Black Vocal Style in a Norwegian Context

Wayfaring Voices Discursions into Black Vocal Style in a Norwegian Context Ane Carmen Stuve Roggen Master Thesis Department of Musicology University of Oslo Fall Semester 2008 1 Acknowledgements First, I would like to express my gratitude towards my supervisor, Stan Hawkins, for generously providing the most precise and perceptive guidance, and for encouraging me throughout the writing process. Other staff and students have offered valuable advice and good help along the way – thank you! Many thanks also to Gro Skorpen for useful comments which have helped both my English and my argument. I would also like to thank my family for always being there. And most of all, thank you, Ole- Martin Ihle, for sharing so much of your knowledge with me, for being patient, and for challenging me to become a little bolder. 2 3 Table of contents 1: INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................................................ 6 BACKGROUND, SUBJECTIVE POSITIONING, AND HYPOTHESIS .............................................................................. 6 Prologue: Wayfaring voices .......................................................................................................................... 6 Hypothesis and research enquiries................................................................................................................ 7 Clarifying “black vocal style”....................................................................................................................... 8 Clarifying “a Norwegian context” .............................................................................................................. 10 THEORETICAL ORIENTATION ............................................................................................................................. 11 Interdisciplinary influences from Popular Music Studies ........................................................................... 11 Discursions into popular music................................................................................................................... 12 METHODOLOGICAL CONCERNS ......................................................................................................................... 15 Choice of method: focus group research and qualitative interviews........................................................... 15 Sampling, composition, and my relation to the informants ......................................................................... 16 Location and facilitation of the focus group conversation .......................................................................... 17 Transcription, analysis, interpretation, application, and ethical concerns................................................. 18 Presenting data and subject position: avoiding neutral authority .............................................................. 20 THE STRUCTURE OF THE THESIS ........................................................................................................................ 21 2. BLACK FACES AND WHITE GAZES: APPROACHES TO APPROPRIATION................................. 24 THE ALLURE OF THE OTHER .............................................................................................................................. 24 The quest for hip: from white Negro to wigger ........................................................................................... 26 The Elvis effect ............................................................................................................................................ 28 THEORIZING BLACKNESS: A WAY OF DOING SOMETHING................................................................................... 30 Ownership and appropriation ..................................................................................................................... 34 Alternative approaches to appropriation .................................................................................................... 37 3. THE “NEGER” AND THE “NORWEGIAN”: ON DISCURSIVE MUSICAL CATEGORIES AND PERFORMATIVE TRANSFORMATIONS....................................................................................................40 Language wars: the “neger” and the “Norwegian”................................................................................... 41 DISCURSIVE TRANSFORMATIONS....................................................................................................................... 46 From Norwegian to white in popular music................................................................................................ 46 Remodelling otherness: from svart to black ................................................................................................ 48 Legitimate influences and mainstream material.......................................................................................... 50 Sounds of blackness down under ................................................................................................................. 53 Role models and the performance of possibilities ....................................................................................... 54 Performing the Other, or just her music?.................................................................................................... 57 4: INTO THE GROOVE: BLACKNESS AS A METAPHOR OF STYLE................................................... 60 Rediscovering an aesthetic mode of experience .......................................................................................... 60 “BLACKNESS” AS A METAPHOR OF STYLE ......................................................................................................... 65 Black style as musicological subject............................................................................................................ 67 5. STYLES AND STEREOTYPES: CONVERSATIONS ON THE SOCIAL SIGNIFICATIONS OF SOUNDS .............................................................................................................................................................. 70 Introduction: the focus group...................................................................................................................... 70 BLACK AND WHITE IN CONTRAST ...................................................................................................................... 72 Whiteness = “Jazz in Oslo” ........................................................................................................................ 72 Destabilization and hierarchy in Norwegian jazz ....................................................................................... 74 “The Norwegian way of being”................................................................................................................... 78 Emotional presence and cynicism ............................................................................................................... 80 The “flinkis” complex: shabby or slick? ..................................................................................................... 81 A rockist consensus?.................................................................................................................................... 84 Beautification, pynt, and play...................................................................................................................... 86 Adornments, emotions and inappropriate expressivity................................................................................ 89 Gendered blackness: syrupy or tough? ....................................................................................................... 91 In-between-ness ........................................................................................................................................... 92 4 AUTHENTICITY AND VOCAL DECEPTION............................................................................................................ 96 Black timbre ................................................................................................................................................ 96 Vocal identity and pretension...................................................................................................................... 98 Overdoing it: style, musical habitus, and authenticity .............................................................................. 100 6. WAYFARING VOICES: AN INTERPRETIVE CONVERSATION ...................................................... 106 KRISTIN ASBJØRNSEN’S WAYFARING STRANGER ........................................................................................... 107 The most common response....................................................................................................................... 107 Liberatingly colorblind.............................................................................................................................. 108 The background narrative ......................................................................................................................... 110 Reading a performance ............................................................................................................................. 111 Timbre and grain....................................................................................................................................... 113

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