In a message dated 1/23/2002 10:24:34 PM Pacific Standard Time,
lloyd.hanson@n... writes:
> However, since pops music is always an art of the buying populace,
> it is logical that the desires of that populace has changed. My
> question was an inquiry into what might have caused that change, not
> a simple statement that the change had occurred. And I was
> suggesting, much along the lines you implied in the above, that it
> was tied up with a different view of women in the world. Perhaps
> women, for whatever reason, were willing to use only that part of the
> voice which is closest to the male voice in range as a part of this
> "new" music. Perhaps men were willing to assume a more female vocal
> sound for some similar reason. The reality of it all is that in rock
> music the men sing in the top of their range, usually using falsetto
> and the women sing in the lowest part of their range. We now have a
>
One of my professors in music school postulated that in times of societal
stress (eg: war), the taste in popular singing voices polarizes, where the
populace favors low, very male sounds for their popular male singers, and
higher, more feminine sounds in their female singers; this as an expression
of comfort in familiar roles.
Conversely, then, in times of societal boom, the popular taste in voices
becomes more homogenized, and the male voices in favor tend to be higher
while the female voices in favor tend to be lower. The general public is less
concerned with the comfort of the expression in the arts of the familiarity
of traditional roles.
This theory has always intrigued me, and I haven't been around long enough to
test its validity.
TinaO
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