Queer Theory and Third-Wave Feminism in Pauline Oliveros's Meditative Works

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Authors Ramirez, Eloy Fidel

Publisher The University of Arizona.

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QUEER THEORY AND THIRD-WAVE FEMINISM IN PAULINE OLIVEROS’S MEDITATIVE WORKS

by

Eloy Ramirez

______Copyright © Eloy Ramirez 2020

A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of the

FRED FOX SCHOOL OF MUSIC

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements

For the Degree of

MASTER OF MUSIC

In the Graduate College

THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA

2020

2

THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA GRADUATE COLLEGE

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF FIGURES ...... 4

ABSTRACT ...... 5

INTRODUCTION ...... 6

CHAPTER 1: REJECTION OF NORMATIVE PRACTICES THROUGH MEDITATIVE SHIFT ...... 16 Mandala and the Embracing of Pleasure ...... 19

MMM, a Lullaby for Daisy Pauline ...... 23

CHAPTER 2: PERFORMANCE AND COUNTERCULTURE ...... 28

Crow ...... 30

Crow Two: A Ceremonial Opera ...... 39

CHAPTER 3: INTERSECTIONAL APPROACHES TO ACTIVIST MUSIC ...... 54

CONCLUSION ...... 63

BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 65

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LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1.1. Pauline Oliveros, MMM, Lullaby for Daisy Pauline: A Meditation for Daisy Pauline Oliveros ...... 25

Figure 2.1. Pauline Oliveros, Crow, Pauline Oliveros Papers, University of California San Diego Special Collections, San Diego, CA. Box 2, Folder 9 ...... 32

Figure 2.2. Pauline Oliveros’s triangular diagram of awareness, attention, and observation ...... 33

Figure 2.3. Pauline Oliveros’s cross diagram of attention, awareness, conscious observation, unconscious observation ...... 34

Figure 2.4. Pauline Oliveros, Crow, Pauline Oliveros Papers, University of California San Diego Special Collections, San Diego, CA. Box 2, Folder 9 ...... 39

Figure 2.5. Pauline Oliveros, Crow Two: A Ceremonial Opera, Pauline Oliveros Papers, University of California San Diego Special Collections, San Diego, CA, Box 2, Folder 13 ...... 43

Figure 2.6. Pauline Oliveros, “Crow Two,” Pauline Oliveros Papers, University of California San Diego Special Collections, San Diego, CA. Box 2, Folder 13 ...... 55

Figure 3.1. Pauline Oliveros, El Relicario de los Animales (Kingston, NY: Deep Listening Publications, 1990), 3 ...... 62

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ABSTRACT

Pauline Oliveros’s (1932–2016) work is characterized by its activist influences. With compositions such as Sonic Meditations, Deep Listening, and Crow’s Nest, it seems clear that her experiences as a queer and feminist woman were integral influences in her work. Oliveros flourished in the 1980s and witnessed major changes in the feminist and LGBT movements. Her output reveals an early transition from a second- to third-wave feminist mentality. Through archival research and in-depth analysis of pieces such as MMM, a Lullaby for Daisy Pauline, this thesis will demonstrate how Oliveros’s relationship with third-wave feminism and queer theory shaped her musical aesthetic.

Oliveros’s oeuvre reveals parallels to third-wave feminism before its formal conception. I will demonstrate the significance of her collaborations with political activists, her intentions behind select compositions, and how her compositional trends mirror third-wave and queer ideas not yet widely adopted by advocacy groups of the era.

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INTRODUCTION

Shifts in the feminist and queer movements during the late twentieth and early twenty- first centuries in the United States prompted scholarly discourse on the intersections between composers’ music and their experiences as members of underrepresented communities.1 Pauline

Oliveros’s (1932–2016) work in the field of avant-garde music is a powerful case study in this discussion. In a version of Sonic Meditations (a series of works published in 1971) featured in

Source Magazine, Oliveros described herself as “a two-legged human being, a female, lesbian, musician, composer among other things which contribute to her identity.”2 Her application of meditation, electronics, and improvisation in compositions such as Sonic Meditations, Deep

Listening, and Bye Bye Butterfly earned her widespread recognition and established her as one of the most influential and thought-provoking composers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

A lesbian and an activist, Oliveros was witness to major changes in the feminist and

LGBTQ+ movements as well as to the conception of queer theory. The turn of the century became a critical juncture for groups advocating for social equality and emphasized the unification of individual efforts to strengthen the fight for all. By participating in these movements, Oliveros’s music began to exemplify queer and feminist traits, many of which were not yet embraced by those advocacy groups until years later. Oliveros’s implementation of deep

1 Judith Ann Peraino, Listening to the Sirens: Musical Technologies of Queer Identity from Homer to Hedwig (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005); Suzanne G Cusick, “Gendering Modern Music: Thoughts on the Monteverdi-Artusi Controversy,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 46, no. 1 (Oakland: Spring 1993): 1-25; Gary C Thomas, Elizabeth Wood and Philip Brett, Queering the Pitch: The New Gay and Lesbian Musicology (New York: Routledge, 2006).

2 Pauline Oliveros, “Sonic Meditations,” in Source: Music of the Avant-Garde, 1966– 1973, ed. Nilendra Gurusinghe, Douglas Kahn, and Larry Austin (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2011), 342.

7 listening and meditation, her desire to gain authenticity through a back-to-nature mindset, her deconstruction of traditional performance practices, and her interdisciplinary artistic approaches all reflect queer and feminist ideas. Her application of precursory practices and trends establish her as a forerunner for both the queer and feminist movements. Details of her life and the presence of activist and countercultural themes in her music illustrate how bridging major evolutions in these critical perspectives played a vital role in her musical aesthetic.

This thesis will describe how Oliveros preceded many third-wave and queer practices, and how compositions such as MMM, a Lullaby for Daisy Pauline (1980), her Crow series

(1974–1980), and El Relicario de los Animales (1979) incorporated those same views years before the formal labeling of queer theory and third-wave feminism. Through collaborations with various interdisciplinary artists including John Luther Adams, Annie Sprinkle, Elaine Summers, and Chungliang “Al” Huang, Oliveros embraced a compendious view of activism often rejected by early proponents of feminism.

In order to understand how the characteristics of queer and feminist theory apply to the music of Pauline Oliveros, it is important to know how the movements have evolved since their conceptions. The characterizations depicted in this analysis are by no means an all-encompassing depiction of feminist and queer ideas. Rather, they demonstrate the queer and feminist tenets present in her music and writings. Feminism in the United States has been the basis for coalitions in support of women’s suffrage, women’s rights, and women’s emancipation. Feminists have also argued for the destruction of the sex-gender system and have openly criticized the concept of a gender binary. American Feminist scholars categorize the evolution of the movement in terms of “waves,” and Oliveros’s life bridged a significant shift between waves in both the feminist and LGBTQ+ groups.

8

Organized by Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the First Woman's Rights

Convention in the United States took place in 1848, a meeting that would eventually be recognized as the start of first-wave feminism in the United States.3 Convention participants launched the women’s suffrage movement in the United States by creating a set of grievances and demands intended to organize and petition for women’s rights known as the Declaration of

Sentiments and Resolutions.4 Mott and Stanton along with Susan B. Anthony became the figureheads of the movement. Their efforts focused on the equality of women and men, leading to the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, which prohibited states and the federal government from denying on the basis of sex the right of citizens of the United States to vote.5

In the 1960s, a strong resurgence of feminism led to the second wave (ca.1960–1992), a period focused on liberating women's sexuality, abolishing employment discrimination, and increasing political representation.6 Scholars frequently credit Betty Friedan’s The Feminist

Mystique (1963) and Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex (1949) with sparking the women’s movement of the 1960s and 1970s.7 Friedan became an early leading figure of feminism during the onset of the second wave and argued that “the personal is political,” a belief that the personal

3 Betty Friedan, Kirsten Lise Fermaglich, and Lisa M. Fine, The Feminine Mystique: Annotated Text (New York, W.W. Norton & Co, 2013), 66.

4 Ibid.

5 Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Matilda Joslyn Gage, and Ida Husted Harper, History of Woman Suffrage (New York, Arno Press, 1969), 18.

6 Friedan, Fermaglich, and Fine, The Feminine Mystique: Annotated Text, xvi.

7 Ibid., xi-xvi.

9 experiences of women are entrenched in their political situation and gender inequality.8 Several organizations associated with the movement—including the National Organization for Women

(est. 1966), formed by Friedan—excluded non-traditional women such as lesbians, trans-women, and masculine-appearing women.9 Being turned away by major leaders of second-wave feminism encouraged groups of separatist and lesbian feminists to attempt to exclusively interact with other women or lesbians.10 The movement faced criticism by feminists such as bell hooks, who felt that women of color, members of sexual minorities, and working-class and poor white women were completely absent from the second-wave vision.11

As indicated by scholars such as Kimberlé Crenshaw and Rebecca Walker, the end of the twentieth century saw a shift toward uniting various social equality efforts with the third wave of feminism.12 In the 1990s, a surge of young feminists with similarly open-minded points of view emerged. In 1992, writer and activist Rebecca Walker founded an advocacy group called the

Third Wave Fund.13 The Third Wave Fund’s ideas are rooted in the concept of intersectionality,

8 Sara M Evans, Personal Politics: The Roots of Women's Liberation in the Civil Rights Movement and the New Left (New York: Vintage Books, 1980), 105.

9 Rita Mae Brown, “Lavender Menace,” The Reader's Companion to U.S. Women's History (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1998), 320.

10 Stephanie Gilmore, “Feminism,” in Encyclopedia of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender History in America (Detroit, MI, Charles Scribner's Sons, 2004), 162.

11 bell hooks, Feminist Theory from Margin to Center (Boston, MA, South End Press, 1984), xi.

12 Kimberle Crenshaw, “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color,” Stanford Law Review 43, no. 6 (1991): 1241.

13 Martin Meeker, "Behind the Mask of Respectability: Reconsidering the Mattachine Society and Male Homophile Practice, 1950s and 1960s," Journal of the History of Sexuality 10, no. 1 (2001): 78.

10 a term coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw. Crenshaw argued that the overlap of multiple, separate social issues perpetuated and increased injustice experienced by marginalized groups, emphasizing the importance of putting two causes of action together in order to strengthen the fight for all.14 Third-wave feminists attempt to reclaim behaviors, actions, and labels that have been historically used to oppress women. This practice can be observed through sex positivity and the reclamation of derogatory terms. Feminist scholars such as Judith Walkowitz and Gayle

Rubin noted that through a suppression of the erotic, women have historically been vilified and shamed for embracing pleasure or exhibiting modes of behavior deemed inappropriate by society.15 In reclaiming their sexuality, third-wave feminists attempt to take back autonomy over their identity and self-expression.

The lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) social movement is a coalition that advocates for equal rights and treatment of LGBT people. The LGBT movement in the United

States developed in response to the discrimination faced by this community and ultimately experienced similar changes to those that feminism had already undergone at the end of the twentieth century.16 LGBT rights activists in the twentieth century were criticized for non- confrontational and gender-specific methods of activism. Lauren Berlant, Eve Sedgwick, and

Judith Butler spearheaded a queer movement in the early 1990s with beliefs entrenched in the works of Michel Foucault.

