Voice & Sound Poetry
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Voice & Sound Poetry treats speech, breath, mouth noise and text as musical material. It includes Dada phonetic poems, tape-based text-sound composition, extended vocal technique, free vocal improvisation and performance art where meaning dissolves into rhythm, timbre and gesture. The voice may still carry language, but the listener is asked to hear consonants, vowels, air, resonance and repetition as composition.
History
The family begins with Futurist and Dada experiments by Hugo Ball, Raoul Hausmann and Kurt Schwitters, then expands through postwar concrete poetry, Henri Chopin's tape works, Bob Cobbing's performance scores, Swedish text-sound composition and new-music vocalists such as Cathy Berberian, Joan La Barbara and Meredith Monk. By the late 20th century it had entered sound art, free improvisation, electronic composition and experimental theater.
Defining artists
Essential listening
Sources
- The Wire Sound Poetry Portal
- Bowerbird Sound Poetry Effects Catalog
- Red Bull Music Academy Joan La Barbara lecture
- ISSUE Project Room Alvin Lucier 90th birthday program