 1988. The data on the women’s bands was imparted by Zainab to me.
10. See, for example, Nasr 1997; Neubauer and Doubleday 2001. Neubauer is the author
of the section on the theological debate. My role was to expand and update other parts
of the article.
11. In other parts of Afghanistan Jats are linked with other professions, including music
and prostitution (see Rao 1982). Another more polite term, gharibzadeh, translates roughly
as “stranger.”
References
Baghban, Hafizullah. 1977. The Context and Concept of Humor in Magadi Theater. Doctoral
Thesis, Indiana University. Ann Arbor: University Microfilms.
Baily, John. 1981. “Cross-Cultural Perspectives in Popular Music: The Case of Afghanistan.”
Popular Music 1:105–22.
———. 1988. Music of Afghanistan: Professional Musicians in the City of Herat. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
———. 1994. “The Role of Music in the Creation of an Afghan National Identity, 1923–73.”
In Ethnicity, Identity and Music: The Musical Construction of Place, ed. Martin Stokes,
45–60. Oxford: Berg Publishers.
———. 2001. “Can You Stop the Birds Singing?” The Censorship of Music in Afghanistan.
Copenhagen: Freemuse.
Danielson, Virginia. 1997. The Voice of Egypt: Umm Kulthūm, Arabic Song, and Egyptian
Society in the Twentieth Century. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Doubleday, Veronica. 2000. “Afghanistan: Music and Gender.” In The Garland Encyclo-
pedia of World Music, South Asia: The Indian Subcontinent, volume 5, ed. A. Arnold,
812–16. New York: Garland Publishing.
———. 2006a [1988]. Three Women of Herat. London: I. B. Tauris.
———. 2006b [revised] [1999]. “The Frame Drum in the Middle East: Women, Musical
Discography
Baily, John, with Veronica Doubleday. 2002 [1996]. Afghanistan: The Traditional Music
of Herat. Unesco/Audivis CD.
Doubleday, Veronica. 2002. Afghanistan: Female Musicians of Herat. Unesco/Audivis. CD.
Madadi, Abdul Wahab, Veronica Doubleday, and John Baily. 2005. Sweet Nomad Girl:
Folk Music from Afghanistan. Metier Sound and Vision. CD.
Upon first reading the essays in this extraordinary collection, I was struck
by two contradictory ideas: on the one hand, the articles seemed to lack any
overarching, connecting themes, save the one mentioned in the Introduc-
tion, written by editor, Ruth Hellier; on the other hand, this very resistance to
thematic construction seemed to give a vibrancy, a realness to the individual
voices and to the multiplicity of voices (even within one individual) that sing
in each of the chapters. I was so engaged with these individual women (not
to mention the individual authors) that connecting them to each other began
to seem something of a violation. This is not your usual collection of articles
on women and music—this is both an illuminating set of biographical case
studies—and, more importantly, a tour de force, illustrating the engaging
use of creatively experimental writing that, like the music it discusses, flows
gracefully through these pages.
The one thread linking all of the essays together, according to editor Hellier,
is a concentration on individual women living in a variety of musical cul-
tures, who use their voices, both literal and metaphoric, to create, negotiate,
and perform various, sometimes changing and conflicting, identities. The
interplay between the literal voice—its timbre, its range, even its use as a
sonic tool for gender confusion—and the metaphoric voice—seen here as
a means of creatively expressing agency, activism, sexuality, and of creating
often multiple strategies to ensure that one is heard and taken seriously—
resonates deeply throughout this work.
Hellier also outlines in her Introduction various other threads, partial
themes, or, as she says, “clusters” that link some of the essays together, such
as the importance of families and supporters, risks and opportunities, the role
Iranian singer, Sima Shokrani reminds us, what, exactly is a feminist outside
of the western academy? Thus, each of the women presented here is doing the
on-the-ground political work of feminism within her own specific context,
but feminist Political action might or might not have been the conscious goal.