14 Crenshaw, “Mapping the Margins,” 1241.

15 Gayle Rubin, Deviations: A Gayle Rubin Reader (Durham, NC, Duke University Press Books, 2012), 150.

16 William B. Turner, “Queer Theory and Queer Studies,” in Encyclopedia of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender History in America, ed. Marc Stein (Detroit, MI: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2004), 481.

11

Queer theory is organic; it grows and adapts to cultural shifts. Scholars who follow this school of thought attempt to critique heteronormativity, or what society has accepted as the sexually appropriate norm or behaviors.17 Queer activists avoided defining the term “queer” and refused to conform to the parameters of a set definition, and work towards producing discourse that ideally disrupts power structures.18 As described in Lauren Berlant and Michael Warner’s,

“What Does Queer Theory Teach Us about X?,” being different is vital to queer theorists as they aim to disrupt normative structures and traditional gender binaries.19 Third-wave feminism and queer theory now work to advocate for each other as both movements have overlapping goals.

Like third-wave feminism, queer tenets strive to strengthen the fight for comprehensive social equality. The practice of reclaiming derogatory images, acts, and names and redefining them to empower the community is just one example of characteristics that overlap in third-wave feminism and queer theory.

The reclamation of derogatory terms, like many other practices of these movements, was already present in Pauline Oliveros’s worldview. The practice of reclaiming once-pejorative terms can be observed in Oliveros’s book Software for People, where she proudly boasts a list of terms she claimed certain women have been labeled throughout history, which includes “hussy,”

“dyke,” “wench,” and “whore.” Unlike much of the scholarly literature regarding Pauline

Oliveros, I make the argument that third-wave feminist ideology is embodied in her work.

Second-wave feminism is often criticized for failing to deal adequately with sexual difference,

17 Ibid.

18 Lauren Berlant and Michael Warner, “What Does Queer Theory Teach Us about X?” Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, no. 3 (1995): 343.

19 Turner, “Queery Theory,” 547–566.

12 erotic pleasure, race, and transgenderism, while social equality for all plays a central role in the third wave.20 The concept of inclusivity and unification is embodied in Oliveros’s work through the implementation of the geometric symbol of the mandala in her music as well as her deep listening workshops. In her essay “MMM,” Oliveros expresses how her use of “the circular shape of the mandala represents global attention which is a unifying and all-inclusive concept.

We use it to sense context, seeing many things at once. In meditation, the circle is awareness of the environment, and global attention is receptivity.”21

Oliveros was an active member of the feminist and queer movements and her life bridged transitional moments in both of them. This change can be traced through her work. In addition to her music, the overlaps of queerdom and third-wave feminism appear throughout scholarly writings, interviews, and collaborations. As Oliveros wrote about herself in a publication of

Source: Music of the Avant-Garde:

She is devoted to the elevation and equalization of the feminine principle along with the masculine principle. The feminine principle is subjugated in both women and men, personally and transpersonally. She believes that Sappho, the great Greek poetess, was the archetype of women composers and that the destruction of her work by the early Christians is representative of a movement which eliminated and suppressed all models of women as creators in the arts. She is further devoted to uncovering, establishing, and encouraging new models to which women and the feminine side of men can relate.22

This statement resembles the black, queer, and black-feminist scholarship on rage, where scholars focus on how to harness intense emotions (especially rage) and mobilize them into

20 Rebecca Walker, To Be Real: Telling the Truth and Changing the Face of Feminism (New York, NY: Anchor Books, 1995).

21 Pauline Oliveros, “MMM,” in Software for People: Collected Writings (Baltimore: Smith Publications, 1984): 216.

22 Pauline Oliveros, “Sonic Meditations,” in Source: Music of the Avant-Garde, 342.

13 effective political actions.23 Oliveros was aware of the inequality faced by queer women of color and chose to focus that awareness into musical and political action. These efforts can be observed in her collaborative work with her romantic partner Carol Ione (a queer black woman) on

Njinga: The Queen King–The Return of a Warrior, a musical depicting the story of queen Njinga of Angola and the effects of colonialism and slavery. Like many queer concepts, this frame of thought is derived from Foucault’s idea of behavioral restriction causing intellectual expansion.24

Oliveros’s statements recounted how the historic repression of women is the motivation that drives them toward liberation; through the performance of her unique queer feminist affect, she attempted to disrupt patriarchal hierarchies.

Oliveros’s conception of the ♀ ensemble—an all-women’s meditation group founded in

1970 during Oliveros’s time as a professor at the University of California San Diego25—and the role it played in the formation of Sonic Meditations encouraged scholars such as Martha Mockus and Heidi Von Gunden to associate Oliveros’s work with separatist lesbian feminism.26 Von

Gunden writes that Oliveros worked solely with women until redefining her interpretation of feminism to be as inclusive as possible, as demonstrated in her piece To Valerie Solanas and

23 Susan Stryker, “My Words to Victor Frankenstein above the Village of Chamounix: Performing Transgender Rage,” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 1, no. 3 (1994), 238; Brittney Cooper, Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower (New York, NY, St. Martin's Press, 2018).

24 Michel Foucault, “Technologies of the Self,” in Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth, ed. Paul Rabinow (New York: The New Press, 1994), 224.

25 Peg Ahrens, “Music with Roots in the Aether,” Pauline Oliveros Papers, University of California San Diego Special Collections, San Diego, CA. Box 13, Folder 1.

26 Martha Mockus, Sounding Out: Pauline Oliveros and Lesbian Musicality (New York, NY: Routledge, 2008), 3.

14

Marilyn Monroe in Recognition of Their Desperation—.27 The composition has connections to feminism, as it is dedicated to the ♀ Ensemble. This orchestral score, composed in 1970, features a “non-hierarchical relationship of the players”28 and is focused on the interactions among the performing musicians. Her composition demands all members of the ensemble to be equal, their sounds becoming blended. Should one performer play too loudly, the ensemble must rise to match, a process that “requires careful listening.”29 These unique characteristics have an immediate link to feminism through the implementation of non-hierarchical structures and giving attention to the voices of women.30 Although Von Gunden provides an insightful representation of equality and inclusivity within the musical framework of the composition, the misconception that Oliveros expressed separatist traits is refuted by Chungliang “Al” Huang’s influence on

Oliveros’s meditative practice, Oliveros’s collaboration in his Tai Chi workshops in 1969, and his influence on the ♀ Ensemble.31

While scholars initially associated Oliveros’s Sonic Meditations with a separatist brand of feminist thought, I argue that Oliveros’s oeuvre reveals parallels to the relatively inclusive third- wave feminism, as well as to queer theory, long before their respective formal conceptions. In an interview with Martha Mockus, Oliveros indicated that her interests lay in “the well-being of

27 Von Gunden, The Music of Pauline Oliveros, 105.

28 Ibid., 40.

29 Ibid.

30 Jennifer Rycenga, “The Uncovering of Ontology in Music: Speculative and Conceptual Feminist Music,” Repercussions 3, no. 1 (Spring 1994): 44-45.

31 Pauline Oliveros, “The ♀ Ensemble flyer,” Pauline Oliveros Papers, University of California San Diego Special Collections, San Diego, CA. Chungliang Huang is a notable dancer, philosopher, performing artist and Tai Chi instructor.

15 others as well as myself. I’m interested in facilitating creative processes through the work that I do so that people feel like they can do it too if they want to. It’s the caring for community and connecting into a larger purpose than just for your own edification or your own satisfaction in a small realm.”32 Inclusivity is central to her later work, requiring non-hierarchical relationships among performers. By creating non-hierarchical forms of performance, Oliveros attempted to displace traditional power structures and provide equal opportunities for all who were involved in the music-making process.

32 Mockus, Sounding Out: Pauline Oliveros and Lesbian Musicality, 172.

16

CHAPTER 1: REJECTION OF NORMATIVE PRACTICES

THROUGH MEDITATIVE SHIFT

During the mid-to-late 1960s, Oliveros began to retreat into herself and demonstrated a desire to develop self-awareness, both personally and through her music. In an interview with

Moira Roth, Oliveros expressed that she was deeply troubled because of the social unrest of the time.33 The 1960s were a violent period of American history, marred by the Vietnam War, the

Cuban Missile Crisis, and the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr., and John F. Kennedy.

The turmoil faced by Americans led to civil rights uprisings such as LGBTQ+ riots, the Black

Power movement, and second-wave feminism. Oliveros replaced traditional performances with her interpretation of meditations, a decision that can be linked to Eve Sedgwick’s belief that many oppositional binaries (for example, performer/listener and student/teacher) become saturated with the implications of sexual binaries.34 In Music with Roots in the Aether, Peg Ahren describes Oliveros’s work following her electronic/multimedia period as a self-exploration.35

Oliveros’s magnum opus, Sonic Meditations, can be attributed to four major catalysts: The ♀

Ensemble, her introduction to meditation (facilitated by Chungliang “Al” Huang), slow listening, and the use of mandalas. By incorporating these aspects of her life into her music Oliveros began to present work that challenged traditional forms of composition.

In the introduction of Sonic Meditations, Oliveros indicated that “she attempts to erase the subject/object or performer/audience relationship,” an act that models Sedgwick’s queer

33 Ibid., 53.

34 Sedgwick, “Epistemology of the Closet,” 73.

35 Ahren, “Music with Roots in the Aether.”

17 principles.36 Suzanne Cusick best applies this concept to music in her article, “Gendering Modern

Music: Thoughts on the Monteverdi-Artusi Controversy,” as she examines the role of gender binaries within the realm of seventeenth-century music and how sexual implications governed the music. In her metaphor, the musician can be interpreted as a man bringing the listener, a woman, to ecstasy, thereby engendering the musician/listener binary.37 Oliveros proceeds to explain her intentions in the score for Sonic Meditations:

Pauline Oliveros has abandoned composition/performance practice as it is usually established today for Sonic Explorations which include everyone who wants to participate. She attempts to erase the subject/object or performer/audience relationship by returning to ancient forms which preclude spectators. She is interested in communication among all forms of life, through Sonic Energy. She is especially interested in the healing power of Sonic Energy and its transmission within groups.38

Cusick’s depiction of traditional gender roles and how their repercussions are embedded in music demonstrates the disproportionate distribution of power that third-wave and queer theorists aim to upset. Oliveros’s meditative works often require the participation of all who are present and eliminates the practice of a traditional performance. Through meditation Oliveros removed the performer/audience binary, thereby eliminating power biases. The use of meditation as a compositional focal point forces the emphasis to shift from providing music to using music as a personal developmental practice. By creating a more democratic form of performance,

Oliveros not only challenged normative performance practices, but she also disrupted traditional power imbalances. Sonic Meditations is central to the argument that Oliveros was a formative figure in queer theory and third-wave feminism.

