Sigma Alpha Iota

30 Spring 2024 • sai-national.org SOCIAL VOICES: THE CULTURAL POLITICS OF SINGERS AROUND THE GLOBE Edited by Levi S. Gibbs University of Illinois Press, 2023 In In Social Voices, a variety of scholars with different musical interests and perspectives explore the intersection of singers' roles and world cultures. More specifically, the authors of these essays consider how the aspects of song performance, such as style, subject, and context, are inextricably linked with social and cultural issues. Musical traditions from Western classical and folk music to popular and film music of countries from around the world are discussed. Editor Levi S. Gibbs states in his introduction that the goal of the book is to "explore how singers of different genres have come to represent regions, nations, groups of people, and historic moments while simultaneously becoming rich sites through which to consider questions of individual and collective identities." The book's chapters are divided into four sections. The first part, "The Politics of Authenticity and Iconicity," explores what makes a performance "authentic" and designates particular singers as "icons" to establish how an audience recognizes validity and authority in music. Folk singer Pete Seeger (1919-2014), Egyptian vocalist Shaykh Imam (1918-1995), and current performers of South Korean K-Pop are studied. "Race, Gender, Ethnicity, and Class," the second segment, deals with music's intersection with the qualities that separate people into distinct communities, and how performers navigate these differences. Performers as disparate as pop icon Beyoncé (1981- ), opera singer Beverly Sills (1929-2007), and Afro-Cuban women singers from the last half of the 20 th century are investigated. The ability of one singer to speak to and represent more than one group of people is the third subject, "Multiplicities of Representations." Performers considered include Romani singer Esma Redžepova (1934- 2016); Teresa Teng (1953-1995), a native of Taiwan, but with career success in Japan; and women of the South African diaspora during the period 1959-2020. Finally, the fourth grouping of essays, "Singers and Songs as Interweaving Narratives" addresses two topics—the career and influence of Indian film singer Lata Mangeshkar and the reception of an Arabic song, Ya Toyour (Oh, Birds) as performed by an American singer in the Arab world and an Arabic singer in the Western world. I found Social Voices to be an exceptionally interesting book, introducing many subjects with which I was not familiar and providing new perspectives on the music I already knew. All the essays were readable and unencumbered with jargon, and are as easily accessible to non- musicians as they are to readers with musical training. Kathi Bower Peterson is a graduate of Indiana University, where she majored in music history and oboe, and was a member of Iota Epsilon chapter. She also has an MM (in musicology) from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and an MLIS from San Jose State University. She has been the librarian at the Athenaeum Music & Arts Library in La Jolla, California since 1997 and currently serves as the treasurer of the San Diego County Alumnae Chapter, as well as the Coordinator of Scholarships for SAI Philanthropies, Inc. SING, MEMORY: THE REMARKABLE STORY OF THE MAN WHO SAVED THE MUSIC OF THE NAZI CAMPS By Makana Eyre W. W. Norton, 2023 A difficult book to read, yet an important one, Sing, Memory documents the tireless work of one individual, Aleksander Kulisiewicz, to ensure that the lives and music of the prisoners held in Nazi concentration camps during World War II would not be forgotten. Although he was not Jewish, the Polish Kulisiewicz was sent to the Sachsenhausen camp in 1940 at the age of 21 because of his journalistic work denouncing Hitler. Music had always been his passion, although he did not have a lot of formal training, so it was natural for him to feel a connection to another inmate he met at Sachsenhausen, choral conductor Rosebery d'Arguto. Kulisiewicz supported d'Arguto in his founding of a clandestine Jewish choral group and aided the men in learning the music they performed using a special technique he had learned early in life. As a young person, Kulisiewicz had suffered from a severe stutter, and in an attempt to find a cure, his father took him to seek treatment from a hypnotist in a nearby town. Known only as Roob, this man helped Kulisiewicz overcome his speech impediment by advising him to "write what you wish to say in black letters on a white background in your mind" before speaking. Then he could read what was written in his mind and his stutter would disappear. Not only was this technique successful, but it helped Kulisiewicz to develop an almost inhuman memory. It was this memory that eventually led him to what he considered his life's calling, to preserve the music of the Jewish inmates. Not only did Kulisiewicz ask for his fellow inmates to share the music they knew, but when he lived long enough to be released from the camp at the end of the war, he spent the rest of his life documenting the music of all the surviving Jews he could find. His own home life suffered, with two failed marriages, but the massive archive he assembled thankfully lives on at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Sing, Memory is in many ways a difficult book to read. Eyre does not shy away from describing the incredible lengths Kulisiewicz was forced to go to in order to remain alive, as well as the truly horrific conditions he and his fellow inmates had to endure. Eyre also details the efforts necessary to maintain secret musical groups under such horrendous conditions, and explains the overall role of music in concentration camps. While music could be a source of hope and release, as d'Arguto's chorus was, it could also be associated with suffering, as the camp guards often forced prisoners to sing German folk music while they were being tortured. It is evident that Eyre was incredibly thorough in his research, consulting any available primary source, as well as extensively interviewing former prisoners who were still living. What emerges is an inspiring testament to hope and human will, and an appreciation for the lifelong efforts of one person to ensure that an important part of musical culture was not lost. Reviews

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