As we read on through the collection, we can see that the individual women
here not only had different goals from each other but also different and some-
times changing goals for themselves as they progressed through life. Achieving
a goal usually requires a strategy, that is, a workable plan that can be adapted
at a moment’s notice to fit some unforeseen circumstance. And, in order to
work, a plan must be situated within a specific environment. Here, I discuss
some of the wonderfully creative and flexible strategies, some of which evolved
consciously, others not, that grew throughout these women’s musical lives to
enable them to achieve (at least some of) their goals, however P/political.
At the heart of all of these essays lies the issue of agency, the ability to
act based on one’s position within a changing matrix of self/other identi-
ties and contexts: “agency is concerned with the social conditions for, and
requirements of, action, as well as with the internal and external barriers to
action” (Deveaux 2000, 15). Each of the women here is an agent in her own
social and musical actions. To achieve their goals, the women often had to
construct and reconstruct appropriate identities contingent upon changing
social, political, and familial conditions. What is unusual here is that we
rarely see the details of this kind of agency in a standard ethnography, so this
comes as a wonderful surprise and contributes much to the book’s overall
vividness. Here are four examples illustrating different forms of agency:
Shokrani, the Iranian activist and singer, despite religious and political re-
strictions, consciously chooses to privately sing songs that celebrate women’s
agency within the family. She also currently participates publicly in Iran’s
classical music tradition, while at the same time passionately adhering to
her traditional role as mother. One of her goals, as we learn, is to caution
western feminists to become more sensitive to cultural differences. What
happens in the United States cannot happen in Iran, she states—but some-
thing can happen in Iran. During her young life to midlife, Shokrani took
out time from her musical activism to care for her growing children, but she
continued not only to perform in her birthplace, Mazandaran, but also to
resist the growing Persianization of this local repertoire. As she grew older,
Shokrani began to perform and teach Persian art music, a practice that has
certainly contributed to her stature as a mature musician, despite her gender.
Respected as a performer, supported by her husband and community, yet
tempered somewhat by her role as mother, Shokrani has successfully bal-
anced multiple identities and political realities to achieve her goals.
Kyriakou Pelagia, the singer from rural Cyprus, devoted much of her
younger life to caring for her family and working with them in their fields
while also singing locally within her community. Public, professional singing
for women in Cyprus in the mid–twentieth century, although not prohib-
ited, did carry some social stigma. However, in the 1990s, somewhat ser-
endipitously, when Pelagia was already an older woman, new music call-in
shows on the radio provided her with a unique opportunity: to record the
traditional folksongs she had learned as a child. Protesting loudly and often
that this whole venture was “ridiculous,” Pelagia somehow managed to par-
lay this moment into national fame and a successful career. How was this
possible, given her original dismissal of this as ridiculous? It was possible
because Pelagia (consciously/unconsciously?) understood both the silliness
of this situation and its political potential. Her loud protests proclaiming her
empowering status as a housewife, as well as her “nasal” voice quality that
led her audiences to associate her with traditional village life, allowed her
to carve out a space to construct another, less conventional, identity—Star
of Cyprus.
Determined to rap at a young age, Ayben Özçalkan, the “Girl’s Voice in
Turkish Rap,” was enabled by her brother (already a known rapper) to per-
form on his new CD recording, effectively launching her career. Taking a
break to care for her dying mother, Özçalkan returned more determined than
ever to infiltrate the male-dominated world of rapping. She gradually became
famous and, risking censure, chose consciously to perform and compose
rap songs that addressed women’s issues in Turkey, hoping to speak to them
and to the wider society through a “woman’s” voice. The author of this essay,
Thomas Solomon, comments more than once upon Özçalkan’s unusual at-
tention to clear articulation and vocal quality—attributes that have certainly
contributed to her success in Turkey by helping to distance her from the often
highly sexualized, violent, and casual performance styles of some of her U.S.
contemporaries. Located in Istanbul, she has had easy access to recording
studios and concert venues, thus continuing to sustain a successful career.
In public performances, costumed in the baggy pants and tank tops of the
American rappers she idolized as a youth, Özçalkan walks the line between
possibly bringing disapproval onto her family and international stardom.
