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 XIBUCCAL INSTRUMENTS

DESIGNING EXPANDED AND INTERCONNECTED VOCAL

TRACTS

By
Eli Berman

A senior thesis
submitted to the Department of Music
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for
the degree of Bachelor of Arts

Princeton University
Princeton , New Jersey

5/4/20
 2

© Copyright by (Eli Berman), 2020. All rights reserved.

 3

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First and foremost, I would like to thank my dedicated collaborators and fellow

Princeton University students. MC Otani, I would not have gotten these instruments to

the stage they are now without your guidance as an engineer and fashion designer in the

beginning. Mariana Corichi Gomez and Sean Crites, thank you two for sticking with this

research through multiple iterations. Your insights and enthusiasm have been invaluable.

Emily Liushen, Kirsten Keels, Akiva Jacobs, Maya Keren, and Christien Ayers, thank you

all for committing to this instrument/community building experiment this academic year

in such fun, risky, and intimate ways. The care, ingenuity, and spirit you each contributed

to our discovery of these instruments will be felt in every future iteration of this work.

Allison Spann and Tim Ruszala, thank you two for helping me unveil part of this project

to the public for the first time. Your vulnerability and creativity has helped sustain this

project immensely. Gloria Yin and Ishani Kulkarni, thank you two for being helping me

discover the wearable design that carried through my work this year.

Dan Trueman, your guidance throughout the past two years has been exactly what

I needed to succeed in this work at this institution. You have always given me space to

explore my musical voices while holding me to standards that have pushed me to expand

creatively in ways I never could have imagined when I came to Princeton. Jeff Snyder, I

will always be indebted to the technical education you gave me this year outside of class

while giving me access to your studio. Thank you for helping me find a new love for

electricity. Sharon De La Cruz, you were the first person to tell me that the instruments I
 4

was creating, as well as my voice itself, were technological without needing circuits, 3D

printing, or code. Thank you for your technical, conceptual, and political guidance and

for creating such an inspirational event, Hack The Drag, to premiere my instruments for

the first time. Aatish Bhatia, thank you for helping begin to integrate quantitive analyses

into my creative research practice and for me teaching me about the physics of sound and

instrument designs as I began this project. Jess Rowland, thank you for giving me the

material and theoretical tools to be able to build speakers while I experimented with my

first electroacoustic prototype.

Laurie Anderson and Arto Lindsay, thank you for giving me a platform to perform

publicly with my electroacoustic instrument for the first time. César Alvarez, thank you

for giving me the spark to imagine political, sonic futures with my technology. Thank you

to every artist who has given me blueprints to help me discover how to engage with the

vibrations of my voice and my histories, namely Jaamil Olawale Kosoko, Anaïs Maviel,

Samita Sinha, Imani Uzuri, Nathalie Joachim, Jacquelyn Deshchidn, inti figgis-vizueta,

and Judith Berkson. Professors Brian Herrera and Gavin Steingo, thank you both for

guiding and challenging me as I began to formalize my thoughts about voice, gender,

time, and space. Anna Pidgorna, thank you for opening my eyes to the potential of video

in my music and always encouraging me to be as honest as possible when I wield my

voice. Irma Qavolli, Alexa Adams, and Aditi Dhital, thank you for your love during our

four years here, especially as I wrote this thesis.

Finally, thank you to my parents, Sue Powers and Jeff Berman, for continuing to

be my greatest mentors and for gifting me with a musical life and loving ancestors.
 5

ABSTRACT

Throughout the past two years, I have been designing and building a collection of

acoustic and electroacoustic extensions of the human vocal tract called Xibuccal

Instruments. The term Xibuccal comes from the word bibuccal, which describes two

people singing into each other's mouths. I coined “Xibuccal” to describe “X” number of

people singing into each other's mouths. Some Xibuccal Instruments are wearable,

connectable, acoustic instruments that form a shared vocal tract among people that are

singing into each other. Other Xibuccal Instruments allow one to sing into themself and

the singing bodies of pipes through digital delay and feedback produced through

handmade circuits connecting small microphones, transducers, amplifiers, digital delay

pedals, and batteries. In this thesis, I outline each step within my design and building

process since 2018; detail responses from student collaborators; provide images and

technical information about these instruments; showcase creative materials I have made

with these instruments since 2019; and offer a short story to express how this project has

influenced my personal philosophy about voices.

 6

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Process Timeline 1

Responses from Collaborators

1. Building Process 7

2. Vibrational Experiences 10

3. Social Experiences 14

4. Relationships to Other Music Making 18

5. Next Steps 22

Technical Displays

1. Acoustic Wearable 1.0 29

2. Acoustic Wearable 2.0 30

3. Parts for Electroacoustic Instruments 32

4. Electroacoustic Diagrams & Demos 33

Creative Demonstrations 34

Hairy Voices & Other Kinds of Time Travel: A Xibuccal Vision 36

7
 1

PROCESS TIMELINE

In the spring of 2018, I wrote my first Junior Paper in the Music Department,

which was a series of structured improvisations for singers that ended with a module for

bibuccal singing. I was first introduced to the technique of bibuccal singing by Jeffrey

Gavett during a dress rehearsal at the Morgan Library and Museum. Ever since then, I

have been interested in exploring the sociopolitical dimensions of this exchange when

two voices sing into each other. For my Junior Paper, I was able to do a few qualitative

tests around bibuccal singing with Mariana Corchi-Gomez ‘21, Maddy Kushan ‘20, and

Ro Van Wingerden ‘20. We used whirly tubes to facilitate the bibuccal singing during

these experiments. Mariana and I also sang into lip-locked and leaned that this version of

bibuccal singing can provide a less intense vibrational experience than you might get

with the added resonant material of a pipe.

