The Race of Sound – Why Do We Think We Can Hear Race Vocally?
Thursday 24th October 2024, 5:00 PM - 7:00 PM (London Time)
Why and how do we make assumptions about a person’s race, gender, or age based on the timbre of their voice? Within the context of the United States, we will examine historical precedents for racialized listening to voices as well as contemporary realities, utilizing a framework for critically interrogating the racializing processes embedded in vocal and listening practices. The case studies we will draw on range from classical voices (such as Marian Anderson’s) to jazz (Jimmy Scott) and voice technologies (the vocal synthesis software Vocaloid). In considering the physiological basis for voice, we learn that there are actually no racial markers. And in taking the power of formal and informal voice lessons seriously, we can begin to deconstruct how voices and listening strategies are shaped within a racialized world.
This session will draw from my book The Race of Sound: Listening, Timbre, and Vocality in African American Music (Duke University Press, 2019).
Nina Eidsheim
Nina Eidsheim is the author of Sensing Sound: Singing and Listening as Vibrational Practice and The Race of Sound: Listening, Timbre, and Vocality in African American Music, and co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of Voice Studies and Refiguring American Music.
Attend this course for as little as £22 as part of the Voice Professional Training CPD Award Scheme.
Learn MoreSorry, this is an archived short course...
We have plenty of upcoming short courses coming soon. See details of some of them below or look at the full list of short courses.
Monday 20th October 2025
5:00 PM - 7:00 PM
(London Time)
Pop Pedagogy
Kim Chandler
Some successful pop stars are celebrating career lengths of over sixty years, having been around since the 1950s when pop music emerged and diversified from jazz, so pop singing has been in existence sufficiently long now that, for teaching purposes, we can observe and analyse what type of approach serves it best.
Tuesday 21st October 2025
2:00 PM - 4:00 PM
(London Time)
Develop Convincing and Respectful East and Southeast Asian English accents!
Jenru Wang
Join Jenru Wang for a practical accent workshop designed to develop convincing and respectful East and Southeast Asian English accents—specifically a Mandarin-influenced English and a Tagalog-influenced Philippine English. This session is intended for actors, dialect coaches, speech-language practitioners, and anybody else who wants to embark on the journey of ESEA Accents learning!
Tuesday 21st October 2025
5:00 PM - 7:00 PM
(London Time)
Establishing a Jazz Voice Curriculum
Dr Tish Oney
As the jazz voice major represents a relatively new program of comprehensive singing study in higher education, it most often absorbs the course requirements of other related majors with which it is grouped. Join Dr Tish Oney for a short course that will reach across a multitude of program requirements in three academic contexts: grouping jazz singers with jazz instrumental majors; grouping jazz singers with voice majors; and grouping jazz singers with commercial music majors. Tish tackles this topic with the authority of one who has pioneered the way for student jazz singers while teaching in jazz departments, classical voice departments, and commercial music departments!