MUSIC Women [02]: A Cappella Experimental Vocal Electronic Music
The importance of representation...
In 2005, Camille’s alternative French language album Le Fil* would be released and draw comparison to Bjork’s album Medulla, which was released the year before. Le Fil contains so many fun quirky elements in a voice-based album that creates claps-based percussion and other sonic components using the power of mouths, mainly Camille’s. Instruments like the piano, guitar and trombone when they are present are a minimalist backdrop to the acapella singing and body-created percussion, the vocal configurations of Camille including her own looped backing vocals are the real star of the album. It’s an album packed with a variety of vibes and full of playfulness too, it makes you feel things, awakens connections to emotions that might have been cut off without your awareness. Having enjoyed it immensely over the years, I cannot recommend it enough.
* Important to flag that the final three songs on the version of Le Fil linked above were not on the original release, and in many ways they don’t fit, disrupting the mood that has been generated by the preceding 15 tracks.
Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Fil_(album)
Rediscover: Camille: Le fil - https://spectrumculture.com/2023/11/13/rediscover-camille-le-fil/
Unfortunately Le Fil, whilst critically acclaimed, did not go on to have the influence Medulla has had. After the success Bjork had with the electronic album Vespertine, for her to pull a move like releasing the album Medulla (an album that’s almost exclusively voices with the electronic programming relegated to the background), must have been a risky prospect in 2004. Bjork privileges the voice, putting it on show in a way that was unprecedented in mainstream music at the time. She wasn’t doing something that had never been done before, Meredith Monk had made even more adventurous music but that was in the realm of the avant-garde, hardly the territory most record buying public ventured into.
A guide to Meredith Monk's music - https://www.theguardian.com/music/tomserviceblog/2012/nov/19/contemporary-music-guide-meredith-monk
I suspect that when people thought of voices in music like on Medulla, it would have been in choral music and other such songs associated with religion. Despite the commercial and critical success of this album, Bjork’s more conventional albums tend to be the ones often mentioned as people’s favourites of her discography, mainly Vespertine and Homogenic. However by so publicly placing unadorned vocal arrangements at the heart of ‘pop’ music, Bjork brought mainstream exposure to styles of singing familiar in indigenous, folk and classical choral circles. She sang in English but also Icelandic, and collaborated with singers from different cultural traditions, both in terms of genre and geography. This was a celebration of music in a manner that presented it as the everyday rather than the world music niche area so often ignored by the Western public. Medulla is a special album for those reasons, but all that would be for nothing if the music didn’t also pack an emotional charge that carries the listener’s imagination to new bold internal landscapes. It is important to acknowledge the significance and importance of such artistic offerings in a world that so often throws weight behind the promotion of commercial efforts lacking in depth.
It's an earthy album that is bustling with life, filled with percussion fashioned out of the mouths of beat boxers and Inuit throat singing mixed with programmed micro beats, all sitting next to sounds crafted by The Icelandic Choir. Bjork’s vision guides the whole album and her distinctive pure voice holds everything together, marshalling her guests in the service of her creativity. There is something incredibly organic about this music, as exemplified by the track Ancestors (track 11) where Tanya Tagaq’s throat singing brings a visceral quality to the fore. You feel yourself immersed in blood, bones, soft flesh and mucous substances. In tracks featuring the choir, the organic components emerge out of a purity and naturalness of human voices carrying the chorus. Through it all, Bjork’s voice weaves through the human sounds like a firefly darting through the landscape. There are subtle beats threading the sounding components together, intricate creations that never displace the vocals, yet providing a heartbeat carrying listeners forward.
There will be no analysis of the album here beyond the preceding paragraph; numerous articles exist online and Wikipedia alone provides a decent start point for this and in addition the official documentary ‘The Inner or Deep Part of an Animal or Plant Structure’, details the making of the album. The focus instead here is Bjork as a modern advocate for creative productivity in a world that so often has sought so diminish her role as a woman in creating and producing her own music. Her high-profile expression in Jan 2015 of her frustrations at interviewers and the media in general assuming her male collaborators were the main producers and beat-makers of her album, led to a public conversation about women as music producers. In response to the aforementioned Pitchfork interview, the musician AGF started the Tumbler blog female:pressure where female music producers uploaded images of themselves at work in their studios. That month the Slate article, ‘It’s Not Just Björk: Women Are Tired of Not Getting Credit for Their Own Music’, detailed accounts of other high profile female artists who had experienced their technical contributions to the creation of their albums also being questioned or undermined.
