Falsetto and the Gender of the Voice
Gastvortrag von Jack Halberstam
09. November 2023
12:00 – 14:00 Uhr
Raum: US-C 109
In 1985, her career stalled by poor sales on her last album, British sensation Kate Bush released her fifth record, Hounds of Love, and overnight she went from being a quirky young singer, known primarily for a screechy homage to Wuthering Heights to an international cult star. Bush is an immediately recognizable singer, mostly because she sings in the hypoxic registers sitting far above not only some mythical “female” range for the voice but above her own range making her voice participate in a kind of elaborate impersonation of the female voice and undermining the seemingly naturalized heteronormative orientation of many of her songs in the process. Using Kate Bush as an example of the female falsetto and then moving on to the male falsetto from Maxwell to Prince to Anohni, I will explore questions about the gendered voice, about range, and about the trans* and queer modality of reaching for the high notes.