36 Pauline Oliveros, Sonic Meditations (Urbana, Ill: Smith Publications, 1971), 3.

37 Cusick, “Gendering Modern Music,” 12.

38 Ibid.

18

In a 1994 interview with Fred Everett Maus, Oliveros expressed her discomfort with essentialist views of gender roles,39 a standpoint that further demonstrates Oliveros’s aversion to binaries and societal expectations of gender. During the interview, Maus and Oliveros discussed her collection of essays Software for People, which contains an article for the New York Times, titled “And Don’t Call Them ‘Lady’ Composers” (1970). In the article Oliveros writes:

Society has perpetuated an unnatural atmosphere that encourages distortions such as “girl” used as a bad word by little boys from the age of 9 or 10. From infancy, boys are wrapped in blue blankets and continually directed against what is considered feminine activity. What kind of self-image can little girls have, then, with half their peers despising them because they have been discouraged from so-called masculine activities and wrapped in pink blankets?40

Oliveros makes a point to express her frustration with the concept of behaviors designated by society throughout this article. While discussing the article with Maus, Oliveros states:

It’s hard on both men and women to be cast into roles where there's no real flexibility in terms of what they can do. I've known men who wanted to be with their children and some who actually did stay home and take care of the kids while the wife went to work. But to balance out the situation so that neither person is oppressed by the role—it has to come about through mutual agreement, and also through support of society. The social pressure to be a particular way becomes very great, and it has been unquestioned.41

As a composer whose music often involves the participation of the audience, this way of thinking goes beyond societal gender norms. Maus indicates that establishing these habits in music can be especially challenging because of the historically-set distinctions between the audience and the

39 Pauline Oliveros and Fred Maus, “A Conversation about Feminism and Music,” Perspectives of New Music 32, no. 2 (1994): 177.

40 Pauline Oliveros, “And Don’t Call Them ‘Lady’ Composers,” The New York Times, September 13, 1970.

41 Pauline Oliveros and Fred Maus, “A Conversation about Feminism and Music,” 177.

19 musical performer.42 This section of the article proceeds to depict the composer’s frustration with socially constructed gender norms. Oliveros states:

I’d like to get beyond gender!—I’d like to get to the faculties or processes that are available to the human being. And the fact that one process is associated with one gender is too bad because I think that all processes should be available, and encouraged, in order to come out with balanced human beings who are able to access any resource they have, rather than being cut off from it. Why do we have it? It’s there to use! But all systems of socialization cause the suppression of certain aspects of intelligence.43

Oliveros depicted a desire to express a genuine identity which may have not been what has been historically associated with her gender. Like queer and third-wave feminists, Oliveros once more sought to create equal opportunities through the abolition of binaries.

Mandala and the Embracing of Pleasure

The use of the mandala as the structural element of Oliveros’s compositions proved to be an additional example of rejecting normative practices specific to music. Oliveros turned to a meditative form of composition as a result of a desire to develop self-awareness. She often used the term meditation in a secular sense to mean steady attention and awareness for continuous or cyclic periods.44 Many of Oliveros’s meditative compositions create a paradox: the performer is required to be observant and socially aware in order to achieve an individualistic state of self- awareness. In order to execute one of Oliveros’s meditative work as she intends, the performer must fully commit to following the directions while embracing pleasure through self-awareness

42 Ibid., 179.

43 Ibid., 180.

44 Pauline Oliveros, “On Sonic Meditation,” in Software for People: Collected Writings (Baltimore: Smith Publications, 1984), 216.

20 and enlightenment. As John Cage stated, “Through Pauline Oliveros and Deep Listening I finally know what harmony is…. It's about the pleasure of making music.”45

In her interview with Maus, Oliveros expressed a belief that “there is the sadness of the misunderstanding of sensuality. We have bodies, and we have them to enjoy! We come into the world to enjoy our bodies. Babies enjoy their bodies. And, again, when you watch your son, the blowing of air through the lips is a very sensual act. He's learning about that pleasure.”46

Oliveros takes this belief a step further and applies the concept of sensuality to her music and active listening, which plays a crucial role in many of her works including Sonic Meditations and her work with Deep Listening:

Active listening is the grasp, the ability to perceive the structure as it’s happening: but not by describing it to yourself, because if in fact that's what's happening, you’re missing the sensual aspect of the sound, and I think that happens very often. With some balancing, you can listen actively and have the sensual aspect, simultaneously. But if you add describing, as it’s going, then there’s loss.47

In “The Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power,” Audre Lorde expressed the concept of eroticism as the source of women’s power. Lorde draws from the ancient Greek definition of the erotic, Eros: the personification of love in all its aspects. For Lorde, the erotic provided the power that comes from deeply sharing any pursuit with another person. “The sharing of joy, whether physical, emotional, psychic, or intellectual, forms a bridge between the sharers which can be the basis for understanding much of what is not shared between them, and lessens the

45 John Cage, “Responding to the Deep Listening Band’s CD Deep Listening” (lecture, Sky Walker Ranch Sound Design Conference, Nicasio, CA, August 1989).

46 Ibid., 183.

47 Ibid., 182.

21 threat of their difference.”48 The erotic also functioned as the underlying capacity for joy and satisfaction to which, once we have experienced it, we know we can aspire.49 Moreover, it is important to acknowledge that for many, that joy and satisfaction may not be analogous to normative aspirations such as marriage or afterlife. For Oliveros, this notion of joy and satisfaction was cultivated through the pleasure of deep mindful listening, and meditation.

Oliveros sought physical and mental pleasure through the sensuality of long tones and in the pursuit of a form of satisfaction dealing with self-cognizance.

Through her meditative shift, Oliveros’s work became more internalized—seeking an inward change rather than an audience’s recognition both personally and through her music— more defined, directed, and “concerned with energy transformations as a whole.”50 Queer social practices try to unsettle the normalization that has made heterosexuality hegemonic as well as those material practices that, though not explicitly sexual, are implicated in the hierarchies of property and propriety that Warner and Berlant define as heteronormative.51 Oliveros questioned the propriety of music in regard to standard musical practice. She felt that her musical thought could no longer be constrained within the normalized parameters attached to standard musical practices.

48 Audre Lorde, “The Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power,” in Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (Berkeley: Crossing Press, 2007), 53.

49 Ibid.

50 Martha Mockus, Sounding Out: Pauline Oliveros and Lesbian Musicality (New York, NY: Routledge, 2008), 53.

51 Michael Warner, “Sex in Public,” Critical Inquiry 24, no. 2 (1998): 548.

22

In response to these constraints, Oliveros appropriated the mandala as the structural basis of her compositions. Oliveros defines the mandala as a circular diagram with a dot in the center and as a plan for action. She used the circular shape of the mandala to represent global attention—an inclusive non-linear process. This non-hierarchical shape is used in many works, including her Sonic Meditations, MMM, a Lullaby for Daisy Pauline, and her Crow series.

Historically, a mandala is defined as a Buddhist or Hindu geometric configuration that symbolizes the universe and is represented as a circle enclosing a square and bearing images of deities.52 The mandala is typically used as an object in which to focus one’s attention while meditating. Although the root of the term mandala is Sanskrit and has Indian origins, scholars have pointed out that forms of mandalas can be observed in various cultures including Mayan,

Aztec, Japanese, and Chinese.53 The introduction and popularizing of the mandala and Buddhist culture to Europe and the Americas during the twentieth century can be credited to Carl Jung and

Allen Watts.54 As a secular idea in the United States, the mandala is often used as a psychological and meditative tool “for personal growth, stress reduction, and creative expression.”55

In 1964, Oliveros released Pieces of Eight, her first work centered on a mandala. A sketch of the piece was made using a circle, enabling her to sense the piece as a whole at a

52 Giuseppe Tucci, The Theory and Practice of the Mandala: With Special Reference to the Modern Psychology of the Subconscious, (New York: Weiser, 1970), 16.

53 Maggie Grey, “Encountering the Mandala: The Mental and Political Architectures of Dependency,” Culture Mandala 4, no. 2 (2001): 5.

54 Encyclopedia Britannica Online, S.v. “Mandala,” June 2, 2020. https://www.britannica.com/topic/mandala-diagram

55 Susanne F. Fincher, Creating Mandalas: For Insight, Healing, and Self-Expression, (Berkeley, CA: Shambhala, 2010), 1.

23 glance. Each section of the circle was a structural cue and represented two minutes of time.

Oliveros’s deconstruction of established normative structures used to compose music can be viewed as an example of her queer compositional thought process. During a time when seemingly-masculine lesbians such as Oliveros were marginalized—not only by the heteronormative, male-dominated society but by the feminist and LGBT communities to which she belonged—Oliveros emphasized inclusivity for all through her use of a mandala. By including the statement in the introduction to the Sonic Meditations that all persons willing to commit themselves could participate in their performance, Oliveros further expressed a third- wave sense of inclusivity.56

MMM, a Lullaby for Daisy Pauline

MMM, a Lullaby for Daisy Pauline exemplifies Oliveros’s commitment to inclusivity and rejection of hierarchical structures through the use of the circular mandala, her deconstruction of binaries through mediation, and her emphasis on pleasure through slow listening. MMM, a

Lullaby for Daisy Pauline connects to third-wave ideas about human pleasure—a much broader concept than the second-wave sense of sexual liberation. Indeed, Oliveros’s depiction of the importance of human pleasure is specific to third-wave ideas and is at the root of queer theory.

As the work’s instructions indicate,

Hum the sound of pleasure as if you were serenading your best-loved infant. Play with the mmm sound by adding vowels and diphthongs between the mmm’s using any repetitions or prolongations. When you finish making sound stay open to your sensations and can you imagine gradually expanding your awareness to sensing your surroundings.57

56 Oliveros, Sonic Meditations, 2.

57 Pauline Oliveros, Lullaby for Daisy Pauline: A Meditation for Daisy Pauline Oliveros (Kingston, NY: Deep Listening Publications, 1990), 1.

24

The beginning of the work is represented by the inner circle of M’s (fig. 1.1). The participants are asked to sit symmetrically in a circle as they hum. The circle expands not only to represent a growth in volume but to indicate sound prolongation and an expansion of awareness of each participant in their surroundings. The outermost circle instructs the participant to experiment with the sound they are producing by adding vowels and diphthongs between the M’s. As expressed in her interview with Maus, Oliveros believed that the desire for pleasure is a primal instinct that can be observed in children. The importance placed on long tones, vibrations, timbre changes, the prolongation, manipulation, and repetition of sounds is vital to this work. The practice of slow listening in this and many compositions resembles the idea of slow reading, a practice that fetishizes the idea of consuming knowledge.58 Although this work is dedicated to children and is thus not directly related to erotic experiences, the similarity of slow listening to slow reading eroticizes sound by slowly creating a sense of shifting vibrations of sounds over an extended period of time; it also connects to Oliveros’s comments that children experience the world sensually.59

58 Oliveros and Maus, “A Conversation about Feminism and Music.”

59 Oliveros, Software for People, 138.

25

Figure 1.1. Pauline Oliveros, MMM, Lullaby for Daisy Pauline: A Meditation for Daisy Pauline Oliveros

26

Oliveros’s collaboration with sexologist, erotic performer, and feminist-pornography producer Annie Sprinkle, is an ideal example of how Oliveros supported sex positivity and pleasure. Her composition of the musical score for Sprinkle’s pornographic film The Sluts &

Goddesses Video Workshop, or, How To Be a Sex Goddess in 101 Easy Steps (1992), breaks away from the second-wave mindset that sex work and pornography further perpetuates sexual oppression. Second-wave feminists such as Audre Lorde often considered pornography as a repression of true feelings, which for scholars like Lorde is a denial of the joy and satisfaction the erotic provides. Third-wave feminists take Lorde’s own argument to demonstrate how women can choose to engage in sex work as a means of regaining ownership of their own sexual expression. Feminists assert that through a suppression of the erotic, women have historically been vilified and shamed for embracing pleasure or exhibiting modes of behavior deemed inappropriate by society. Lorde believed that the erotic has been suppressed and drawn upon only when men need a woman’s sexuality.60 Advocates of feminist-pornography, such as Annie

Sprinkle, asserted that by taking back sex work they could displace power inequalities and provide women in this field of work with erotic power.

