Dana International and the politics of nostalgia

Maurey, Yossi

doi:10.1017/s0261143008001608

Cited by 11 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…More recently, initial studies of transgender singers in popular music (cf. Goldin-Perschbacher 2007, 2015; Maurey 2009; Krell 2013, 2019; Jennex and Murphy 2017; Leibetseder 2017; Välimäki 2017; Pennington 2018; Baitz 2019; Geffen 2020) have begun to draw a complex map of transvocality (Constansis 2008), describing the ways in which trans voices may variously configure the relationships between voices, bodies, and subjects.…”

Section: Trans Voices In Popular Music and Emergent Discursive Format...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Listening to Anohni's variously vibrating voice: studying transfeminine vocality in 21st-century popular music culture through the concept of vocal figurations

Muchitsch

2023

Pop. Mus.

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This article examines the work and reception of singer-songwriter Anohni to investigate sonic and discursive negotiations of transfeminine vocality in 21st-century popular music culture. Developing Haraway's concept of feminist figurations, it introduces the concept of vocal figurations, which articulates a performative, relational and multiply mediated understanding of voice, wherein gendered voice takes shape through processes of voicing and listening. I initially examine Anohni's reception to analyse how biologist, trans-exclusionary and othering discourses surrounding voice and gender inform emergent discourses of transfeminine voices in the first decades of the 21st century. Subsequently, I build on trans and queer theorisations of voice and listening to engage Anohni's variably vibrating voice as a vocal figuration that may challenge biologist and marginalising constructions of transfeminine vocality. I suggest that it may attune us to recognise all gendered voices as thoroughly situated yet changeable configurations of sounding voices, bodies, and subjects.

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Section: Trans Voices In Popular Music and Emergent Discursive Format...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Listening to Anohni's variously vibrating voice: studying transfeminine vocality in 21st-century popular music culture through the concept of vocal figurations

Muchitsch

2023

Pop. Mus.

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“…58 Her transition from drag shows in gay bars of Tel Aviv to the main stage of the ESC symbolized the end of the process of coming out. 59 Arguably the 'performing gender' strategy gained even more prominence following the enlargement of the ESC, when it came to be applied "more optimistically, harnessed positively" 60 (often in connection with human rights issues rather than simply categorized under the 'sex sells' slogan).…”

Section: [2] the Eastern Acts Strike Backmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Eurovision Song Contest – A Continent (still) Divided?

Piotrowska¹

2020

J Historical Sociology

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Credited as one of the most successful major televised music events held annually in Europe, the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) still serves as a battlefield between Eastern and Western European aesthetic paradigms. Although the Western paradigm has long been regarded as an almost universal criterion of success, the contemporary ESC presents a unique opportunity for post-communist acts to contest that hegemony while playing with its conventions. This article examines how, in the post-1989 situation, the most successful Eastern European acts purposely exploited, juxtaposed and subverted several aesthetic categories, demonstrating their understanding of the conventions promoted at the ESC on the one hand, while undermining and contesting them on the other. The article argues for greater attention to such strategies as over-exploitation of stereotypes and auto-stereotypes, as well as mocking the prevailing aesthetics by playing with such notions as authenticity, folklore, nationalism, essentialism, camp, kitsch or hyper-reality and challenging the contest's utopian and nostalgic ideals. 1 | INTRODUCTION The Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) may be credited as one of the most successful musical events held annually in Europe, yet it causes heated debates among music lovers, TV and press commentators, and academics alike. Most of the literature on the ESC is written in the English language and represents the Anglo-Saxon approach to the phenomenon. It is often claimed that despite the atmosphere of joy and mutual respect the contest sharply reveals cultural divergences permeating today's Europe, demonstrating the existence of political and economic tensions in the post-World War II European public spaces. The paper discusses how the intentions of the most successful and controversial acts representing Eastern European countries 1 are misread in Western debates in the press and scholarly writings. The main premise of the paper is that Eastern European (including Russian) acts purposely to apply, juxtapose and subvert a number of aesthetic categories assumed by the ESC in order to demonstrate that they have assimilated ESC's strategies to use them for their own ends. They make use of such notions as authenticity, nationalism, essentialism, camp, kitsch, or hyper-reality, as well as alluding to utopian and nostalgic ideals. In that sense the

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“…The first was Zehava Ben, who emerged from the ranks of Muzika Mizrahit but reached new audiences in Jordan and the Palestinian Territories after recording two albums of Arabic classical music in 1994 and 1995 (Horowitz 2008). The other was Dana International, a transsexual pop diva whose cassette of Arabic-language dance songs was a sensation on the Egyptian market in 1994 (Swedenburg 1997; Maurey 2009). The Oslo period also gave birth to a host of ‘ethnic music’ bands such as Bustan Abraham (‘Abraham's Garden’), wherein Israeli and Palestinian musicians played together under the cloak of a shared regional style, or ‘world music’ (Brinner 2009).…”

Section: Arabic In Popular Music By Israeli Jewsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sounding Arabic: postvernacular modes of performing the Arabic language in popular music by Israeli Jews

Erez¹,

Karkabi²

2019

Pop. Mus.

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Popular music in Israel has recently seen a surge in the use of Arabic in music made by Israeli-Jewish musicians. Most of these, although descendants of immigrants from Arab countries, never acquired Arabic at home or in school, owing to national ideology which sought to label Arabic as the language of the non-Jewish other. This article reveals and contextualises this recent trend, offering a typology of the ways in which musicians engage with Arabic, their motivations for doing so and the challenges that they face. Discussing musicians who approach Arabic as Jewish heritage, as an aesthetic repository, or even as mere sound, we identify these mobilisations of Arabic as postvernacular uses of language, which often privilege its non-semantic qualities. Observed in the context of Israeli–Arab enmity, this trend appears to have emerged surprisingly not in spite of, but partly because of, the decline in peace prospects.

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Dana International and the politics of nostalgia

Cited by 11 publications

References 9 publications

Listening to Anohni's variously vibrating voice: studying transfeminine vocality in 21st-century popular music culture through the concept of vocal figurations

Listening to Anohni's variously vibrating voice: studying transfeminine vocality in 21st-century popular music culture through the concept of vocal figurations

The Eurovision Song Contest – A Continent (still) Divided?

Sounding Arabic: postvernacular modes of performing the Arabic language in popular music by Israeli Jews

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