Response to “Jamie Lynn Webster – The Mysterious Voice!

American Women Singing Bulgarian

Songs”

In this article the author explores the social and historical phenomenology of the presence of
women’s Balkan music group in America over the last thirty/forty years, using her experience as
insider/outsider as a basis: In fact, she has been trained in both Western Classical and Balkan (mainly
Bulgarian) singing styles, performing them successfully [CITATION Jam04 \p 155 \y \l 2057 ].
The first observation made is about the cultural re-interpretation within the context of
American society by the women who have been performing it. This peculiar musical tradition has
and intrinsic sense of exoticism that was found as attractive, and some of the people who
approached it experienced an unexplainable sense of familiarity [CITATION Jam04 \p 156 \l 2057 ].
This, together with the idea of universal connection within women, contribute to a sort of spiritual
bonding with this genre, and with the other women participating in the performance, creating a
common area in which women could express themselves in a new way in a mainly patriarchal
society, as an act of artistic resistance; although, ironically, in Bulgaria, women’s singing exists only
as part of categorical patriarchy [CITATION Jam04 \p 161-162 \y \l 2057 ].
The contrast between Western art bel canto and Bulgarian folk singing find a metaphorical
intersection with the technical differences between the genres. If Western art singing style is usually
labelled as made through the “head” vocal register (aiming for precision and, finesse); Balkan singing
requires the perhaps more bright and strong singing made through the “chest” register instead
[CITATION Jam04 \p 165 \y \l 2057 ]. The author here argues that the dichotomy between head and
chest voices is mainly a cultural perception and that many vocal possibilities exist in reality.
Interestingly, the decontextualization of Balkan village singing appears as part of a search for
emancipation on more, overlapping levels. On one hand, the Balkan music exudes an appealing
exoticness and sense of “otherness”, on the other, it is a way to overcome the hegemonic control of
the Western art musical tradition on voice studies. Reading the author arguing that exists a
continuity between vocal registers, it appears clear that the division between head and chest vocal
areas is only a cultural construct, and a definition like “falsetto” - that implies something “false”, in
Italian – completely misleads the performers. The next layer of emancipation that the article makes
the reader think about, is about gender. In Western art singing tradition, women are expected to
sing in “head” register, while men sing using the “chest” one. And it is perhaps due to this dichotomy
that the performers that are subject of the author’s analysis found the Balkan’s vocal style so
compelling, at the point that they found it appealing even on a spiritual level, as the voice of
Bulgarian women singing while working in the field is the voice of a global women-ness that
expresses itself through something which is perceived at the same time more natural and different
from what would have been expected from them.
Singing, as the most natural human musical activity, is strongly related to how a human
being perceives himself. Singing is not music only, but is a mean for personal expression too. It then
makes perfect sense to me – even though it might appear as very creative - that the group of female
performers studied by the author of this article decided to use this decontextualized musical
tradition to express their willing for multi-layered emancipation. Whether this choice is conscious or
not, it highlights that vocality, being so close to the personal “inner world”, is an aspect that is
worthy to be considered while approaching any cultural issues, such as those evidenced in the
article.