By participating in Sprinkle’s film, Oliveros is demonstrating her commitment to women's pleasure, the undoing of stereotypical beauty standards, and an embrace of the erotic that anticipated twenty-first-century feminist thought. The Sluts & Goddesses Video Workshop, or, How to Be a Sex Goddess in 101 Easy Steps is a video workshop intended to educate women on how to explore their own bodies and sexuality. The film aims to disrupt normative ideas of eroticism. Oliveros’s detachment from the standard Western art music compositional style

60 Audre Lorde, “The Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power,” in Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (Berkeley: Crossing Press, 2007), 88.

27 contributed to Sprinkle’s nonconformist objective. Like much of Oliveros’s work, Sprinkle incorporates ritualistic and Buddhist spiritual practices. The film includes tantric rituals, “energy orgasms through ecstasy breathing” and “erotic meditations.”61 Although the blatant exoticism in this film is not excused, Sprinkle does address this issue in a disclaimer:

This film was made in 1989/90, before the discussions and awareness of cultural appropriation we have today. In retrospect, this film involves some appropriation. Annie has explained that if she were to make this film today, she would be culturally sensitive, mindful, and do it very differently. She hopes no one will be offended viewing this uncensored original version.62

Oliveros provided an electronic and instrumental composition for the film. The music called for tambourines, bells, and hand drums to imitate sounds of breathing, and were also used when

Sprinkle described ritualistic themes or antiquated axioms of women’s sexuality.63 Electronic massager wands were represented by didjeridus and electronic music was used when Sprinkle presented her most poignant remarks. In correspondence between Sprinkle and Oliveros,

Sprinkle emphasized the importance of diversity and includes women of color, elderly women, and women of varying body types. Her contributions to this film demonstrate an overt embrace of pleasure, but Oliveros’s use of deep listening provided a more subtle but vital incorporation of the erotic.

61 Annie Sprinkle, “A Workshop/Experience with Dr. Annie Sprinkle,” Anniesprinkle.org(asm), accessed April 10, 2020, http://anniesprinkle.org/projects/archived- projects/sluts-and-goddesses/.

62 Annie Sprinkle, “The Sluts & Goddesses Workshop— or How to Be a Sex Goddess in 101 Easy Steps,” Anniesprinklemovies.com, accessed April 10, 2020, https://www.anniesprinklemovies.com/video/sluts/.

63 Pauline Oliveros, “Correspondence with Annie Sprinkle,” Pauline Oliveros Papers, New York Public Library Archives, New York City, NY, Box 31, Folder 97.

28

CHAPTER 2: PERFORMANCE AND COUNTERCULTURE

Through the application of pleasure, inclusivity, and the deconstruction of established musical practices, Oliveros performed her unique identity through music. If we consider performance as defined by Kyla Tompkins, the term may mean an aesthetic or theatrical event; it may also point to the fulfillment of social norms—ways of living, talking, and “doing” selfhood—that makes oneself legible and acceptable to the social world.64 By expressing queer and feminist tenets through her compositions, Oliveros is emoting affect in the form of music.

According to Brian Massumi, affects are visceral forces that precede or go beyond an emotional or conscious state that can serve to drive us toward movement.65 In publicly expressing a form of disruptive art, Oliveros challenged socially established expectations of what traditional normative music is, an act which is an overtly queer demonstration.

The act of restricting behavior in order to produce artistic expansion can be observed through the meditative practices that led up to the creation of Sonic Meditations. In Listening to the Sirens: Musical Technologies of Queer Identity from Homer to Hedwig, Judith Peraino examines how the Foucauldian concept of asceticism and prohibition yielding self-knowledge manifests in music.66 Oliveros frequently instructed members of the ♀ Ensemble to refrain from speaking and encouraged members to express themselves through their meditation.67 By

64 Kyla Wazana Tompkins, “Intersections of Race, Gender, and Sexuality: Queer of Color Critique,” in The Cambridge Companion to American Gay and Lesbian Literature (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 184.

65 Brian Massumi, Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002):139.

66 Judith Ann Peraino, Listening to the Sirens: Musical Technologies of Queer Identity from Homer to Hedwig (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 68.

67 Pauline Oliveros, “The ♀ Ensemble,” Pauline Oliveros Papers, University of California San Diego Special Collections, San Diego, CA, Box 12, Folder 1.

29 repressing forms of expression and exerting them through her meditative and musical works,

Oliveros participated in the performance of her personal affect. Although queer and feminist communities are so varied that it would be impossible to have a unifying sense of affect, I argue that Oliveros’s unique intersectional experiences of being queer and a woman appear throughout her work.

In 1974, Oliveros premiered the first of three works centered on the symbolism of a crow, a series which demonstrates how Oliveros used her unique queer and third-wave performance of affect in her music. The three works were titled Crow (1974), Crow Two: A Ceremonial Opera

(1974), and Crow’s Nest (1981), and were all structured around Native American and Buddhist mysticism. Like many of her works, the crow works are primarily meditative; the scores are instructions depicted as a mandala and delivered through prose. Oliveros’s adoption of Lakota characters and her use of Buddhist and Aboriginal spiritual and ceremonial practices further demonstrates the significance of queer culture in Oliveros’s work.

Crow was commissioned by the Creative Associates Center for the Creative and

Performing Arts at State University of New York at Buffalo and dedicated to “the Indians of

North America.”68 The structural elements of the composition are intended to create an interactive environment of self-awareness and meditation.69 Oliveros designed her meditative works to seek self-awareness for herself and the performer. Although her interest in seeking pleasure from sound and listening is rooted in her exploration of long tones, her introduction to meditation through Chungliang “Al” Huang was a major turning point in Oliveros’s work with

68 Pauline Oliveros, “Crow,” Pauline Oliveros Papers, University of California San Diego Special Collections. San Diego, CA, Box 2, Folder 9.

69 Ibid.

30 regards to deep listening, meditation, and self-awareness. Oliveros aimed to turn inward to discover authenticity in a world that had historically oppressed her and her community. Ancient spiritual practices such as the implementation of mandalas and meditation became Oliveros’s tool to express her artistic identity. By 1970 she had established the ♀ Ensemble and wrote in her essay “On Sonic Meditations” that:

A profound change occurred: rather than manipulating our voices or instruments in a goal-oriented way in order to produce certain effects, we began to allow changes to occur involuntarily, or without conscious effort, while sustaining a sound voluntarily. It is an entirely different mode. It requires the elimination of opinions, desires and, speculations.70

Oliveros would go on to compose numerous meditative works throughout her career, incorporating spiritual and ceremonial practices from a wide-ranging variety of cultures.

Crow

The analysis of this series examines not only how Oliveros’s compositional method reflects activist thought, but how the resulting perception of the Crow series aligns with third- wave and queer trends. By incorporating countercultural and meditative themes into her music,

Oliveros is expressing her affect and exhibiting the queer principle of rejecting normative practices. The use of these themes, as seen in the Crow series, resulted in a new form of composition. Through an analysis of the meditative integrations in this series, I will demonstrate how Oliveros created what I call a utopian production of unconscious sound: a compositional method that can be considered one of her most significant contributions to the development of music in the twentieth century.

70 Oliveros, “On Sonic Meditation,”141.

31

Oliveros composed Crow during a leave of absence from the University of California San

Diego that was funded by a Guggenheim Fellowship, and it would have its premiere in 1974.71

During this period of Oliveros’s career she was deeply interested in the topic of ethnopoetics and

Native American spirituality.72 She became interested in the symbolism of the crow in Native

American culture and “adopted the animal as her herald and totem, making it the underlying intention for the mandala” used in this composition.73

Similar to Sonic Meditations, the structural framework of Crow is partially provided by an instructional score manuscript. The remaining structural framework is provided by the full commitment and self-awareness of the participants. The score for Crow calls for a flexible number of musicians with a minimum of five performers, and it is comprised of an unconventional ensemble including one or more percussionists; one instrumentalist or vocalist capable of a wide variety of qualities of sounds; two vocalists capable of a wide variety of qualities of sounds, and sustained, slow body movement; one person capable of maintaining calm sustained concentration while walking very slowly; and the audience.74 The work is intended for performance in an open space and the audience should surround the performers. The instrumentation of the work is a clear example of Oliveros’s deconstruction of normative performance practices and a rejection of what has been traditionally associated with the Western

Art Music canon. The score indicates that four symbols (fig. 2.1) should be projected while the

71 Von Gunden, The Music of Pauline Oliveros, 123.

72 Pauline Oliveros, “Letter from Michel Benamou,” Pauline Oliveros Papers, University of California San Diego Special Collections, San Diego, CA.

73 Von Gunden, The Music of Pauline Oliveros, 123.

74 Oliveros, “Crow,” Box 2, Folder 9.

32 performance is enacted. The four projected images should be a circle with a dot in the center, a triangle, a cross, and an aerial view of a rocky landscape with a crow flying.

Figure 2.1. Pauline Oliveros, Crow, Pauline Oliveros Papers, University of California San Diego Special Collections. San Diego, CA. Box 2, Folder 9.

Although not explicitly indicated in the score, the symbols included in Crow have far more meaning than what is immediately apparent: the symbols play a central role in Oliveros’s expectation for the performers to create unconscious sound. Other than the obvious inclusion of the inspiration for the work, Oliveros does not indicate the reason for projecting the images in

Crow. The first of the three projections is a symbol common in many of Oliveros’s works, the archetypal mandala. In her essay “On Sonic Meditation,” Oliveros describes this symbol as follows:

The dot represents attention, and the circle, awareness. In these respective positions, each is centered in relation to the other. Awareness can expand, without losing center or its balanced relationship with attention, and simultaneously become more inclusive. Attention can be focused as fine as possible in any direction, and can probe all aspects of awareness without losing its balanced relationship to awareness.75

Oliveros goes on to use the triangle to describe a cyclic three-way relationship among awareness, attention, and observation (fig. 2.2).76

75 Pauline Oliveros, “On Sonic Meditation,” 141.

76 Ibid., 150–152.

33

Figure 2.2. Oliveros’s triangular diagram of awareness, attention, and observation.