And, finally, Amelia Pedroso, the openly gay Cuban ritual singer and
drummer, despite all odds, provides a possibility for women to perform
ritual drums, considered a strictly heterosexual male activity in Cuba. To
do so, Pedroso successfully used the growing interest in the Santería tra-
dition outside Cuba to promote her feminist Political agenda. Forming
an all-woman drumming ensemble, she toured the United States and Eu-
rope—contexts that were more accepting than those in Cuba. And, although
she did not marry or have children, she nurtured and cared for scores of
women who came to study and be inspired by her. Perhaps of all of the
women presented here, Pedroso was positioned (or situated herself) as the
“most outside” her own cultural norms, protesting and defying the expected
through her performances.
What these four examples, and, indeed all of the articles in this collection
also share, in addition to agency is the ability to creatively play with self and
other constructive strategies that carve out musical spaces to perform any
number of sometimes conflicting identities—some that could be described
as “fully natural,” others as “completely constructed.” Although this has been
commented upon by many others (see Butler 1990, for example), what is
so interesting here is that we can closely watch and hear how these women
walk/sing such fine lines between their accepted (some said, “empowering”)
roles as mothers and caretakers and their rebellious (perhaps personal) roles
as resisters and fighters against their own culturally specific gender norms.
This attention to detail is perhaps the most positive feature of biographical
writing like that presented in this collection.
The sonic space of musical performance seems to create for these women
a sort of safe space or zone that takes both performer and audience into an-
other reality. Here, I call that safe space “enchantment.” Enchantment, in its
earliest usage in the thirteenth century, meant to cast a magic spell, bewitch,
or charm through singing. Ixya Herrera, the Mexican American singer pre-
sented in Hellier’s chapter, explicitly mentions this term, associating it with
a specific performing directive—grace. Thus, for Herrera, to enchant means
to perform with the grace of flying birds, and all that she does on stage—cos-
tuming, movement, vocal quality—works toward that end. That is how she
sees herself and how she wants to be seen by others. If she can create a space
of safe enchantment, then her messages of resistance and advocacy can be
heard more easily.
Enchantment is a safe place, out of time and space, that is open for both
performers and audiences to play, experiment, remember, fanaticize, mourn,
connect with others, experience pure joy, or discover parts of themselves
they never knew existed—whatever they wish. Performers, though, gener-
ally control, often in tandem with their audiences, the flow and pacing of
enchantment—the real-time events that structure this space. That is their
job—to take themselves and their listeners to that place and to bring them
safely back. To do this, performers must walk a fine line: they must captivate,
charm, and bewitch, but not go so far as to encourage aggression or violence
in their audiences or censure for themselves.
So, when Pelagia states that she is a “housewife, not a singer,” despite her
national fame as a publicly performing woman, or when Özçalkan asserts
that she is “still the girl next door,” despite her overtly political lyrics, these
women are balancing objectified essentialist social norms against their own
subjective, and perhaps risky or threatening, resistance to those norms. Often,
as we see in these pages, they use the devices of poetry, such as metaphor,
irony, or playfulness in their lyrics. These are ways of deflecting direct, and
potentially dangerous, statements while at the same time making P/political
ones. As any good comic knows, these devices serve to both enable social
realities to be contested—and to defuse the fear and anger that inevitably
arise in these circumstances.
One of the most poignant essays in this collection beautifully illustrates
the potential for self-construction through musical performance. Here, it
works, not to promote an overtly Political act but, rather, to provide a space
for one person to work out painful family relations—a localized and per-
sonal political act. Akiko Fujii, the singer of Japanese jiuta, uses her musical
performances to bring her audiences back to the older performance style
and context previously associated with this all-male tradition. In order to do
this Fujii had to first face and deal with considerable anger and resentment
toward her own mother and teacher, as well as her brother, who inherited
the position of head of the school associated with their lineage. Her brother,
having had no intention of becoming a musician, changed his mind and
entered Tokyo University of Fine Arts and Music, thus pushing Fujii into
second place for succession. Fujii recounts that her brother only wanted to
be a “superior teacher,” whereas she wanted to “save jiuta.”
