EVERY GENRE PACKAGES: Sing With Your Chest - The Human Voice (4 January 2025)

Jan 05, 2025

SING WITH YOUR CHEST: The Human Voice

harder than expected to find good paintings of people singing…

I believe I referenced this tidbit of information possibly multiple times in a column (hey, it was a whole year! We all repeat outfits, no?) but Jean Jacques-Rousseau, whose name itself rolls off the tongue with a musical beauty, theorized that speech and discourse had a common origin with singing. In his vision of the prehistoric past, there was no distinction between singing and speaking—every moment was like a musical, I suppose.

As someone once interjected, we all sing. Humans were blessed with this capacity to produce resonant vibration. I am of the ilk that anyone can even produce the whistle tones famously sung by Minnie Riperton or Mariah Carey. Has your voice ever squeaked while you yawned? That’s the same complicated physiological process coloratura sopranos use to produce those high tones. Though it may probably sound like a dying dolphin when you’re finally able to manipulate it at will (I know mine do), it’s possible.

Yesterday, we focused on instruments of our making—today’s recap of the EGP’s random genres focuses on the instrument within us, on the vibrations we produce in the cooperation of one’s lips, tongue, jaw, velum, and larynx. Where your larynx sits determines the range of frequencies you can comfortably sing (hence the castrati), though you can probably stretch far beyond with careful training. The lowest male voice type, a bass, can typically sink to an E2; the highest female voice, a soprano, sails to a C6.

Given that the majority of people can produce song, many genres help designate the cream of the crop by intensely testing singers’ vocal abilities. Opera, which appeared in verismo, obviously reflects this at the highest level, demanding vocal perfection as actors vigorously act, dramatize, and attempt to make the audience laugh in the case of opera buffa. Korea’s pansori and traditional Arabic pop often demand hours-long performances of their singing storytellers, which takes intense stamina anywhere but particularly in the generally arid climates of many Arabic-speaking countries. How many cups of tea does it take, one wonders, to preserve a prime voice?

The range of polyphonic styles across the world only came up in a select few random genres, but they are a marvel for their unconventional harmonies and contrapuntal glory such as the Bulgarian polyphonic choir that entranced the world in the 1980s and Albania’s millennia-old pentatonic Lab polyphony.

Other genres are named for their vocal style: the rural Moroccan genre of aita (loved that album’s energy) means cry, and Tajik falak of the Pamiri Mountains means heaven, referring to the skyward vocal climbs. Lithuania’s sutartinės means ‘to be in concordance’, capturing its collaborative style.

Where most people are apt to be in vocalconcordance in their lives is in the religious realm; Tibetan Buddhist chant and Celtic chant explore two religious traditions that employ the voice to elevate reverence.

It takes nothing to use one’s voice but the right moment, so why not be playful with it? This is the premise of Inuit vocal games, which are a fierce competition in the moment that often break into mutual giggles between opponents. Though significantly more technical as a learning tool, konnakol’s syllables aid learners as a sung pneumonic in the process of learning Carnatic rhythms. It recalls the scatting of vocal jazz that demands singers to be as swift and improvisational as the instruments accompanying them.

Peculiar vocal manipulation also helps delineate genres from interrelated ones; gothic rock vocalists, for example, tend to use ‘tortured’, wailing vocal timbres as connotative distinction.

That’s a lot of words on the page rather than in your ears, so it’s time to hear some words crooned, belted, cried, echoing, and professing. For today’s album, I listened to Björk’s Medulla, the avant-garde legend’s intimate exploration consisting only of the human voice, which features styles from hymns to Inuit vocal games and beatboxing. She conveys more than I could in this article about the human voice, whether in summoning the aggression of previous efforts like “Army of Me” in “Where in the Line” without any of the former’s electronic buttressing. In “Vokuro”, we hear her in her native Icelandic glory, the voice of a punk princess. Her production is never predictable, as always, like the micro-vocal-beats of “Desired Constellation” that sound as fine as blades of grass in contrast with the depth of the beatboxing or the wall of sound constructed by background choirs in other tunes. Singing is a reminder that your power lies nestled within you, ready to burst out at any time, so go forth and sing.