The frequent use of these symbols represents not only her commitment to self-awareness and inclusivity but the significance of meditation and the desire to seek authenticity through ancient spirituality. The concept of breathing provides an ideal example of this relationship and how it is used in the crow series. Although one’s mind is aware of the breath, one is not consciously attentive to breathing. During a Sonic Meditation, the performer should be both conscious and aware, a relationship that results in the observation of one’s presence in the meditation. Oliveros believed this relationship created a dualism where a participant of the meditation becomes both the observer and the subject or the student and the teacher: the performer is continuously developing the meditative practice. This triangular process leads to a similar concept symbolized by the cross. Oliveros introduced conscious and unconscious observation to the triangular process, and provided the following scenario to demonstrate this process:

Often, even ordinarily, when my attention is engaged (and awareness is present, or absent as the case may be), I am too caught up in the present moment, or too subjective, to observe myself during an event or events. Later however, reflecting on a situation, it is possible to remember myself objectively in the event or events and in detail. The memory may occur spontaneously, or be retrieved laboriously indicating that observation has taken place on some unconscious level. The relationship of conscious observation to unconscious observation might be similar to the relationship of attention and awareness. It can be represented by the same dot and circle. The dot represents conscious observation and the circle, unconscious observation, with the same sort of reciprocal, centered relationship possible.77

77 Ibid., 153.

34

The cross then represents the complementary relationship between attention, awareness, conscious observation, unconscious observation (fig 2.3).

Figure 2.3. Oliveros’s cross diagram of attention, awareness, conscious observation, unconscious observation.

The symbols are not defined in the work, but as observed in the instructions for Crow, the concept of awareness and attention are central to enacting the performance. Oliveros begins by instructing the percussionist to imagine a single stroke roll. The percussionist must visualize the intensity, quality, and rate of the roll until the participant begins to play involuntarily. At first glance, the notion of playing an instrument involuntarily seems unrealistic. But, as a meditative work, one can begin to understand the composition and Oliveros’s intent. This seemingly impossible feat can also be considered Oliveros’s attempt to encourage the performer to reach for an elevated state of being, or an ideal world where this action is possible. The performer must follow the steps laid out by the symbols Oliveros has provided. Only by being actively attentive, aware, and observant will the performer be able to execute what the score is requiring. The percussionist is asked to roll for the duration of the performance. All variations in the rate, quality, and intensity must be corrected as they come about, to match the imagined single stroke roll. This presents the duality depicted by the triangle and requires the performer to be both the subject and the observer. Oliveros is asking the performer to be aware and attentive to the roll,

35 thereby observing oneself and unconsciously executing the roll. For the instrumentalist or vocalist role, Oliveros places the focus on listening. The performer is asked to enact their role in the same way as the percussionist. As the instructions indicate,

Begin by listening to every continuous sound in the environment. Listen also to your own continuous internal body sounds. Consider these continuities as a drone. Whenever you feel prepared or are triggered by an intermittent sound, or random sound from the environment, make any sound or a cycle of like sounds. When the sound ends re-establish contact with all continuities you were hearing as the drone before making another sound.78

Oliveros is instructing this performer to use listening as the root of their meditation. The practice of awareness and attention is reinforced by the recurring influence of drones and long tones in

Oliveros’s work, an idea core to her belief of sound as pleasure.79

Oliveros is using music and meditation to create a sense of utopia, a key premise in

Queer theory. Participants of Oliveros’s meditative works are encouraged to seek an elevated state of being through deep listening. Utopia, as defined by Ruth Levitas, is an ideal but unattainable society.80 For many scholars, queerness is an ideality that has not yet been achieved.

According to José Esteban Muñoz, queerness exists as an ideality that can be distilled from the past and used to imagine a future.81 Self-awareness and enlightenment for Oliveros and queer theorists is a continuous goal and way of living. Queerness is a longing that drives us forward.82

78 Oliveros, “Crow,” Box 2, Folder 9.

79 Oliveros, Software for People, 138.

80 Ruth Levitas, Utopia as Method: The Imaginary Reconstitution of Society (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 3.

81 José Esteban Muñoz, Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity. Sexual Cultures (New York: New York University Press, 2009), 3.

82 Ibid.

36

At a macro level, the idea of utopia appears in Crow as meditative music that is used to continuously develop the concept of self-awareness and inclusivity. When examining Crow through a more microscopic lens, the duality of awareness and attentiveness to correct and continuously develop the meditation for the individual creates an ideal plan to aspire for but has not yet been achieved. Moreover, the objective of creating a sound unconsciously is a potentially unattainable goal but provides the performer with an ideal world that drives them forward. The concept of utopian unconscious sound production requires a continuous attempt to develop a sense of self-awareness without a promise of ever achieving the goal. Every participant is asked to be both socially aware but to seek the individualist concept of self-awareness. Oliveros and members of the queer and third-wave movements continuously attempt to create an ideal world for each other to explore their personal identity while still advocating for the rights of all.

Oliveros’s aspirations to create a utopia go beyond her music and are also present throughout her writings and advocacy for sexual liberation and composers belonging to marginalized groups.

The most complex role in Crow lies with the moving vocalists. For this role, two participants are asked to enact a joint meditation. As the score instructs:

The performers are to observe each other from a long distance, establish eye contact which is to be maintained for the duration of the performance, while remaining aware of all the sounds surrounding them. They are to make any sound when ready, or triggered by the partner, and mirror the partner’s sound as immediately as possible. The sounds must match exactly as fast as possible or counter with a sound as opposite as possible. Movement must be extremely slow and mirror each other, and must begin involuntarily. Ideally, neither partner should be able to discern who is causing the movement. Partners should move towards each other, pass at a central point, and exit opposite their respective beginning point. Lastly, the moving vocalists are to perform barefoot.83

83 Oliveros, “Crow,” Box 2, Folder 9.

37

The instructions for these performers require a multifaceted meditation where the two performers are asked to be aware of sound, sight, and mobility, while simultaneously interlocking with their partner. A handwritten draft of the program for the premiere of the work depicts the names of the performers and their given roles. Two of the participants are especially significant when analyzing this work. Oliveros was noted as one of the two moving vocalists, as depicted in the sketch of the program for the October 20, 1974, performance of Crow in Buffalo, NY (fig. 2.4).84

Two roles are excluded from the program; the second moving vocalist and the walking performer were exempt from the sketch. An additional role labeled “Heyoka” was included and was assigned to Linda Montano, a member of the ♀ Ensemble and Oliveros’s romantic partner.85 The walking performer is instructed to walk as silently as possible until it seems the performer is hearing through the soles of their feet, all while carrying a crow totem. Since the label “crow totem” is written next to Ellen Van Fleet, one may assume that the walking performer who carries the crow totem is to be executed by Van Fleet. Since the only role remaining is the second moving vocalist, the draft of the program confirms that Linda Montano was assigned to this role. Oliveros ends her score by inviting the audience to visualize a black dot.

84 Ibid.

85 Edith Gutierrez, “Letter to Pauline Oliveros and Linda Montano,” Pauline Oliveros Papers, Houston Metropolitan Research Center, Houston, TX, Box 4, Folder 5.

38

Figure 2.4. Pauline Oliveros, Crow, Pauline Oliveros Papers, University of California San Diego Special Collections. San Diego, CA. Box 2, Folder 9.

39

In casting herself and her lesbian romantic partner as the interlocked joint meditators in

Crow, Oliveros rendered visible modes of living that have been traditionally obscured. In the essay “Intersections of Race, Gender, and Sexuality: Queer of Color Critique,” Kyla Tompkins states, “To be different—to be queer, or to be trans, for instance—in a deeply normative world is by definition to be theatrical, in part because to be unapologetically visible in a world that would much rather you were invisible, or even dead, is by definition to be an event.”86 Heterosexuality is considered the norm and through this public queer performance, Oliveros disrupted normative forms of expression. As observed in the writings of several queer and feminist scholars, including Tompkins, Muñoz, and Audre Lorde, performance is central to queer theorists, and

Oliveros’s contributions to music—which reflect and in some cases, precede these scholars’ writings—further confirm Oliveros’s role as a harbinger of these movements. She is publicly demonstrating a lifestyle in her music that has been historically marginalized, an act which can be considered an overt disruption to the hegemonic heteronormative expression of affect.

Crow Two: A Ceremonial Opera

Following the premiere of Crow, Oliveros decided to re-focus the structural framework of the composition to create Crow Two: A Ceremonial Opera (1974). Due to the similar structure and content, Crow can be considered a preliminary version of Crow Two. Oliveros takes the idea of Native American and Indian spirituality and strengthens their pairing to create a composition rooted in a ritualistic form of meditation. The work commemorates her recently-deceased grandmother, and there is a strong emphasis on the idea of a matriarchal ceremony. Oliveros uses

86 Tompkins, “Intersections of Race, Gender, and Sexuality: Queer of Color Critique,” 173-89.

40 a large mandala as a road map for this work (fig. 2.5). The instructional score for Crow Two begins with a poem by Margaret A. Porter. The poem titled Crowlogue is included here:

A crow is not a crow is a crow. A crow, bright black, flashes through a sun-crazed field of Van Gogh Or, raven, intones “Nevermore” in the chamber of Poe From the bust of Pallas, as Athena’s sacred bird, For whom, when needed, she would utter an ominous word. Messenger, bird of beginning, it was crow who emerged First of all from the Ark. Three legged, crow sits before The sun-disk—Yang emblem of the Chinese emperor. Crow is chess-piece, the Rook; also, is seen to soar In the constellation corvus of the skies down-under. To the Absaroke, “Bird-people,” the bird of Thunder, Crow is symbol of earth, of spirit, of material night. Her caw makes part of the divination rite. “As the crow flies” you go for the most direct flight. What he steals he hoards and hides, and you never know What havoc this omnivorous creature, as a pet, will sow. Yet only a human being can be said to “eat crow.”87

Porter’s work invokes a sense of returning to earth, indigeneity, and primitivism. Crowlogue mirrors Oliveros’s desire to find self-awareness by returning to what can be considered a natural state. Porter praises the crow as an animal and depicts the significance it has played in ancient

Greek culture, Christianity, ancient Chinese culture, astrology, and finally in the Native

American Absaroke culture. Oliveros proceeds to develop the use of indigenous themes in the instructional score as she states:

87 Pauline Oliveros, “Crow Two,” Pauline Oliveros Papers, University of California San Diego Special Collections, San Diego, CA, Box 2, Folder 12.