To do so, Fujii broke with her family and began performing jiuta alone,
outside the context of her school. She distanced herself from the tradition she
had been given by her mother by returning to more intimate performance
spaces and renewed her commitment to performing jiuta in the strong, gritty
voice of her grandmother, acknowledging that she had crossed a gender line.
In short, Fujii used her anger productively, creating a safe performance space
for herself—an enchantment—that enabled her to achieve many goals: to
become a successful performer who could enchant her audiences by taking
them back to an older time, to fulfill her dream of saving jiuta (perhaps from
her brother?), and to become more emotionally healthy and independent.
Thus, the two themes discussed in this section, those of feminist everyday
P/political activism and of creative identity construction, seem to link all of
the essays in this collection together into a meaningful and satisfying whole.
• • •
My “theme-seeking self,” who wrote the text above and who needs to link
people together in some meaningful way to help her build a convincing theory,
will now step aside and be replaced by my “theme-resisting self,” a more play-
ful identity, who advocates for different, individual voices (who cares if they
connect?) and for creative experimental writing (who cares if it works?). I am
not suggesting that one of these identities is better than the other—simply
different, and difference itself, as this identity believes, is good.
One of the best features of this collection is its resistance to linking the
details of these women’s lives together for the explicit purpose of theory
building. So, in this section, I concentrate on the other half of the conundrum
mentioned in the first paragraph of this Afterword: the delight I felt, not only
in getting to know the individual women in this volume, but also reading
about them in prose that, in some cases, comes closer to poetry or music.
In doing so, I hope also to show how this book contributes to the current
ethnomusicological/anthropological literature as well as to contemporary
feminist values.
I begin with a response from Nicoletta Demetriou (2010) to a personal
communication from Hellier, asking her to be more theoretical in her article:
When I tried to incorporate more theory into my chapter, I got the sense that
Pelagia was turning into a caricature of herself, that I was moving from the
living, breathing individual that I know Pelagia to be towards an abstract theo-
retical entity.
believe that the intersubjectivity of fieldwork alone can erase the power dif-
ferential in the subject/object binary, even here; after all, each of the authors
“presents” her/his partner to us through this collection (somewhat like a rei-
fied object), so, try as they might to mitigate this, the author/subject binary
still controls and mediates these interactions to some degree.
This attempt to collapse the subject/object binary through fieldwork and
its inherent intersubjectivity, although laudatory, has been a pesky problem
within feminist anthropology and ethnomusicology for a while now. In the
decades following the so-called Second Wave of feminism,1 feminist anthro-
pologists began to isolate two problems they were experiencing—one outside
their field and one within. First, I will address the outside issue (see more on
the inside problem later).
One of the hallmarks of feminism’s Second Wave was the passing of a great
deal of legislation that prohibited sex discrimination of any kind, domestic
abuse, and many other consequences of unequal gender relations, as well as
providing many positive opportunities for women and girls, such as the right to
an abortion, or to play on a school sport’s team. In short, the decades between
1960 and 1980 were amazingly productive in legally addressing many social ills
that were regarded as being rooted in centuries-old attitudes and laws that nor-
malized gender inequality. In order to accomplish this, Second-Wavers (both
men and women) had to conceptualize women as a single, monolithic group,
all of whom faced similar issues: second-class status, nonaccess to education
or work opportunities, and so on. These sweeping generalizations enabled
them to make a powerful and effective case for change.
Soon, however, some, like writer and activist bell hooks, and many other
people of color, began to point out that these changes were being driven
largely by white, middle-class perspectives and interests and cautioned their
white sisters to also consider class and race as separate, yet intertwined, issues
within feminism. This challenge came about within the context of 1960–70s
race relations in the United States, and resonated generally with the anger and
frustration of radical African American thinkers: “Even before race became a
talked about issue in feminist circles, it was clear to black women (and to their
revolutionary allies in struggle) that they were never going to have equality
within the existing white supremacist capitalist patriarchy” (hooks 2000, 4).
