Her “vocal authority”: the semiotic and cultural soundscape of Chinese female rock singers’ voices in the late 1990s

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the vocal authority of Chinese female rock singers’ voices as semiotic and cultural rebellion against male-dominated rock aesthetics and the accepted sounds of women’s singing in popular music. The first of the paper’s two sections challenges the gendered stereotypes associated with female singers, and argues for the artistic significance embedded in the voice to set the exploration of subversive femininities, and, more importantly, to unveil the polysomic cultural and social making process of a distinctive personal voice. The second and longest section of the paper first creates theoretical dialogues regarding Potter, De Certeau, Shepherd and Barthes’ theories of voice and culture, and then presents the case analysis of three prominent Chinese female rocker singers, Zhang Qianqian, Wu Hongfei and Kang Mao. The analysis discusses distinctive “feminine noise” by excavating the cultural and institutional forces embedded in the vocal styles of these singers. The semiotic features of grain, timbre, articulation and volume in the voice demonstrate how the complex acoustic soundscape of “feminine noises” reveals the regional, ethnic, class and sexual formation of female musicians’ gender identity.

KEYWORDS:

• Chinese female rock singers
• China’s rock
• feminine noises
• voice
• sound qualities
• grain
• soundscape

Acknowledgements

I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the reviewers’ the critical and inspirational suggestions for the early submission of this paper. They are very helpful in the revision process of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Qu Shuwen is the Assistant Professor in Shenzhen Tourism College at the Jinan University and works on the research of gender and music industry in China. She has a PhD in Cultural Studies from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. This article is adapted from part of her PhD dissertation entitled ‘Run Deep: The Voice, Authorship and Musicianship of Chinese Female Rock Musicians since 1979’. She is also a member of the study group of Chinese Popular Music and the International Council for Traditional Music.

Notes

1. This tape is not officially released but is kept as Yan Jun’s personal collection, so it is a regret that most of the people cannot listen to her performance at that time.

2. For the recording of this song “Can,” visit http://music.163.com/#/song?id=326830.

3. Conversation with Zhang Qianqian in August 2012 in Beijing.

4. For the recording of this song “Sprout Again,” visit http://music.163.com/#/song?id=5279754.

5. For the recording of this song “Xianchang,” visit http://www.xiami.com/play?ids=/song/playlist/id/376961/object_name/default/object_id/0#loaded.

6. These three types of timbre are not the only ones available to women singers; see Shepherd (1991, 172).

7. For instance, Luo Qi with the band Compass, Wei Hua with the band Breathing and Xiao Nan with the band Cobra all sang with a macho voice timbre.

8. For the recording of this song, please visit http://music.163.com/#/song?id=326788.

9. See Zhang Qianqian張淺潛, “Xiao Doudou De Tiankong 小兜兜的天空 (The Sky of Xiao Doudou).” Accessed September, 2012. http://blog.sina.com.cn/u/1212354664.

10. Personal communication with Wu Hongfei in August 2012 in Beijing.

11. Personal communication with Wu Hongfei in July 2011 in Beijing.

12. For the recording of this song, visit http://music.163.com/#/song?id=326809.

13. Personal communication with Wu Hongfei in July 2011 in Beijing.

14. Ibid.

15. Personal communication with Kang Mao in August in Beijing in 2013.

16. Ibid. Please also see this short clip about Kang Mao’s singing and bands’ interview. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2-Usso0xfU.

17. Ibid.

18. Ibid.