41

In most cultures, the crow has had a rich and rather similar symbology. In classic myth, it had the ability to foresee the future. In Christian allegory, it stood for solitude. In alchemy, it represented the initial state, inherently characteristic of prime matter. To the American Indians, Celts, German and Siberian tribes it was the great civilizer and creator of the visible world, to the Crow people (the Absaroke) it meant creative power and spiritual strength. We see our Crow Mothers (a main character role in the composition) as personifications of these attributes.88

As previously stated, in response to societal unrest Oliveros turned inward in an attempt to discover herself and be more self-aware by embracing a back-to-the-land counterculture. The incorporation of primitivism by Oliveros and Porter raises important concerns about the appropriation of non-European and American cultures and the colonialist practice of commodifying cultures to which one does not belong. As James Clifford summarized, borrowing from “primitive” cultures may be seen as part of Western society’s “taste for appropriating otherness, for constituting non-Western arts in its own image, for discovering universal, ahistorical ‘human’ capacities.”89 Moreover, the misrepresentation and reductionist application of those other cultures in question and the labeling of “primitive” may create a devalued or inaccurate caricature of complex civilizations. By incorporating the different cultures into this work, Oliveros is expressing a reaction to the societal state but she is also demonstrating a trend in queer culture that has historically appropriated Native American themes.

88 Ibid.

89 James Clifford, “Histories of the Tribal and the Modem,” in The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1988) 192.

42

Figure 2.5. Pauline Oliveros, Crow Two: A Ceremonial Opera, Pauline Oliveros Papers, University of California San Diego Special Collections, San Diego, CA, Box 2, Folder 13.

43

The role titles establish the structural elements of the composition: matriarchal ceremony, indigenous themes, meditation, and interdisciplinary approaches to musical performance. The mandala (fig. 2.5) is a schematic for the performance, and Oliveros often refers to the figure as a compass. The work involves fourteen performing roles and although titled a ceremonial opera,

Crow Two can be more accurately described as a ceremonial meditative performance. The instructions indicate that each role is a meditation that was originally intended to stand alone, each mediation exploring a particular mode of awareness, utilizing a particular focus of attention.

The roles included in the work are crow poet, crow mother, crow grandmother, crow mother-in- law, crow stepmother, “didjeriduers,” mirror meditators, energy changers, single stroke rollers, telepathic improvisers, crow “Heyokas” (a term misspelled in Oliveros’s score), and crow totem.

The score also asks for a “luminic meditation” (a meditation involving light), an assistant luminist, and the projection of graphics and photos. The crow poet is instructed to be the center of the mandala as they smoke and dream. The roles of the mirror meditators, energy changers, and stroke rollers are exact counterparts of the moving vocalists, instrumentalist or vocalist, and percussionist roles found in Crow.

Oliveros states that the mothers’ meditation is simply being, and they should personify natural order; this role portrays the importance of matriarchy and ceremony played in her music.90 According to Heidi Von Gunden, the maternal roles are in memory of her late grandmother.91 This meditation represents the matriarchal image embedded in Oliveros as a child. As Heidi Von Gunden and Martha Mockus indicated, Oliveros’s mother and maternal- grandmother were central to Oliveros’s upbringing. In 1941 Oliveros’s father abandoned the

90 Oliveros, “Crow Two,” Box 2, Folder 13.

91 Von Gunden, The Music of Pauline Oliveros, 123.

44 family, and Oliveros was raised by her mother and grandmother. Both women were financially independent and sustained themselves and their family by teaching piano. Correspondence between Oliveros and her mother depicts the high regard Oliveros placed on her mother’s opinion of her work—Oliveros’s mother would eventually hold administrative roles for the ♀

Ensemble and the Deep Listening Institute.92 The inclusion of matriarchal roles in works such as

The Pathways of the Grandmothers, MMM, A Lullaby for Daisy Pauline, and Crow Two resembles the matriarchal work seen in feminist literature such as Cherrie Moraga’s Native

Country of the Heart and Audra Lorde’s Zami. Moraga’s memoir Native Country of the Heart

(2019) centers on her mother. As she states,

Perhaps my writing has never really been about me. Perhaps it was about she all along: she without letters; she has fallen off the map of recorded histories; she that is my history and my future with every Mexicana female worker who comes to, or is born into, these lands of an ill-manifested destiny.93

Through this work, Moraga examines her life within a maternal narrative and expresses a belief that in order to understand ourselves we must locate our ancestors. For many feminist theorists, there is an importance placed on matriarchy and ancestry because, like Oliveros, there is a desire to find an origin point or authenticity through returning to their roots. Like Moraga, Oliveros plots her own story within the arc of this maternal narrative.

Similar to other works, such as MMM, Lullaby for Daisy Pauline, Oliveros’s Crow series incorporates drones or long tones in the meditation. In her essay “On Sonic Meditations,”

Oliveros expressed an obsession with reverberation after the 1960s, observed in her work Teach

92 Edith Gutiérrez, “Letter to Pauline Oliveros and Linda Montano,” Pauline Oliveros Papers, Houston Metropolitan Research Center, Houston, TX, Box 4, Folder 5.

93 Cherrie Moraga, Native Country of the Heart (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019), 4–5.

45

Yourself to Fly (1974), and embraced pleasure through the listening and creation of long pitches.94 In Crow Two the recurring theme of slow (or deep) listening is introduced by the

“telepathic improviser” roles and the use of the didjeridu. The performers are asked to create drones and are directed to focus their meditation on the sounds around them. Oliveros defines the didjeridu in her score as “an Australian Aborigine Instrument (made from a tree branch which has been hollowed out by termites) used for meditation.”95 Four didjeridu players are instructed to focus on listening as the center of their meditation. Like the Energy Changers, they are creating sounds through their instrument based on what they hear. The Telepathic improvisers are seven flute players on the catwalks of the auditorium which represents the sky. The players are instructed to play only long tones. Like the didjeridu players, the Telepathic improvisers are asked to meditate on listening. Oliveros often described the recurring presence of long tones in her compositions as a corporeal experience and a sensual practice. In a letter describing Crow

Two, Oliveros indicated that she “became an observer of myself, making sounds which seemed to flow through me from somewhere else. I began to experience new body feelings, ways of moving.”96 This is an example of how Oliveros is embracing pleasure and mindfulness through her drive to reach a utopia.

The incorporation of spirituality in Crow Two is candidly demonstrated through the

Heyokas, Crow Totem, “didjeriduers,” and the use of the mandala alongside meditation. In this work, the Heyokas and the crow totem are the two roles that most demonstrate Oliveros’s use of

94 Pauline Oliveros, “On Sonic Meditation,” in Software for People: Collected Writings (Baltimore: Smith Publications, 1984), 149.

95 Pauline Oliveros, “Crow Two,” Pauline Oliveros Papers, University of California San Diego Special Collections. San Diego, CA, Box 2, Folder 13.

96 Ibid.

46

Native American practices. Oliveros quotes John Fire Lame Deer, a Lakota holy man, as she defines the term Heyoka and their role in Crow Two in the following way:

A Sioux Indian word meaning sacred clown. The crow Heyokas are personifications of natural disturbances. Their purpose is to test the meditators through mockery and distracting behavior. They appear at will 15 to 20 minutes after the meditation has begun. He is an upside down, backward forward yes and no man, contrary wise. They cannot touch the meditator, but may try in any way to break the meditation. When the Heyokas have thoroughly tested the meditation they are lured away by the shiny mylar crow totem.97

Oliveros faced criticism for this aspect of Crow Two, in addition to her broader appropriation of various cultures. Among the articles which emerged that discussed Oliveros’s relationship with feminism in music, Timothy D. Taylor’s “The Gendered Construction of the Musical Self: The

Music of Pauline Oliveros” (1993) and Tara Browner’s “‘They could have an Indian soul’: Crow

Two and the processes of cultural appropriation,” presented a firm critique of Crow Two. Both articles present valuable insight into how Oliveros prefigured third-wave and queer trends through performance and appropriation.

Taylor criticized Crow Two as an example of how Oliveros’s use of indigenous themes in her music was a deviation from the dominant societal aesthetic, an action, according to Taylor,

“feminine” in nature.98 His main critique of this work was that Oliveros was essentialist and expressed a belief that her music was closely tied to “cultural feminism.”99 This is the theory that men and women have innate and specific characteristics that are exclusive to a corresponding gender. Taylor also makes the claim that this trend aims to create an environment free of

97 Ibid.

98 Timothy D. Taylor, “The Gendered Construction of the Musical Self: The Music of Pauline Oliveros,” The Musical Quarterly 77, no. 3 (Autumn 1993): 385.

99 Ibid.

47 masculinity as perceived by the feminist. He claimed that “female composers who have feminist sensibilities face important questions: Are they composers, or ‘women composers?’ Do they compose music or ‘women's music?’.”100 Taylor’s article suggests that “If the dominant aesthetic in a patriarchal culture values some ideas over others those ideas are somehow inherently masculine while an aesthetic seen as subservient is considered feminine.”101 In an interview with

Oliveros, Taylor asks the question:

Is a woman's experience in the world different from a man’s, and could it or should it be represented musically? She replied somewhat evasively: “Well, that’s a hard one. Certainly I think women's experiences are different. Because of the hierarchy and power structure... women don’t have the power and privilege that men have. It’s not the same for women in this society as it’s structured now.”102

Although her response may be misconstrued to mean that all women share an essentialist life experience, what Oliveros is referring to is that women do not have the same experience as men because of the historical social leverage men have over women. The main pitfall of Taylor’s article is the fallacy that feminism is somehow tied to a societal form of femininity, which, to

Taylor, is the method of creating music intuitively or subconsciously. While it is true that

Oliveros embraced and incorporated human intuition in the Crow series, this was not a rejection of masculinity. Rather, it was an embrace of one’s human identity regardless of the expected normative gender behavior. Oliveros’s rejection of gender norms and desire to create equality for all composers is characteristic of third-wave feminism.

Both Browner and Taylor raised important concerns regarding the accuracy of the Lakota themes portrayed in Crow Two. The analysis of this series as an example of appropriation is

100 Ibid.

101 Ibid.

102 Ibid., 387.

48 noteworthy in itself but also demonstrates clear links to trends commonly seen in queer culture from the 1960s through present time. Browner, a Native American (Choctaw) and ethnomusicologist, focused on critiquing Crow Two as misrepresentative of true Lakota spiritual values. Browner draws parallels between Oliveros’s compositional method and that of a cluster of primitivistic American writers and poets during the 1960s who focused on a genre titled

“ethnopoetics.” For Browner, the influence of ethnopoetics placed Oliveros in the same vein as a group of non-native writers who chose to commodify indigenous cultures through the translation of non-English oral texts. These writers often referred to their English-language versions as reworkings and usually claimed primary authorship upon publication.103 Oliveros herself described an interest in ethnopoetics in a letter to Michel Benamou before an upcoming performance of the work at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee:

I began to find affirmation for the work in ethnopoetic sources such as the tasks given to Carlos in the Teachings of Don Juan: Carlos Castaneda, Ballentine. The vision as described in Black Elk Speaks, Neihardt, U. of Nebraska Press, the relationship of the Shaman to his or her dream in Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy; Mircea Eliade, Bollingen. I studied Tai Chi, Karate, and Kinetic awareness, understanding that part of the key to the intuitive mode lies in body consciousness. Our Western mode of analysis has often locked up the body and promoted a mental tension anachronous to intuitive thought and action.104

Oliveros is describing her reasoning for rejecting Western modes of thought as a result of a cultural disconnect between the self and methods of Western self-expression. Oliveros embraced a Western interpretation of Native American, Indian, and even Australian Aboriginal spirituality through the search for corporeal and spiritual growth. The most evident discrepancy between

Oliveros’s depiction of Lakota themes and genuine Lakota beliefs is the role of the Heyo’ka. In

103 Tara Browner, “They Could Have an Indian Soul: Crow Two and the Processes of Cultural Appropriation,” Journal of Musicological Research 19, no. 3 (2000), 243.