Feminist anthropologists and ethnomusicologists were initially delighted
that there was now an opportunity to put women into the picture, and many
articles and books appeared at that time positioning women at the center,
not at the margins, of culture. (See Tick, Ericson, and Koskoff [2001] or my
forthcoming book, A Feminist Ethnomusicology, for a fuller discussion of this
history.) However, some, like those feminists of color mentioned above, began
to see mainstream feminists as both too limited and monolithic in their idea
of what a “woman” (or “man”) was, and were also hampered by their general
lack of knowledge and seeming disinterest in non-Western cultures. After
all, the anthropologists said, we conduct fieldwork all over the world, where
white/black racial tensions, like those found in the United States, are largely
irrelevant. Much more relevant, they said, are the effects of colonialism and
European (albeit white) hegemonies. Thus, in addition to the problem of
the monolithic and essentialist “woman,” they saw Second Wave feminism
as not especially sensitive to cultural and historical differences. This very
valorization of individual differences by feminist anthropologists, however,
made categorizing, or linking many different women together, far more dif-
ficult and cross-cultural comparison all but impossible.
Then, along came postmodernism, saving us by revolutionizing how we
see (or rather, construct) “reality.” Postmodernism and its twin, poststruc-
turalism, suggested that we abandon binaries altogether because they were
the result of crude and rigid power relations that were no longer relevant.
Instead, we should play with language and other human creations to expose
the preposterousness of power, of Truth claims that positioned some people
in and others out. No one voice or position was any more True than any other,
they said; everything could be interpreted through the flow of constantly
moving social interactions, perspectives, and constructions. (In the spirit of
transparency, I acknowledge that I’m playing with, and glossing over, many
different strands of postmodern thought here, but this is my lighthearted
identity speaking.)
During the 1980s and 1990s, mainstream feminism and feminist anthropol-
ogy also began to change as more and more of these ideas trickled into their
discourses. Younger women in the United States (who mainly saw feminism
as the “new f-word”) were also beginning to deconstruct essentialist notions
of woman, concentrating their efforts on destabilizing controlling binaries
and celebrating individually different voices. Rebecca Walker, who coined the
term, “Third Wave” in response to the complacency she saw in the 1980s and
1990s that proclaimed feminism’s goals had been accomplished, writes in the
Introduction to her call-to-arms, To Be Real (1995, xxxiv):
As they [the authors in her collection] formulate a feminism they can call their
own, they debunk the stereotype that there is one lifestyle or manifestation of
feminist empowerment, and instead offer self-possession, self-determination,
and an endless array of non-dichotomous positions.
This shift in thinking from the other-to-self and from the monolithic to
the multiple, allowed more space in anthropology and ethnomusicology to
address not only gender differences, but also other relevant cultural differ-
ences researchers saw outside of the United States that were intertwined with
gender in the specific cultural contexts they documented. Many monographs,
such as those of Veronica Doubleday (1990), Jane Sugarman (1997), and Vir-
ginia Danielson (1997) as well as collections, such as Diamond and Moisala
(2000), Magrini (2003), and Bernstein (2004), and others too numerous to
mention here, began to appear in the ethnomusicological literature. Along-
side this blossoming of literature, however, another trend was taking hold in
anthropology: the “New Ethnography”—the second (inside) issue to which
I referred earlier.
The New Ethnography was one outcome of anthropology’s powerfully
self-reflexive moment in the 1980s, sometimes referred to as the “crisis of
representation.” Briefly, this moment dealt with the power structures within
anthropology itself: its method (fieldwork), its representation of others (in-
terpretation), and its presentation of data (ethnography). Ushered in by
James Clifford and George Marcus (1986), and later Clifford Geertz (1988),
among others, the new ethnographers suggested that fieldwork was a form
of academic colonialism, where the (usually western) ethnographer used the
work of the (usually non-western) other for his/her own benefit. Further, the
end result of fieldwork (ethnography), in order to be written so that academ-
ics and others (but not necessarily the people studied) would understand
and be moved by its rhetoric, was certainly partially fiction, constructed by
the author and bearing a closer resemblance to the novel than to a full and
accurate documentation of living cultural informants. Since there was no
longer a Truth to be had, older ethnographic writing soon went out of style
and newer experimental writing was adopted, where the authors began to
position themselves in their work, and where different styles of writing were
used to present a multiplicity of voices and perspectives.
