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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Yoko Ono’s Experimental Vocality as Matrixial Borderspace: Theorizing Yoko Ono’s Extended Vocal Technique and her Contributions to the Development of Underground and Popular Vocal Repertoires, 1968 - Present A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Musicology by Shelina Louise Brown 2018 © Copyright by Shelina Louise Brown 2018 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Yoko Ono’s Experimental Vocality as Matrixial Borderspace: Theorizing Yoko Ono’s Extended Vocal Technique and her Contributions to the Development of Underground and Popular Vocal Repertoires, 1968 - Present by Shelina Louise Brown Doctor of Philosophy in Musicology University of California, Los Angeles, 2018 Professor Timothy D. Taylor, Chair This dissertation involves the development of a theoretical framework for understanding non-normative gendered vocal subjectivities emergent within counter- hegemonic, experimental vocal performances. In particular, I choose to focus on the extended vocal techniques of Yoko Ono that were developed in the context of her late 1960s and early 1970s collaborations with the Plastic Ono Band, and later came to exert a significant influence upon underground vocalists from the late 1970’s to the present day. As a theoretical foundation for my work, I primarily draw upon post-Lacanian feminist psychoanalyst, Bracha L. Ettinger’s Matrixial Borderspace (2006), adapting her lexicon for the analysis of experimental vocalities. In proposing a musicological !ii appropriation of Ettinger’s rubric, I hope to demonstrate the ways in which Ono’s vocal performances actualize a mode of “matrixial gendered resistance,” that is, a feminist aesthetic practice that works to re-contextualize the parameters of gendered subjectivity within a shared space of trans-subjective encounter. While the first two chapters of this dissertation will provide a detailed theorization of Yoko Ono’s early avant-rock musical output in relation to psychoanalytic, postcolonial, and posthumanist thought, the final two chapters will trace Ono’s stylistic influence through punk rock and New Wave genres of the mid-1970s to the early 1980s, concluding with a series of interviews with current Los Angeles-based underground vocalists. !iii The dissertation of Shelina Louise Brown is approved. Robert W. Fink Tamara Judith-Marie Levitz Purnima Mankekar Timothy D. Taylor, Committee Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2018 !iv This dissertation is dedicated to my mother and my mentor, Janice Carole Brown. !v TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments ……………………………………………………………………………………………………. ix Vita ……………………………………………………………………………………………………. xiv Introduction ……………………………………………………………………………………… 1 Introducing Ettinger’s Lexicon……………………………………………… 6 Matrixial Hermeneutics as Methodology for the Analysis of 11 Experimental Vocal Production………………………………….…….…… Chapter 1 Matrixial Sonic Encounters in a World of Stickiness: Yoko Ono’s Studio Album, Fly (1971) and the Proto- Ethics of Vocal Experimentation…………………………….… 20 Biographical Contexts: Transnational Artist, Borderlinking 27 Aesthetics……………………………………………………………………………. Yoko Ono’s Studio Album, Fly (1971)……………………………..……… 40 “Midsummer New York”…………………………………………..… 44 “Don’t Worry Ky"ko”…………………………………………………. 48 “Airmale”………………………………………………..………………… 53 Conclusion……………………………………………………………..…………… 58 Chapter 2 Of Insects and Interstices: Yoko Ono’s Experimental Short Film, Fly (1970) and the Synaesthetic Un- Mapping of the Abstract Female Nude Part A: Woman, Fly, Gaze and Voice within a Cross- Sensory Matrix………………………………………………………. 60 Synaesthetic Trouble in the Interstitial Voice………………………….. 68 Fly Trouble: Psychoanalytic Interpretations…………………………… 76 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………… 101 !vi PART B: Woman and Fly within a “Fourth Space” of Contactual Hybridity………………………………………………. 103 Ono’s Fly in Context: Primitivism, Avant-Garde Cinema, and the Encounter of Bordering Umwelt……………………………………… 105 Towards a Fourth Space of Contact: Ono’s Fly and the Psychoanalytic Contexts of Postcolonial Thought………………… 123 Conclusion……………………………………………………………..…………… 142 Chapter 3 Ono Soul: A Matrixial History of Feminine Cultural Resistance Traced Through New Wave, No Wave, and Experimental Underground Vocalities (1976 - 1983)… 145 Outsider Vocal Aesthetics and the Athens New Wave………………. 153 The B-52’s………………………………………………………………… 157 Primitivism and Vocal Deconstruction in No Wave New York 161 Mars………………………………………………………………………… 167 Teenage Jesus & the Jerks………………………………………….. 172 New Wave Divas: Considering the Avant-Pop Vocalities of Lene 178 Lovich and Nina Hagen………………………………………………………… Lene Lovich………………………………………………………………. 181 Nina Hagen………………………………………………………………. 