Latin America’s aural modernity has been shaped by conflicting dynamics where musics have been circumscribed to the geopolitical and interpolated into nation-states—a process of “folklorization” (Ochoa Gautier 2006)—and “popular” expressive cultures have been commercially circulated and incorporated into media capitalism (Martín-Barbero 1987). Central to these discursive formations is a political body that is voiced through the exaltation of its “folklorized” auralities and simultaneously silenced by the “community” of the nation (Esposito 2008). Analyzing Ecuadorian singer Julio Jaramillo (1935-1978), I suggest that his vocality signals dynamics of aural de/territorialization. Jaramillo’s capacity to sing and commercially circulate music genres deemed “national” and “cosmopolitan,” as well as his ability to incorporate and reinterpret vocal markers stylistic of these, signals an aural fluidity that puts forward broader issues of nationalism and the political. Elaborating on Derrida’s (1980) The Law of Genre, I argue that Jaramillo’s vocality reifies and unsettles musical nationalisms (Turino 2008). The Law of Genre posits that the ontological difference between genres is predicated on a principle of contamination; a parasitical presence of its other that affords such separation (Derrida 1980; Crimmins 2009). I consider what happens when music genres that articulate place (i.e., nation) are vocally contaminated. The law of genre/nation, I show, is voiced through Jaramillo’s fluid vocality. The listening subject that emerges from this theorization, simultaneously exalted and silenced, unveils dynamics of difference in sameness immanent to the mestizo racial order.

In 2006, Antares Audio Technologies released the fifth version of their wildly successful pitch correction software, Auto-Tune. Users, predictably, embraced the new version. Unpredictably, though, some users did not want to let it go when it was time to update versions once again. The following version, Auto-Tune Evo, sought to address public criticism accumulating around the software that it made voices sound “unnatural” by introducing new parameters to re-incorporate a more “human” sound. Subsequent releases took this goal even further, relentlessly pursuing inaudible pitch correction joined with streamlined workflow. But in the meantime, Auto-Tune users, especially those working in hip hop, preferred the 5 sound, which, they claimed, sounded and acted differently from later versions. In 2021, in response to what Antares notes is “the most common feature request” fielded from users, they incorporated Auto-Tune 5 into Auto-Tune Pro as “Classic Mode.” This parallel application allows users to access the mid-aughts sound of iconic hip hop recordings (T-Pain's Rappa Ternt Sanga, Kanye West’s 808s and Heartbreak) and, ironically, subvert problematically timeless or “classic” expectations for vocality.

Drawing on ethnographic research spanning twelve years, this paper examines the legacy of Auto-Tune 5 as part of a counter history to normative, essentialized vocality. It investigates the ways Antares’ pursuit of a more “natural” sound was contested by users who had no investment in that nature to begin with, and how “Classic Mode,” which sits alongside Pro X, offers a different vocal imaginary that still reverberates with users imagining the voice otherwise.

“Madrasi” is an appellation for the minority of South Asian indentured laborers who embarked for the New World via the southern port of the Madras Presidency of the British Empire between 1838 and 1917. “Madrasi” also became associated with relatively unrestrained styles of Kali goddess worship that European listeners/British colonizers and Hindu reformers within the post-emancipation indentureship plantation context constructed as uncivilized, “wild,” and superstitious. Such associations deeply resonate among Indo-Caribbean listeners who are ambivalent about similarities of Madrasi sonic practices with Afro-Caribbean religions. Unlike their Caribbean orthodox Hindu counterparts, and like colonial accounts and accusations of obeahmen, deities of “Madrasi Religion” of Guyana and Trinidad “manifest” people to heal, cleanse, and communicate with supplicants. During the ritual of “falling before Mother,” devotees listen to oracles that reveal reasons for their predicaments, spirit possession, and ancestral identities of spirits who inhabit them. At certain Madrasi temples, the presiding deity Kali, increasingly Mariamman, intones divine messages through melodies in an “ancient Tamil” language unintelligible to Indo-Caribbeans and Tamil speakers and perceivably powerful and prestigious. Discourses surrounding “correct” or “authentic” Madrasi sonic practices appear as attempts to perform Indian diasporic identity and Tamil racial purity. I contribute to recent ethnomusicological scholarship that engages the critique of the humanist equation of voice as representation with agency. I argue how in seeking forms of belonging to South Asian American diaspora culture, Indo-Caribbean/Americans mobilize musical performance and sonic interpellations of diaspora spirits—simultaneously reifying notions of racial hierarchy while defying essentialist ideologies about lacking legitimacy.

Though recognized as a pivotal contributor to the Civil Rights movement and praised for her enormous musical prowess, Nina Simone is notably absent from discourse on the voice. With its unique contralto timbre, her voice evades traditional cultural markers, such as gender and race, manifesting as a form of androgyneity that permits Nina Simone’s fluid occupation of several identities in her public and private lives: artist, activist, Black American, woman, mother, and survivor. Scholarship on Nina Simone addresses her intersectionality, however, her singing voice is not recognized as its own politically and socially engaged semiotic zone. This paper seeks to center discourse around the biomechanism through which Nina Simone’s identities and desires were mediated, asserting that its timbral qualities—dark, raspy, growling, and nasal, among others—granted her voice inimitable rhetorical power and subversive capabilities. Drawing crowds from across racial, economic, and gender spectrums, her voice seeps through barriers that would otherwise obfuscate messages of Black and women empowerment, thereby uniquely contributing to imperative revolutionary action of the late twentieth century. Building on the scholarship of Victoria Malawey (2020), Kristal Spreadborough (2022), and Kate Heidemann (2016), this paper attempts to understand the synthesis of identities through vocal timbre by analyzing iconic recordings of “I Loves You Porgy” (1959) and “Mississippi Goddam” (1964), songs laden with immanent racial and gender tension. Reaching beyond lyrics and expanding the civil rights era lexicon, this exploration of Nina Simone’s vocal androgyneity reveals that her voice’s enigmatic quality bolstered her musical success and political messaging.