Event

Amanda Weidman

Brought to Life by the Voice: Thinking with Playback

February 8, 2022 (Tuesday) — 5:15 pm to 7:00 pm

Lerner Center
Penn Music Building
201 S. 34th Street, Room 101

ABSTRACT 

Playback singers, so called because their voices are first recorded in the studio and then “played back” on the set as the visuals of song sequences are being filmed, became an integral part of India’s popular film industries in the 1950s.  Based on historical and ethnographic research on the South Indian Tamil film industry, this talk will discuss the sonic materiality and sociopolitical relevance of playback voices, treating playback not simply as a technical/industrial practice but as a cultural institution that has generated novel forms of vocal sound, performance practice, celebrity, and affective attachment to voices in the roughly 70 years it has been in use.  I explore both the affordances and the gendered implications of a system that separates onscreen body from offscreen voice. Finally, I consider the ways in which playback challenges the idealized unity of body, voice and self taken as the starting point for much Euro-Western theorizing about voice, giving us different ways to think about voicing, animation, and performativity in relation to musical sound and performance. 

BIO

Amanda Weidman is Professor and Chair of the Department of Anthropology at Bryn Mawr College. Her research in South India, ranging from the social history of Karnatic music to the ethnography and cultural politics of playback singing in the South Indian Tamil film industry, bridges the fields of ethnomusicology and linguistic anthropology.  She is also a practicing Karnatic violinist.