Blog 09

After reading Stoever’s introduction on the sonic color line and the listening ear, I think I’ve furthered my understanding of Douglass’s piece, particularly the ending. I thought it was odd when Douglass mentioned Northerners using song as a way to prove a slave’s contentment/happiness, and this was mainly because the white Northerners would have more access to language and be able to literally understand the lyrics, as opposed to Douglass and other enslaved people who may or may not understand what the words were actually saying. But after discussing the listening ear, this made a lot more sense. The white Northerners were not hearing the same things that the enslaved people were, they were accustomed to hearing song as a release of joy, not pain. White Northerners’ cultural context of the acoustic environment made it so that the enslaved people’s pain couldn’t be found in their singing, while Douglass’s listening ear gave him access to the deep rooted sadness of the songs he and other enslaved people sang despite not always understanding what the lyrics meant. It’s strange to use Stoever’s book, published 171 years after Douglass’s narrative, to contextualize what Douglass was discussing, but this is only further proof for Stoever’s claim of sound’s presence in racism and racial dynamics.

“I did not, when a slave, understand the deep meaning of those rude and apparently incoherent songs… The hearing of those wild notes always depressed my spirit, and filled me with ineffable sadness.”

This particular quote made me think of the king in Calvino’s story, and how the meaning of the conversations around him was lost to him. Douglass is not analogous to the king, except for the fact that he could not understand the lyrics of the songs he sang. For me, these two quotes show the power of language in communicating emotion without needing meaning. Douglass says it himself, whenever he heard the songs, he would be filled with a sadness, but this doesn’t have anything to do with the lyrics, but the feeling that is conveyed through the sounds the enslaved people produced. For Douglass, his listening ear provided him with enough context to access the true meanings of the songs he sang.

Question: what about songs made it accessible to enslaved people to express their sadness?

Stoever demonstrates that racism is not only visual discrimination towards a different race, but also auditory in, “The Sonic Color Line and the Listening Ear”. Furthermore, Stoever’s Sonic Color Line focuses on how sound plays a role between races, specifically how one race cannot look past the stereotypes of another due to an accumulation of nurtured hate. As of a result of this, an ingenuine hatred between the two races is formed. As Stoever states, “The Sonic Color Line connects sound with race in American culture, showing how listening operates as an organ of racial discernment, categorization, and resistance in the shadow of vision’s alleged cultural dominance” (Stoever 4). Stoever proposes how the Sonic Color Line’s purpose is to maintain the tension between whites and blacks. Additionally, she points out how the line consists of racist social practices that are invisible to the naked eye due to generations of racist behaviors being passed down. Consequently, these practices eventually become principal beliefs that results in the unequal treatment of certain races. A question that relates to Stoever’s Sonic Color Line is if there are methods to “decolor” certain phrases or voices. Is there a way we can deconstruct the social belief that certain sounds belong to a race?

In Stoever’s introduction to her book, The Sonic Color Line, Stoever describes a line regarding sound between White and Black people that is actively policed. Black people are not allowed to control the sonic space. “White Americans oft en feel entitled to respect for their sensibilities, sensitivities, and tastes, and to their implicit, sometimes violent, control over the soundscape of an ostensibly “free,” “open,” and “public” space.” Stoever goes on to cite examples of how many whites have enforced the sonic color line and how it is often overlooked in favor of the (more obvious) visual color line.

Elvis’s many covers of and influences drawn from African American artists like Fats Domino, BB King, and Chuck Berry raise interesting questions about the Sonic Color line’s position in music, and how it has developed in recent years. Elvis was a polarizing figure to some people because he was not a song-writer, and thus built his fame mostly off the backs of others. It is unquestionable that if Elvis had been black he would have been nowhere near as successful in his career, so we can say that he profited off of Stoever’s color line, and he most certainly enforced the “white constructed ideas about ‘sounding Other’— accents, dialects, ‘slang,’ and extraverbal utterances, as well as ambient sounds— have flattened the complex range of sounds actually produced by people of color, marking the sonic color line’s main contour.” Are there other musicians who have profited off the color line, what musicians have enforced the color line, and which musicians have been negatively affected by the color line.