190 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………… 203 Chapter 4 To Yell or Die in Los Angeles: Vocal Experimentation in the Millennial Eastside Underground…………………… 205 The Roots of Experimental Punk Rock in Los Angeles…………….. 206 A Topography of the Millennial Scene……………………………………. 213 Matrixial Vocalities of the Eastside Undergound…………………….. 224 Nora Keyes……………………………………………………………….. 226 MRK………………………………………………………………………… 232 Uhuru Ali Moor………………………………………………………… 240 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………… 248 !vii Conclusion ……………………………………………………………………………………… 250 Future Directions of Research……………………………………………… 252 Bibliography ……………………………………………………………………………………… 258 !viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First and foremost, I would like to thank my committee chair and mentor, Tim Taylor, for his support throughout my time at UCLA. Tim’s commitment to encouraging his students to explore critical and cultural theory has been a constant source of inspiration during the course of my doctoral studies. As a student of music with a keen interest in philosophy, Tim has instilled within me a deep appreciation for a variety of theoretical approaches in the pursuit of progressive modes of engagement with musical experience. Tim’s expert training in materialist theory grounded and shaped my explorations into the field of psychoanalysis. In my third year as a doctoral student at UCLA, with the aid of the Graduate Student Summer Research Grant, Tim acted as a close mentor who was instrumental in shaping my first publication, “Scream from the Heart: Yoko Ono’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Revolution.” The article that resulted from Tim’s mentorship marked the beginnings of an intellectual journey that would lead me to delve deeper into multiple theoretical models concerning cultural resistance and vocality, eventually leading to my discovery of Bracha L. Ettinger’s Matrixial Theory. In the development of my dissertation project, I am also indebted to my committee members, Tamara Levitz and Bob Fink who have each exerted a strong influence on my current work. Tamara’s article on the “Unfinished Music of John & Yoko,” to which I was introduced as a Teaching Assistant for her course on the Beatles, stands as one of the only academic works that engages with Ono’s vocality, and was a primary source of inspiration for my current project. The questions raised by Tamara in this article provided a springboard for my own dissertation, and I value her intellectual and musical insights which have provided a model for my own interpretive work. !ix Likewise, Bob Fink’s research on the nature of musical timbre was also a great source of inspiration for my current project, which involves a philosophical inquiry into the resistant qualities of vocal timbre. As a student in Bob’s seminar, “The Relentless Pursuit of Tone,” I was prompted to further consider the question of timbre as a too- often under-theorized, yet powerful aspect of musical experience. At the early stages of my dissertation writing, both Tamara and Bob were kind enough to read over my preliminary chapters, and to provide detailed feedback that helped me grow as a writer and a critical thinker. Thank you Tamara and Bob for your patience, generosity, and your invaluable critique. In addition to Tamara and Bob’s helpful critique, my external committee member, Purnima Mankekar, also provided me with a detailed reading of my manuscript, offering much helpful feedback from a Gender Studies perspective. As a student of both Musicology and Gender Studies, Purnima’s expert commentary was invaluable to my dissertation project, and I hope to further explore interdisciplinary connections between my own work and current trends within the field of Gender Studies. In the fall of 2014, with the aid of a research grant offered by the Student Opportunity Fund of the Herb Alpert School of Music, I had the opportunity to attend a Symposium and masterclass with Bracha L. Ettinger in Dublin, Ireland, that forever changed the course of my intellectual journey. At the time I was only beginning to grapple with both the theories of Ettinger and Lacan, and having the opportunity to make contact with not only Ettinger, but a coterie of academics working with Matrixial Theory was a truly life-changing experience. In the month preceding my defense, I was once again able to return to Ireland to re-connect with two of these scholars, Professor !x Tina Kinsella and Michael O’Rourke. The intellectual conversations we shared in Dublin, and their supportive feedback on my work were incredibly reassuring to a graduate student anxiously awaiting her defense date. The quality of their research has been a constant source of inspiration for me over the past four years, and their research and activism compels me to be a better writer, thinker, and moreover an academic that is