Exploring and celebrating individual lives in diverse situations, this book is a new departure in the study of women's worldwide music-making. Ten unique women constitute the heart of this volume: each one has engaged her singing voice as a central element in her life, experiencing various opportunities, tensions, and choices through her vocality. These biographical and poetic narratives demonstrate how the act of singing embodies dynamics of representation, power, agency, activism, and risk-taking. Engaging with performance practice, politics, and constructions of gender through vocality and ... More

Exploring and celebrating individual lives in diverse situations, this book is a new departure in the study of women's worldwide music-making. Ten unique women constitute the heart of this volume: each one has engaged her singing voice as a central element in her life, experiencing various opportunities, tensions, and choices through her vocality. These biographical and poetic narratives demonstrate how the act of singing embodies dynamics of representation, power, agency, activism, and risk-taking. Engaging with performance practice, politics, and constructions of gender through vocality and vocal aesthetics, the book offers insights into the experiences of specific women singers in a range of sociocultural contexts. The chapters trace themes and threads that include childhood, families, motherhood, migration, fame, training, transmission, technology, and the interface of private lives and public identities. The book concentrates solely on individual women singers. The women profiled include a locally known community singer, an internationally renowned priestess, a professional wedding singer, and a national star. Chapters range across musical genres encompassing jazz, rap, traditional, folk, devotional, and classical, and the book's geographical range encompasses Afghanistan, Australia, Canada, Cuba, Cyprus, Germany, Iran, Japan, Mexico, Poland, South Africa, Torres Strait Islands, Turkey, and the United States.