After reading Stoever, I do have one objection. On the one hand, I do believe that the sonic color line bears worth mentioning. I also acknowledge the role of language, as language and society are synonymous. However, Stoever wasn’t fully correct. When she claims that the “inaudibility of whiteness stems from its considerably wider palette of representation,” she wrongly assumes whiteness to be homogenous. Across the globe, linguistic minorities of all skin colors – white included – must fight to ensure their society lives on in the face of the global sound dynamics of languages like English, Spanish, and Chinese. I saw this in Rihanna’s use of Jamaican patois, which is a linguistic minority. There are about seven thousand languages alive today, and nearly half are fighting for survival. This issue of linguistic minorities and language death are particularly potent to me, as I am one of a quickly shrinking number who can speak my ethnic language of Irish Gaelic. While Stoever’s point about the sonic color line is an important one, I object on the basis that this problem goes far beyond race. My question is this; can we have a dialogue about language and language death before it’s too late?

While reading the introduction of Jennifer Lynn Stoever’s The Sonic Color Line and the Listening ear, I was illuminated on the impact of race on music and vice versa, the impact of music on race and the relationship they have had with each other for the past several centuries. I really enjoyed how by writing about the racial contetations of music, she challenged the notion that’ race is a purely visual phenomenon. It is something auditory, as well, making that whole “I do not see color” argument completely moot. Stoever writes, “Reconsidering racialization as a sonic practice allows for a deeper understanding of why both race and racism persist,” meaning that seeing how race has impacted other elements of life, in this case the artistic practice of music, can show us why racism impacts our daily lives, so many decades since slavery and laws on segregation was a part of this country. Race isn’t just about looks it’s about culture, since culture impacts music, different music genres have different cultural connections and different connotations that go with it. My question revolves around what comes next, if this is happening now, is there anyway to live in a world without racism? Is there any way to not let these differences between races lead to separation and hatred?

When I first read Stoever’s “The Sonic Color-Line”, I assumed it was going to be a piece all about racial oppression of African Americans in the same context that I have heard about for years now. Since cases such as Trayvon Martin and Michael brown, this has been a constant in social media and on the news. However, I quickly realized that Stoever was addressing this problem from an angle that I had never even considered before by analyzing sound and its role in racial divide. He says “I meet sound where, when, and in what form I find it, not as an object of study, but as a method enabling an understanding of race as an aural experience with far- reaching historical and material resonance.” This was very interesting to me as it means that he uses sound as something he can listen to in context to gather more information on racial elements of the past. I was also interested in his mentioning of “linguistic profiling” and how it goes beyond just black and white, but spans across all races and ethnic groups in our country. One question I would be interested in looking into more is how one can listen to music and voice without analyzing racial aspects of sound, but with no racial implications. He describes his form of listening as being able to further understand racial divide, but is there a way to listen that is “colorblind” without bringing any aspect of race into analysis?

Stoever discusses the idea of racism not just being a visual thing, but also coming from sound. People have an idea of what a “black” voice sounds like and these ideas and stereotypes are racializing. Stoever incorporates the idea of a sonic color line stating: “the sonic color line describes the process of racializing sound—how and why certain bodies are expected to pro- duce, desire, and live amongst particular sounds—and its product, the hierarchical division sounded between “whiteness” and “blackness”” (7). This idea is all about having different views from different sides. There is a clear divide between these two which is maintained in our daily lives. This color line is prevalent when listening to music. In the 1A podcast, they talk about Michael Bublé being “the whitest singer”. As a society, we have taken this idea of a color line and applied it to everyday things such as music. There is a big racial component to songs as well as artists. As a society we have created a “norm” in our minds and in our ears to how certain types of people should sound depending on where they come from. For example, because Iggy Azalea is a white female many people believe she should not rap. I question this. Should certain people not be able to create certain music due to their identity/background? I understand the respect wanted for cultures and histories, but I also believe that no matter your culture, race, or background, you should be able to express yourself in the ways you desire rather than the ways that are the “norm”.

In the “Introduction to The Sonic Color-Line”, Stoever dissects race and racial conflict in terms of what she describes as the sonic color line; this is the idea that sound is connected with race in American society. For instance, Stoever mentions Douglass, which is interesting as it provides insight on Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass an American Slave. He wrote, “[The slaves] would sometimes sing the most pathetic sentiment in the most rapturous tone, and the most rapturous sentiment in the most pathetic tone”(Douglass, Ch.1). This quote is meant to describe the slave songs that Douglass used to hear; he claims that the song were either profoundly sad despite the joyous melody or that despite the joyous lyrics there was a terribly sad melody.  

Further, slaves spoke of sadness, yet white people firmly believed them to be content with their lives, hearing the songs but not listening. This relates to the idea that there is a racial divide in terms of who is listened to and who is simply heard, supporting Stoever’s sonic color line theory. However, while I understand Stoever’s theory, I am still confused on how this idea of listening and sound in the sonic color line influences voice. Is it meant to show that only certain people have a voice because of the sonic color line or that everybody has a voice and the sonic color line plays a role in that?