104 Oliveros, “Crow Two,” Box 2, Folder 13.

49 her letter to Michel Benamou, Oliveros stated that she derived her understanding of Native culture primarily from Lame Deer: Seeker of Visions (1972), a book that emerged during a period when Native American themes in literature were in vogue.105 Lame Deer: Seeker of

Visions was written by John Fire Lame Deer in collaboration with Austrian-born writer Richard

Erdoes.106 Browner’s studies of this literature found that Lame Deer himself was not a medicine man at all; the work primarily consisted of earlier Lakota texts that Erdoes misattributed to Lame

Deer.107 As a result of Oliveros’s failure to interact and learn this content from the Lakota people themselves, she misrepresented the meaning of an animal totem and the Heyo’ka. According to

Browner, Oliveros misspelled “Heyo’ka” as “Heyoka” (without an apostrophe) in Crow Two, a term also misspelled in Lame Deer: Seeker of Visions. Rather than being the disturbers of meditation, the primary role of the Heyo’ka in the Lakota culture is to teach people to recognize and acknowledge the connections between themselves and the natural world.108 By ignoring accurate representations of the Lakota people, and dedicating Crow to the Native American people of North America, Oliveros is presenting a caricature of this culture. Her representation of these people contributes to the generalization of extremely diverse communities and contributes to the erasure of their culture and the struggles these communities face due to colonialism.

Ironically, Oliveros’s approach to the search for authenticity and self-awareness through the appropriation of other cultures itself proves to be an example of how queer trends permeate

105 Ibid.

106 Julian Rice, “A Ventriloquy of Anthros: Densmore, Dorsey, Lame Deer, and Erdoes,” American Indian Quarterly (Spring 1994): 169-96.

107 Browner, “‘They Could Have an Indian Soul’,” 249.

108 Ibid.

50 her work. In his book, Spaces Between Us: Queer Settler Colonialism and Indigenous

Decolonization, Scott Morgensen describes a trend in the queer community to seek an origin point for queerness.109 Communities of queer people who subscribe to this philosophy desire to gain authenticity through a notion of returning to the primitive, a theme that parallels Oliveros’s aspiration to gain self-awareness through ancient spiritualties. Although feminist and queer movements advocate for the fair treatment of all people, this trend is evident in gay and lesbian counterculturists in back-to-the-land collectives across the United States and Canada. Morgensen traces the indoctrination of the socially accepted sexuality in the Americas to the colonial era.

Through settler colonialism, native expressions of affect and sexuality—which did not align with that of the European colonizers’—were systematically repressed through re-education.

Morgensen argues that since colonialism, there has been a socially accepted form of expression of affect he calls “settler citizenship.” He suggests that settler citizenship is based on the conquest and incorporation of primitivity—crucially, as disappeared Native American indigeneity—makes primitivity a resource that settler subjects access when asserting their national belonging.110 In the 1970s, gay and lesbian radicals challenged heteropatriarchal capitalism, racism, and imperialism by pursuing back-to-the-land collectivism and primitivism.111 One of their enduring legacies, still active today, is the Radical Faeries, a countercultural network of queer people who seek to reject normative ways of life through the embrace of various spiritualties.112 Oliveros, ethnopoetic writers and queer counterculture all

109 Scott Lauria Morgensen, Spaces Between Us: Queer Settler Colonialism and Indigenous Decolonization (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2011), 130.

110 Ibid., 45.

111 Ibid., 67.

112 Ibid., 127.

51 emerged during a period of distress in the United States. As Oliveros indicated, this was a period of societal unrest, and she felt the need to turn inward.113 Like the other members of these communities, Oliveros searched for self-enlightenment through meditation, pleasure, and mindfulness.114 Morgensen believed that the Radical Faeries, like Oliveros’s dedication to “The

Indians of North America,” overgeneralized an incredibly diverse community of people.115

Although disrupting established forms of expression which suppress sexual minorities is central to queer theory, non-native queer people who traverse Native primitivity follow a normative path to settler citizenship. By making primitivism a resource, non-native queer people who engage in appropriative countercultural practices are performing heteronormative and colonialist trends of conquering and claiming ownership over a culture that does not belong to them.

The final iteration of the crow series is titled Crow’s Nest and reveals the common thread of interdisciplinary collaboration that unifies the series. Crow’s Nest premiered as part of

Oliveros’s Guggenheim Fellowship at the Guggenheim Museum in 1980. The work is a contemporary dance by choreographer and filmmaker Elaine Summers. Rather than drawing from earlier versions of the Crow series, Oliveros uses Tuning Meditation (1971) as the musical basis for Crow’s Nest. Throughout her career, Oliveros made a clear attempt to incorporate people from all facets of life, and the crow series is exemplary of this principle. In the premiere for Crow, Oliveros makes conscious decisions to cast a variety of artists including Ellen van

Fleet, a visual artist, and performing artist and romantic partner Linda Montano. Oliveros’s collaboration with van Fleet continued in Crow Two, van Fleet provided the crow totem and

113 Ahren, “Music with Roots in the Aether,” Box 13, Folder 1.

114 Oliveros, “Crow,” Box 2, Folder 9.

115 Ibid.

52 photography projected during the composition (fig. 2.6).116 In addition to Margaret Porter’s

Crowlogue, Crow Two also includes the queer black composer Julius Eastman and Al Huang as the Heyokas. The role of the luminic meditation in Crow Two also required the collaboration of optical engineer John Forkner. Oliveros described the lighting for Crow Two as a meditation in itself, which introduced a visual layer to the cumulative meditation. The crow series united people of color, gay people, straight people, and artists in the fields of dance, Tai chi, photography, engineering, and poetry. Not only did Oliveros continuously include various artists in her works but she also frequently advocated for equal opportunities and representation for all artists, but especially women. Oliveros was aware of the historical inequality faced by composers belonging to marginalized groups and often worked to advance the careers of such composers.117

Various letters to institutions and organizations corroborate Oliveros’s role as an advocate for composers such as Joan La Barbara, Alvin Lucier, and Gordon Mumma.118 By championing diversity, she not only negates separatist arguments purported by Taylor and Mockus but, more importantly, mirrors the importance of intersectionality in third-wave feminism.

116 Oliveros, “Crow Two,” Box 2, Folder 13.

117 Ibid.

118 Ibid.

53

Figure 2.6. Pauline Oliveros, “Crow Two,” Pauline Oliveros Papers, University of California San Diego Special Collections, San Diego, CA. Box 2, Folder 13.

Although her appropriation of indigenous and Indian cultures leaves room for critique,

Oliveros approached music with a desire to express herself in ways that departed from the norm.

By publicly performing her personal affect (perhaps unintentionally) that is rooted in her queer feminist experiences, Oliveros publicly protested and rejected heteronormativity through her composition.

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CHAPTER 3: INTERSECTIONAL APPROACHES TO ACTIVIST MUSIC

Throughout her career, Oliveros championed interdisciplinary collaboration. As made evident in this paper, Oliveros worked closely with poets, photographers, choreographers, optical engineers, pornography producers, and many other artists from various fields of study. Oliveros also created opportunities for composers and musicians of various backgrounds through professional recommendations and performance opportunities. Collaborations in themselves may not qualify as acts of intersectionality, but toward the end of the twentieth and well into the twenty-first century, Oliveros’s output communicated a visible interest in social equality advocacy. Oliveros began participating in exploits that not only dealt with gender and sexual rights but addressed those matters alongside other issues, such as race and class disparity. In promoting musicians from disenfranchised groups and publicly performing her queer-feminist affect, Oliveros went beyond collaboration in an attempt to empower members of those groups.

The activist mentality during the turn of the century shifted from self-subsisting to an interconnectedness of people, social problems, and ideas.119 Third-wave feminism adopted intersectionality as a core principle and phrase during a period of immense social change.

Although the term intersectionality was coined by Kimberle Crenshaw and her work was, and continues to be, central to civil rights advocacy, it is important to acknowledge that the roots of the concept of intersectionality should not be limited to neatly organized time periods, geographic locations, or one specific person. As indicated by Patricia Hill Collins, “tying authors to particular decades and schools of thought, far from being neutral, divides history into periods

119 Patricia Hill Collins, Intersectionality as Critical Social Theory (Duke University Press, 2019), 1.

55 which often leads to oversimplified explanations.”120 Like queer scholars, third-wave proponents acknowledge that history has been taught through the perspective of a heteropatriarchal system, and in order to espouse social equality, it is important to shift the power structures which have caused disparagement and inequality. Third-wave and queer scholars aim to create different ways of approaching social advocacy. By layering social issues and approaching advocacy through musical performance, Oliveros demonstrated a form of intersectional feminism.

Intersectionality emphasizes the layering of multiple causes of action but goes beyond postulation. Feminists believe intersectionality is a tool used to link theory and practice that can aid in the empowerment of communities and individuals, and it often combines topics of race, class, and gender.

Oliveros’s work created in support of the ecological feminist movement, also known as ecofeminism, is a prime example of intersectionality manifesting in her work. Adherents of ecofeminism argue that there are important connections between the unjustified domination of women, people of color, children, the poor, and the unjustified domination of nature.121

Ecofeminists often try to expand outwards and consider nature as another entity that has been unjustifiably dominated, the implications of the abuse on the ecosystem resulting in especially adverse effects on women. These practices are evident in Oliveros’s collaborations with John

Luther Adams and her composition of El Relicario de los Animales.

In 1989, Oliveros worked with John Luther Adams to plan a concert series titled Coyote, to publish Adams’s article “Resonance of Place,” and to aid in the commission of his

120 Patricia Hill Collins and Bilge Sirma, Intersectionality (Polity Press 2016), 53.

121 Karen Warren, Ecofeminist Philosophy: A Western Perspective on What It Is and Why It Matters (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000), 25.

56 composition Aeolian Dream.122 With the intent of sharing his compositional motivations and personal musical philosophy, Adams sent a draft of his article, “Resonance of Place,” to

Oliveros. In his article, Adams expresses a pledge to deep ecology, a cultural and ethical system that encourages society to “think globally and act locally.”123 Deep ecology encourages people to participate in global ecological change by doing their individual, local part.124 Followers of deep ecology concern themselves with the survival of the entire planet and its lifeforms. By acknowledging and adopting these values, followers believed their life experiences would be undoubtedly affected, thereby influencing all aspects of their life; for Adams, this included his musical output. Adams believes that cultural work can be a powerful force in the evolution of new social and spiritual values. In “Resonance of Place,” Adams advocated for the importance of environmental justice but the protection of the diverse cultures that are integral to the land.

