The Friday Fillip: Falsetto, Fry and Folderol

When my voice broke it sort of didn’t. I’d been hoping for one of those giant stomach-flipping plunges you’d get at the county fair’s Turbo Drop, where at the end I’d step out of the chrysalis as a basso profundo — or even (just) a plain old baritone. The universe has a peculiar sense of humour, of course, and so I emerged as a pretty decent first tenor, which meant I actually had to use this high singing voice — and make the first of a number of emendations in my definition of masculinity.^*

Voice. Hearing. Say what you like about our nature as visual beings and our having a visual culture, but without your voice and my ears I couldn’t, well, hear you say anything. Hearing is the 360° sense, sweeping in all of the world. And your voice is a unique and amazingly sensitive instrument. More, it is the way we, in this culture at least, construct your participation in society. Do you have a voice in this and that? Shall we give you a hearing? Speak up.

Those who work in law know all about this, because law has retained a very strong oral element, both literally and metaphorically. Which is why I was curious about the fuss — folderol, if you like — over “vocal fry” that emerged briefly last year. Vocal fry is the growly sound that a voice can make when it’s dropped to, and a little below, its lowest “modal” register. More or less out of the blue, a couple of commentators slammed what they saw as the growing, and to them intensely irritating, use of fry by women, particularly young women. Listen to Slate’s Bob Garfield and then take a look at the Abby Normal video clip as each excoriates this phenomenon.

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/73131519″ params=”color=ff6600″ width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]

A whole lot of stuff is going on here, but one strong element is an oldie but a goodie: the view that women’s voices need to change. Bizarre, when it’s stated that baldly, isn’t it? But there’s a whole lot of pressure on women who speak to do so in this way or that way but not in their way. And, as you can imagine, that pressure is present in law. The clearest most recent illustration of this is in the memo (“Presentation Tips for Women“) distributed to women associates by a member of the Women’s Committee at Clifford Chance. It’s a long document, but I’ll copy one or two of the voice-related instructions from it:

Lower the Pitch

Say “uh-huh” and match that pitch to see how low you can go
Your voice is higher than you hear

Sound Your Age

. . .
Your voice is higher than you hear
Think Lauren Bacall, not Marilyn Monroe

You might like to see the variety of reactions to this memo from the legal community. If so, check out the article “BigLaw lawyer’s public-speaking tips for women (lose the quirky mannerisms, don’t giggle) cause stir” on the ABAJournal site, and then look at the more than 50 comments on the piece.

Near the top of this fillip I said that the fuss about vocal fry contained a number of threads, only one of which was about women’s voices; to hear a broader discussion of fry and why some folks are irked about it, listen to the recording of a broadcast on National Public Radio.

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* The universe also flirts with synchronicity from time to time: at the very moment I was writing that first sentence, my internet radio began playing the glorious Handel aria Ombra mai fu — but transposed for, and sung by, a basso, when the thing was composed for a soprano (castrato) voice and is properly performed by a counter-tenor.