Singing Boundaries: Toward an Understanding Of
ABSTRACT Title of Document: SINGING BOUNDARIES: TOWARD AN UNDERSTANDING OF VOCALITY AND THE PERFORMANCE OF IDENTITIES IN THE CAT VALECIÀ D’ESTIL Carles A. Pitarch Alfonso, Doctor of Philosophy, 2011 Directed By: Professor Robert C. Provine Division of Musicology and Ethnomusicology School of Music, University of Maryland, College Park The cant valencià or cant valencià d’estil of Valencia is one of the four main living monodic expressive song traditions of Spain. Comprised of non-metric cant d’estil and metric albaes songs mostly used in street serenades, it features a distinctive vocality characterized by a highly-projected, clear, inflected, and flexible voice as well as two melodic styles, of which the more ornamented cant requintat developed at the turn of the twentieth century. I take a historical, theoretical, and ethnographic approach to this Valencian vocal genre and explore the ways in which vocality can help us to understand it better. After examining the origins of the cant valencià and the antiquarian, journalistic, folkloristic, and (ethno)musicological approaches to it, I probe the notion of vocality in a transdisciplinary way: drawing on ethnomusicological theory, anthropology, folklore, semiotics, and other disciplines I show its significance for the development of a musical anthropology of the voice productively based on the ethnographic exploration of the iconicity of style and of two sets of central vocal issues: on the one hand, identity, gender, authority, and sonic histories and geographies; on the other, acoustemology, interpellation, and transcendence. Vocality not only expands usefully the scope of vocal or singing style by encompassing larger bodily-dependent traits of the human voice as central or salient means of aesthetic and ethical production of meanings, but also acknowledges its pre- eminent position in the hierarchy of musical values, since the material/textural qualities of (vocal) sounds iconically shape our first sonorous perceptions and identifications and are thus paramount for communication.
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