The collection of essays here beautifully captures the spirit of this creative,
experimental writing and of the multiple voices that lie at the heart of the new
ethnography. Like the interactive and personalized collection of Diamond
and Moisala mentioned earlier, this collection plays with reflexivity and in-
tersubjectivity in ways that could not have been possible twenty years ago.
Three articles here stand out as models for new ways of writing that come
closer to the internal flows of conversation. Carol Muller’s essay on South
African singer Sathima Bea Benjamin, for example, uses the device of differ-
ent voices to tell and retell her story. Inspired by Marjory Wolf ’s A Thrice-Told
Tale: Feminism, Post-Modernism, and Ethnographic Responsibility (1992),
Muller clearly presents the device of using three different narrative forms
in her essay: biography, where Muller outlines the basics of Benjamin’s life;
autobiography, where Benjamin tells her own story; and finally conversation,
where the two previous voices interact and blend to provide a convincing
analysis. This works because all of the subject/object positions are visible and
positioned adequately to help make this a wonderfully convincing story.
Hellier’s article on the Mexican singer Ixya Herrera takes another tack:
assigning creative headings to different sections (e.g., Seven, Twelve, Father,
Future Unknown). This serves not only to position Ixya in her own life, but
also to further personalize it for us. Hellier also seems to flit back and forth
between her own voice, often captured in its embodied presence—how she
felt emotionally and physically while speaking—as well as its informational
presence—the literal meaning of what she was saying—and Ixya’s voice cap-
tured in lengthy field notes. In this way, Hellier plays with intersubjectivity,
sometimes leaving open for a time the answer to the question of whose voice
is speaking. This is nice because, in contrast to a constant authorial/narrator
voice, this kind of dual-voice writing gets us closer to the process and feeling
of a real exchange between two situated people.
Finally, Katelyn Barney’s article on Torres Strait Islander, Lexine Solomon,
incorporates a form of dramatic writing, especially in the heading of the
first “scene,” where she introduces her partner: “A singing workshop in the
classroom: Introducing Lexine.” Here, she writes the scene using her own
voice, that of Lexine, and the voices of her students, using both a narrative
and dialogic writing style. One would think that this moving from one style to
another would hamper the feel of this scene, but, in fact it seems to enhance
the realness of this experience, to engage us in its “you are there” feeling,
much as the feeling of living inside a novel while reading it. This form of
dialoguing and describing, without the usual authorial interpretation and
analysis, gently diffuses not only Lexine’s Political messages so that they can
be heard more easily, but also diffuses the power dynamic between author
and subject. Thus, like the ironic or comic devices discussed earlier, Barney,
as well as Hellier and others within this collection, couch the utter serious-
ness of their work in creative and entertaining forms—enchantments of a
different kind.
This kind of playing with narrative or poetic forms may not be everyone’s
cup of tea, but these authors should be congratulated for their courage to
try something different; and, to the degree that these essays go beyond the
written words of academic discourse to expose and blur boundaries between
self and other, individuality and generalization, and speech and song, they
make an important and valuable contribution to a new kind of feminist
ethnomusicology.
Postmodern critical theory tells us that our identities are multiple, frag-
mented, contingent, and situated, always changing in relation to social inter-
actions and environments. If we accept this notion, then we must always ask
the question, as Louise Wrazen does in her article on the Polish Górale singer,
Marysia Mąka: If identities are multiple, then who is the who in “Who is
singing?” If we answer that question through carefully detailed and nuanced
portraits like those presented here, the Who will not only become clear, but
also the Why and the What of musical and P/political performances.
Notes
1. The designation of First, Second, and Third Wave is a contentious topic that is discussed
elsewhere. I am using it here, however, because it is familiar to most readers interested in
this topic.
References
Bernstein, Jane A., ed. 2004. Women’s Voices across Musical Worlds. Boston: Northeastern
University Press.
Butler, Judith. 1990. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York:
Routledge.