Adams’s commitment to deep ecology establishes a concordance with the concept of intersectionality as a crucial force in ecological conservation efforts. To conserve the land and its culture, it is important to recognize the overlap of civil rights for the native inhabitants and environmental justice efforts. In response to Adams’s article, Oliveros described a profound alignment with the efforts he represents and wished to present and represent these same ideas in her own work. In the correspondence with Adams, Oliveros proceeded to state:

122 Oliveros, Correspondence with John Luther Adams, Pauline Oliveros Papers, New York Public Library Archives, New York City, NY, September 23, 1989, Box 1, Folder 4.

123 Ibid.

124 Arne Næss, Alan R. Drengson, and Bill Devall, Ecology of Wisdom Writings by Arne Naess (Berkeley, CA, Counterpoint, 2008), 22.

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If your article is still in draft form, it would be important to also reference some women who share your ideas and ideals. We are left out of most everything! For example: there is Annea Lockwood, Marianne Amacher, Hildegard Westerkamp etc. They are not as famous as John Cage and Murray Schafer but their work is right on and we should help to make them more known.125

Oliveros demonstrated an accord with Adams’s beliefs but also understood that women had an important role to play in these efforts and they were being excluded from the literature.

The partnership of Oliveros and Adams developed over the years, and, in 1992, Oliveros worked with Adams and his wife Cynthia to raise funds for a young black women’s singing and dancing group titled the Girls of Distinction.126 Oliveros submitted a grant proposal for the Open

Meadows Foundation committing to promoting gender, racial, and economic justice through the support of the Girls of Distinction. Oliveros declared her commitment to ecology in her work with Cynthia and John Luther Adams while still acknowledging that women face more adversity—not only from the effects of ecological destruction but from the exclusion of women within the movement itself. She aims to demonstrate how the effort of women is necessary in order to achieve bioregionalism, a belief that significant social, political, economic, and cultural change will come about only from the combined local efforts of people around the globe.127

The year 1977 saw the premiere of El Relicario de los Animales, a meditative work in collaboration with the soprano Carol Plantamura that affirmed Oliveros’s dedication to ecologically-motivated music. This composition translates to “The Animal Reliquary” and is an instrumental work with a vocal soloist. Like her Crow series, this composition is an instructional

125 Oliveros, Correspondence with John Luther Adams, Pauline Oliveros Papers.

126 Oliveros, Correspondence with Cynthia Adams, Pauline Oliveros Papers, New York Public Library Archives, New York City, NY, November 19, 1992, Box 1, Folder 4.

127 John Luther Adams, “Resonance of Place,” The North American Review 279, no. 1 (1994): 10.

58 score written in prose with a mandala that depicts the spatial configuration for the performance.

In an interview with Andrew Timar, when asked “What does the title El Relicario de los

Animales refer to, what is happening to the animals today?” Oliveros responded:

I was thinking earlier today how this piece could be understood in the future, say in another 50 years. Will the animals be wiped out? Every inch, every centimeter of life is necessary to life. That is the way I feel it and sense it. My position is that I can only change myself but the changes that form my life may be cures for others. In a piece like this, it’s impossible for 21 people to do that piece and walk away from it without being more sensitive to the animal environment so there’s influence at work there.128

This composition can be considered an expression of deep ecology and ecofeminism. Preceding the composition of El Relicario de los Animales, Oliveros and Carol Plantamura visited the San

Diego Zoo to select four animals—a tiger, wolf, owl, and parrot—which would be contained in the reliquary of the composition.129 Oliveros and Plantamura chose four animals that are at risk of being endangered with the intent of evoking the urgency of their extinction to the listener. As

Adams described, living one’s life while continuously being aware of the efforts needed to preserve the planet influences all aspects of human life, including our art, literature, and music.130 Although a musical contribution may seem small, Oliveros is promoting the practice of deep ecology through this composition by participating locally to make a change globally.

Oliveros’s response to Timar’s question depicts the intersectional belief that it is important to not only champion for one’s own self-interest, but for the rights of all lifeforms.

128 Pauline Oliveros, “Timar, Andrew—Talk with Pauline Oliveros,” Pauline Oliveros Papers, University of California San Diego Special Collections, San Diego, CA. Box 12, Folder 16.

129 Von Gunden, The Music of Pauline Oliveros, 132.

130 Adams, “Resonance of Place,” 10.

59

Oliveros’s use of geographic orientation, treatment of sounds, and her interpretation of the mandala as a representation of global attention in El Relicario de los Animales demonstrates her musical efforts to contribute to bioregionalism and intersectionality.131 The mandala for this composition (fig. 3.1) symbolizes the animal reliquary and is used as staging instructions that performers are asked to follow to create the figure in the performance space. The instrumentation for the composition calls for a female vocalist and conductor skilled in extended vocal techniques and Tibetan finger cymbals. Each instrument required is to be paired: oboes doubling piccolos, clarinets, alto saxophones doubling bass clarinets, trumpets doubling medium size conch shell, trombones doubling large size conch shell and trumpet in F, violins, cellos, string basses, two pairs of percussionists with a variety of auxiliary instruments.132 Each pair of percussionists should have similar instruments. As evident in the instrumentation, Oliveros is emphasizing pairings within the work. As demonstrated below, the ensemble is arranged in two different twin groupings: North/South and East/West groups contain the same instrumentation respectively, while the vocalist remains at the center of the formation. The mandala in the prose score includes a compass rose, and Oliveros indicates that there should be enough distance between the players of the same instrument to create a stereophonic effect.133 Oliveros’s use of the compass rose and geographic positioning of the paired instruments to create the stereophonic effect focuses the global attention she associates with the mandala.

131 Pauline Oliveros, “MMM,” in Software for People: Collected Writings (Baltimore: Smith Publications, 1984), 216.

132 Pauline Oliveros, El Relicario de los Animales (Kingston, NY: Deep Listening Publications, 1990).

133 Pauline Oliveros, “El Relicario De Los Animales,” Pauline Oliveros Papers, University of California San Diego Special Collections. San Diego, CA, Box 3, Folder 3.

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Figure 3.1. Pauline Oliveros, El Relicario de los Animales (Kingston, NY: Deep Listening Publications, 1990), 3.

61

The incorporation of deep ecology and intersectionality finds its way both overtly in the writings of Oliveros and in the subtleties present in the structure of this composition. In El

Relicario de los Animales, the use of the mandala may be perceived as an analogy for the Earth, with the female lead vocalist in the center portraying Mother Earth. Oliveros structured the composition in ten sections: entrance, tiger evocations, tiger, owl evocation, owl, wolf evocation, wolf, parrot evocation, parrot, and exit. The entire work is conducted by the centrally-located vocalist and signals the evocation of the next animal by vocalizing the word

“Earth” first in French, followed by German, Cherokee, and finally in Spanish. By repeating the word “Earth” in different languages for every new evocation, Oliveros is reiterating the concept of global awareness, implying that the conservation of Earth is the responsibility of all its inhabitants. Nine guide words are provided as the basis for the performers’ meditation and manipulation of sound: blend, echo, follow, embellish, free, lead, wolf, parrot, and silence. Each pair of instruments is provided with a guiding word or option of guide words for every section.

Like the Crow series, each guiding word instructs the player to meditate on the surrounding sounds and imitate and manipulate what they hear. Some players are tasked with creating the sound of the environment while others are instructed to imitate the call of the animal. In contrast to the Crow series—where the players are asked to meditate on sounds present during the performance—Oliveros directs the performers in El Relicario de los Animales to focus their meditation on imagined sounds or scenarios. For example, when the guiding word “lead” is provided, the musicians are intended to “play [instrument] from your imagination according to the guidelines specified for each animal corresponding to the section you are in.”134

134 Pauline Oliveros, El Relicario de los Animales (Kingston, NY: Deep Listening Publications, 1990), 4.

62

“Lead” requires the performer to focus their consciousness on a sound or scenario that is not physically present. If we consider Oliveros’s intent for the composition as stated in her interview with Andrew Timar, she hoped to induce consideration for the viability of the animals being portrayed.135 By incorporating the aspect of imagination, Oliveros is forcing the performers to place themselves in a world where the animal does not exist. Oliveros invoked ecological awareness through this composition while still providing opportunities for female leading roles. El Relicario de los Animales was the beginning of an ongoing trend of incorporating complex social themes within her music.

135 Pauline Oliveros, “Timar, Andrew-Talk with Pauline Oliveros,” Pauline Oliveros Papers, University of California San Diego Special Collections, San Diego, CA, Box 12, Folder 16.

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CONCLUSION

In 1981, Oliveros ended her tenure at the University of California San Diego to fully commit herself to her music, performance, and her foundation. Third-wave and queer trends remained present in her work through the end of the twentieth century, but the twenty-first century marked yet another transition in her career; her output began to demonstrate more explicit activist collaborations, including the soundtrack for Vicky Funari’s documentary

Maquilapolis: City of Factories, the creation of the musical Njinga, and the Adaptive Use

Musical Instruments—a software interface that enables the user to play sounds and musical phrases through movement and gestures. These projects demonstrate the concentration on work that champions intersectionality and challenges traditional conceptions of humanity, history, and musicianship. In a society that historically forces non-conforming identities into hiding, Oliveros used her queer feminist affect as the impetus for her compositional method and approached music with a desire to express herself in ways that departed from the norm.

By incorporating the mores of her communities—before the formal labeling of the third- wave and queer theory—Oliveros solidified herself as a figure at the forefront of feminist and

LGBTQ+ advocacy groups. Oliveros demonstrated tenets present in these movements within pieces such as her Sonic Meditations, MMM, Lullaby for Daisy Pauline, Crow series, and El

Relicario de los Animales. The division of history into eras has been critiqued for creating a reductionist image of our past that has focused on heteropatriarchal points of view while excluding members of marginalized groups. It is important to acknowledge that the historical changes of civil rights movements cannot be constrained within one precise date, event, person, or geographic location. Likewise, the division of feminism via the wave metaphor should be discussed critically in order to avoid the oversimplification of a complex coalition. The founding

64 of third-wave feminism and queer theory were acknowledgments of where members of the groups should aim their efforts. The turn of the century was undoubtedly a critical juncture for social justice efforts, and the actions of Pauline Oliveros place her amongst those first activists to turn the tide. The significant body of scholarly writings on Oliveros’s music concerning feminist views include many contradicting claims on how her compositions were fueled by activism, but none have adequately classified her as a queer third-wave feminist.

By creating visible forms of queer feminist expression, Oliveros plotted the ways in which other queer women could follow in her footsteps. Like many other feminists, Oliveros made the personal political and pushed the boundaries of what it meant to be a composer. Her incorporation of meditation in music, use of mandalas, and utopian unconscious sound production can be considered her foremost contributions to art music. Oliveros’s contributions to electronic, aleatoric, and activist music are significant in standard narratives of modernism, but connections to the third wave of feminism add a new chapter to our understanding of her music and its importance in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

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