Roshanak Kheshti
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781479867011
- eISBN:
- 9781479861125
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479867011.003.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
Listening is distinguished from hearing as a faculty of perception that is learned, and that is historically and culturally variable. But it is no mere faculty at Kinship Records (the book’s ...
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Listening is distinguished from hearing as a faculty of perception that is learned, and that is historically and culturally variable. But it is no mere faculty at Kinship Records (the book’s ethnographic field site); instead consumers are referred to as listeners, understood as subjects by way of their faculties of aural perception. By specifically addressing listeners’ ears and staging interactions with the aural other there, the ear is constructed as the site of agency production. I focus not only on listening but aurality because of the significance ascribed to the ear and on the biopolitical instrumentalization of listening as what Jonathan Sterne calls an “audile technique” promoted by the WMCI that has had material consequences with raced and gendered implications. In this chapter I ask: What is the history of the WMCI’s imaginary and fantasized ideal listener—that white woman between her late twenties and early forties—and how has an entire industry been structured around fantasizing about her fantasies? What you have before you is a critical examination of the WMCI and its racialized and gendered fantasies of sexuality in sound.Less
Listening is distinguished from hearing as a faculty of perception that is learned, and that is historically and culturally variable. But it is no mere faculty at Kinship Records (the book’s ethnographic field site); instead consumers are referred to as listeners, understood as subjects by way of their faculties of aural perception. By specifically addressing listeners’ ears and staging interactions with the aural other there, the ear is constructed as the site of agency production. I focus not only on listening but aurality because of the significance ascribed to the ear and on the biopolitical instrumentalization of listening as what Jonathan Sterne calls an “audile technique” promoted by the WMCI that has had material consequences with raced and gendered implications. In this chapter I ask: What is the history of the WMCI’s imaginary and fantasized ideal listener—that white woman between her late twenties and early forties—and how has an entire industry been structured around fantasizing about her fantasies? What you have before you is a critical examination of the WMCI and its racialized and gendered fantasies of sexuality in sound.
Charles B. Hersch
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- March 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226328676
- eISBN:
- 9780226328690
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226328690.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, History, American
This book probes New Orleans's history, uncovering a web of racial interconnections and animosities that was instrumental to the creation of a vital American art form—jazz. Drawing on oral histories, ...
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This book probes New Orleans's history, uncovering a web of racial interconnections and animosities that was instrumental to the creation of a vital American art form—jazz. Drawing on oral histories, police reports, newspaper accounts, and vintage recordings, the book brings to life the neighborhoods and nightspots where jazz was born. It shows how musicians such as Jelly Roll Morton, Nick La Rocca, and Louis Armstrong negotiated New Orleans's complex racial rules to pursue their craft and how, in order to widen their audiences, they became fluent in a variety of musical traditions from diverse ethnic sources. These encounters with other music and races subverted their own racial identities and changed the way they played—a musical miscegenation that, in the shadow of Jim Crow, undermined the pursuit of racial purity and indelibly transformed American culture.Less
This book probes New Orleans's history, uncovering a web of racial interconnections and animosities that was instrumental to the creation of a vital American art form—jazz. Drawing on oral histories, police reports, newspaper accounts, and vintage recordings, the book brings to life the neighborhoods and nightspots where jazz was born. It shows how musicians such as Jelly Roll Morton, Nick La Rocca, and Louis Armstrong negotiated New Orleans's complex racial rules to pursue their craft and how, in order to widen their audiences, they became fluent in a variety of musical traditions from diverse ethnic sources. These encounters with other music and races subverted their own racial identities and changed the way they played—a musical miscegenation that, in the shadow of Jim Crow, undermined the pursuit of racial purity and indelibly transformed American culture.