Clifford, James, and George E. Marcus, eds. 1986. Writing Culture: the Poetics and Politics
of Ethnography. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Danielson, Virginia. 1997. The Voice of Egypt: Umm Kulthum, Arabic Song, and Egyptian
Society in the Twentieth Century. Chicago Studies in Ethnomusicology. Chicago, Il-
linois: University of Chicago Press.
Deveaux, Monique. 2000. “Agency.” Encyclopedia of Feminist Theories, ed. Lorraine Code.
New York: Routledge.
Diamond, Beverley, and Pirkko Moisala, eds. 2000. Music and Gender. Urbana: University
of Illinois Press.
Doubleday, Veronica. 1990. Three Women of Herat. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Legacies
As Zainab and Amelia are no longer living, we cherish and acknowledge the lives
of these two women.
Zainab touched many listeners as a singer for wedding celebrations, yet following
her death she was repositioned in a realm of obscurity. However, her traditional
legacy exists through the singing and narratives of Veronica Doubleday, who per-
forms the songs she learned from Zainab and continues to disseminate her life
through published narratives.
Amelia shaped issues of gender in the music-making of Santería, creating a last-
ing impact upon her followers, in Cuba and internationally, and upon the accepted
norms of sexuality. Posthumously she continues to guide and inspire through her
recordings, through the perpetuation of her practices, and through the belief of Egun
and the spirit world.
Akiko propagates the lineage of jiuta, as developed by her grandmother and
mother, even as she creates a new path in her own manner, inspiring other women
to challenge traditional cultural patterns.
Ayben is only twenty-eight, yet through her career since the age of seventeen she
has carved out a high-profile role for women rappers in Turkey and created lyrics
that challenge men’s actions toward women.
Ixya has given voice to a young and graceful Chicana presence and has brought
into circulation older and less well-known Mexican songs.
Kyriakou has afforded senior and older women a public place as singers.
Lexine empowers Torres Strait Islanders and Aboriginal women to reflect on their
lives and become activists.
Marysia enables Górale migrants and their offspring who have not lived in Poland
to connect with their homeland and repertoire.
Sathima reinforces the lineage of jazz women, creating a place for South African
women through her recordings and live performances.
Sima has solidly established the importance of Mazanderani songs in national and
international contexts.
on gender and music, and is the editor of Women and Music in Cross-Cultural
Perspective (1987). Her book, Music in Lubavitcher Life (2000) was the winner
of the 2002 ASCAP Deems-Taylor award. Koskoff is a contributor to the New
Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, is the general editor of the Garland
Encyclopedia of World Music, vol. 3, “The United States and Canada,” and
the series editor of the University of Rochester Press’s, Eastman/Rochester
Studies in Ethnomusicology. She has just completed a collection of essays
on music and gender to be published by the University of Illinois Press en-
titled, A Feminist Ethnomusicology: The Ellen Koskoff Reader. She is a former
President of the Society for Ethnomusicology.
Carol Muller is a Professor of Music (ethnomusicology) at the Uni-
versity of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, who has published widely on South
African music, both at home and in exile. Her intellectual interests include
the relationship between music, gender and religious studies, migration and
diaspora studies, and critical ethnography. Muller has published on South Af-
rican jazz, religious performance, traditional and popular musics including:
Shembe Hymns (Univ. of KwaZulu Natal 2010); Focus: South African Music
(Routledge 2008); Rituals of Fertility and the Sacrifice of Desire: Nazarite
Women’s Performance in South Africa (Chicago 1999). In 2011 Muller led a
combined online and live summer abroad program in South Africa at one of
the world’s largest arts festivals. Muller is also a seasoned gumboot dancer.
Thomas Solomon is Professor in the Grieg Academy–Department of
Music at the University of Bergen, Norway. He has previously taught at New
York University, University of Minnesota, and Istanbul Technical University.
He has done field research in Bolivia on musical imaginations of ecology,
place, and identity; and in Istanbul on place and identity in Turkish hip-hop.
His publications include articles in the journals Ethnomusicology, Popular
Music, European Journal of Cultural Studies, and Yearbook for Traditional
Music, as well numerous papers in edited volumes. He is also editor of Music
and Identity in Norway and Beyond: Essays Commemorating Edvard Grieg
the Humanist (Fagbokforlaget 2011).
