ABSTRACT
“Vocal Village: The Rise of a New Transnational Vocal Jazz Community” examines free jazz in the 1980s and the new transnational and transcultural collaborations that emerged in this period in voice-centred and voice-only free jazz. Through a focus on certain collaborative projects of Downtown New York jazz scene alumnus vocalist David Moss (including Direct Sound, the Vocal Village project, his opera Survival Songs, and the Institute for Living Voice), author Chris Tonelli introduces the histories of experimental vocalists whose practices began in the 1970s and 1980s, including Shelley Hirsch, Sainkho Namtchylak, Catherine Jauniaux, Koichi Makigami, Greetje Bijma, Carles Santos, Anna Homler, and Tamia. Vocal improvisation in this period in free jazz and European improvised music took on new forms, and Tonelli discusses these developments while commenting on the limits and potential of cross-cultural music reception, intercultural collaboration, and the approaches to vocal pedagogy taken by free jazz and European free improvisation singers like Moss. The Institute for Living Voice is examined in relation to its guiding notions that it is an exploratory rather than a conservatory and that bimusical or multi-musical pedagogy can often be more empowering for young singers than training in a singular vocal tradition.