A video of pictures of contemporary women producers from the female:pressure Tumblr blog
Considering the important contributions women have made to electronic music over the decades it is disappointing to see such sexism occur time and time again. Documenting such contributions, is evidence that can contribute to challenging sexism whilst seeding future endeavours.
10 Female Electronic Music Pioneers You Should Know - https://www.flavorwire.com/335503/10-female-electronic-music-pioneers-you-should-know
The Secret History of Women in Electronic Music Is Just Beginning to Be Told - https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/the-secret-history-of-women-in-electronic-music-is-just-beginning-to-be-told/
Sisters with Transistors - https://sisterswithtransistors.com/
In the highly recommended ‘Verso Book of Feminism’ page after page quotes texts going back thousands of years of women standing up for themselves, as well as advocating for their rights and asserting them too. It makes for both a liberating and sobering reading experience. The fact that women have been denied their agency and people (mainly men) have sought to subjugate generations of women, not just in the distant past but in the present, reflects badly on humankind. That despite barriers placed in the path of women, they have managed to make considerable contributions to electronic music is heartwarming. There’s also immense value in displaying diverse ways of being, showing alternatives to traditional forms and genres. Knowing this is possible, by documenting and highlighting this, serves as a reminder of what can be achieved even under adverse conditions in electronic music and other walks of life, a reality that bears emphasising.
Bjork’s influence in electronic music is important for showing women’s contribution to this genre is valid and valuable, whilst also making a powerful and convincing case for vulnerability, emotion and heart in this music as well as mainstreaming acceptance of avant-garde and Indigenous sounds. Bjork’s Medulla album makes the case for organic electronic music full of soul, whilst showing that indigenous music can comfortably exist with more traditional electronic material. The album is worth returning to, and appreciating the forward-thinking nature of it especially at a time when there was less widespread accommodation for such melding of styles in the mainstream arena. It is impossible to measure the impact of such exposure to inspiring the next generation of beat-makers and music makers. On her part, Bjork has spoken of Kate Bush being an inspiration to her, and in turn one can see new generations taking experimentation with vocals further in the work of the Japanese artist Hatis Noit;
and the British musician Lucy Gooch;
North Americans women are also taking vocal experimentation in exciting directions, blurring the lines between what technology can facilitate (e.g. Juliana Barwick) and utilising fascinating vocal techniques (e.g. Meara O’Reilly).
Experimental electronic vocal music might seem like a misnomer, after all why even label this predominantly a capella music as electronic? Well, it’s the production and the use of programming to enhance the effect of the voices. This is seen in a spectacular way in a couple of albums, Remixes and Interpretations of Music by Meredith Monk (CD1 & CD2), where Monk’s music is either recreated or remixed by other artists, bringing electronic music into direct contact with experimental vocal music.
Finally, taking this back to voices, I’ll leave you with the work of the vocal collective, the Deep Throat Choir:
And here they are in collaboration on Murmurations, a collaboration with electronic duo Simian Disco:
Articles Linked
Medulla - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Med%C3%BAlla
AGF starts photo pool for female producers and electronic musicians - https://www.thewire.co.uk/news/36144/agf-photo-pool-for-female-producers-and-electronic-musicians
The Invisible Woman - https://pitchfork.com/features/interview/9582-the-invisible-woman-a-conversation-with-bjork/
female:pressure - https://femalepressure.tumblr.com/
It’s Not Just Björk: Women Are Tired of Not Getting Credit for Their Own Music - https://slate.com/culture/2015/01/bjork-pitchfork-interview-shes-tired-of-not-getting-credit-for-her-music-just-like-mia-taylor-swift-neko-case-solange-knowles-grimes-more.html
Composer Meara O’Reilly Brings Hockets Into the Future -