Amanda Villepastour is an ethnomusicologist with a focused re-
search interest in Yorúbá music and religion in Africa and the African dias-
pora. Villepastour completed her MMus (1998) and PhD (2006) at the School
of African and Oriental Studies in London and has since published her first
monograph, Ancient Text Messages of the Yorùbá Bàtá Drum: Cracking the
Code (Ashgate 2010). Her past research and teaching positions include Gold-
smiths College, University of London, The Smithsonian Institution, Bowling
Green State University (Ohio), and The Musical Instrument Museum (MIM)
(Arizona). Villepastour is currently an ethnomusicology lecturer at Cardiff
University in the United Kingdom.
Louise Wrazen is Chair and Associate Professor in the Department of
Music at York University, Toronto. Her research on the music and dance of
the Górale of southern Poland has focused on transnationalism, transmission,
and gender and has been published in various journals, including Yearbook
for Traditional Music, Ethnomusicology, Intersections, and The Anthropology
of East Europe Review. She is currently coediting a volume on performing
gender, place, and emotion.
Abu-Lughod, Lila, 33n9, 86, 89 apprentice, 17, 24, 28, 40-41, 51, 196-98, 205,
accompanying musicians. See ensemble 229, 231, 233. See also learning and teach-
activism: conscious, 168, 173, 184-85, 190, ing
214; feminist, 214; through singing, 1, 18, Arisawa, Shino, 2, 16, 17, 38-53, 218
19, 29-30, 68-69, 103, 213, 234-38 Arizona, 19, 94-95
adjectives, to describe voice, 4, 60, 95. See aspiration, 5, 16, 19. See also goals
also Barthes; singing, aesthetics audience, 3, 69, 85, 93, 98, 115-17, 131; expec-
adulthood, 11, 95, 184, 186, 228, 231, 234, 237 tations, 17, 26, 39, 44-50, 119, 154-55; fans,
aesthetics, vocal. See singing, aesthetics 82, 107, 114-17, 125-26, 158, 163; as listen-
Afghanistan, 2, 9, 15, 24, 26, 29, 194-212 ers, 3, 217; -performer relationship, 19,
Africa, 2, 9, 15, 22-23, 59, 161-76 40, 45, 92-93, 100, 106-7, 122-24, 170, 179,
Afro-Cuban tradition, 73-91 198, 200-201, 217, 234. See also kinesthetic
age, and singing, 2, 11, 15, 14, 20, 25-26, 29, response; listening
30, 112-30. See also identity Australia, 9, 15, 21, 131-45, 209n17, 214, 228
agency, 1, 5, 11, 13, 25, 30, 74-75, 86, 213, 215; authenticity, and singing, 4, 46, 78, 121, 153,
through singing, 3, 5, 21, 23, 27, 101-4, 146- 156, 195
47, 180-81, 229; and subjectivity, 10. See authors: and authoring, 2, 16; as researchers,
also power; self; subjectivity 8-12, 15-24, 213, 214, 219-24. See also biog-
agent, music. See manager raphy; ethnography; ethnomusicology;
albums. See recordings narrative; writing
altered states, and singing, 61 autobiography, 174, 223. See also biography;
America. See North America; United States ethnography; narrative; writing
of America axes of identity. See identity
androgyny, 66, 121, 229 Ayben. See Özçalkan, Ayben
Antelyes, Peter, 33n13, 122
anthropology, 7; feminist, 33n9, 219-20, Barney, Katelyn, 2, 16, 21, 131-45, 223-24
222; and the self-reflexive turn, 7, 222-23. Barthes, Roland, 3, 94-95, 150-51, 158
See also ethnography; ethnomusicology; Bayton, Mavis, 6
feminism; theorization beauty, 103-4, 109n19, 173-75, 176n3, 181, 196,
Anzaldúa, Gloria, 106, 109n13 201, 204, 205, 206. See also bodies; clothes
apartheid, 9, 22-23, 163-64, 232, 236 bedroom, 29, 74, 96, 231