In the Fall of 2018, I took STC/MUS 204: Musical Instruments, Sound,

Perception, and Creativity, a course that investigates the impact of organology on music

composition and performance. For my final I created a few prototypes of handheld

Xibuccal Instruments that could join three or four voices together. These prototypes

consisted of 1.5” PVC pipes, 90° & 45° PVC couplings, and small to medium sized

buckets that acted as resonant chambers with large enough holes for the the pipes to be

inserted into. Additionally, I drilled four finger sized holes into each of the PVC pipes so

that each person using their pipe could release various amounts of air pressure from the

pipe. Each person had one PVC pipe and could join with others through the PVC
 2

couplings and/or bucket resonators. I discovered that the buckets did not facilitate a more

robust or interesting sound, which showed me that I did not necessarily need to have to

build any external resonator to facilitate Xibuccal singing; I had plenty to work with by

exploring the resonating chambers of the body and purely focusing on how to extend the

vocal tract among multiple people in as simple away as possible. I also discovered that

having the ability to release air pressure in different ways was musically effective. I have

yet to continue experimenting with these smaller sound holes while designing wearables

and feedback instruments.

Next, I collaborated with MC Otani ‘20 to design the initial prototypes for

wearable Xibuccal Instruments, which were showcased at Hack the Drag 2019 and

Performance Lab 2019 (see: page 29). From January–March 2019, MC and I tested

various designs in the studio lab with help from Sharon De La Cruz and Aatish Bhatia

from Princeton’s Council on Science and Technology before deciding on two designs

(see: page 29). The materials used in prototyping these initial wearables were 1.5” PVC

pipes and 90° & 45° PVC couplings. During Hack the Drag, I collaborated with

Alexandra Palocz to build the first two wearable prototypes. I've included pictures of my

performance attire from hack the drag, which includes a drag outfit with my wearable

instruments under my dress and peeking out at the sound hole and mouth hole. At this

point, I had found a design that was stable, durable, and comfortable enough to wear for a

durational performance, but I had not experimented with the instrument's sound and its

ability to facilitate Xibuccal singing.

 3

In preparation for Performance Lab 2019, MC and I had guidance from Aynsley

Vandenbroucke as we further refined our wearable designs and a seven minute

performance for me, Allison Spann ‘20, and Tim Ruszala ’20 (see: pages 34). In the

process of rehearsing this improvisational piece, we started with only two people singing

at once. We only had one working wearable at first, which meant that one person was

able to wear the full instrument and receive the vibrational experience in full while the

other person sang through one small pipe that was attached to the other person’s wearable

instrument. The participant who was wearing the one wearable instrument expressed that

receiving somebody else's voice in their throat as well as around their diaphragm and

abdomen felt unsafe and invasive because it was not reciprocal (see: page 17). Once MC

and I were able to make a second wearable instrument, both participants expressed that

they found the experience to be playful and fun once the vibrational exchange was

reciprocal and balanced. The last thing we added to these outfits were stretchy fabric

covers that went over the pipes to give the illusion of an extended physical form with

fabric ‘skin’ and PVC vocal tract extension ‘bones’. The final performance of this piece

started with Tim and Alison assembling their outfits with the wearable instruments,

stretchy covers, and colorful skirts live on stage. Eventually they connected together to

sing into each other for a few minutes before I joined from the audience and added my

voice with a single pipe connected to one of the wearable outfits. I learned from this

experience how emotionally and socially powerful these instruments are and how

dangerous they can be if not approached with care and consent. I also learned about the
 4

importance of designing Xibuccal instruments with the visual form of one's body in

mind.

For four weeks in the Summer of 2019, I conducted experiments testing different

variables related to the acoustic experience of Xibuccal Instruments under the guidance

of Aatish Bhatia. I conducted these tests with the help of Sean Crites ‘22, Ishani Kulkarni

‘22, and Gloria Yin ‘18. My initial questions were about the influence of embouchure,

interval, amplitude, timbre, air pressure, pipe material, pipe length, and individual voices

on the Xibuccal experience with groups of three and four singers. I ended up narrowing

my scope to focus on the relationships between frequency, amplitude, pipe material, and

individual voices. I recorded sweep tests of myself and the other three participant with

and without a standard PVC pipe and a flexible, corrugated pipe. After these tests, I

discovered that the corrugated pipes were the best material to continue building with

because they possessed the most resonant frequencies across all three singers and they

were able to fit around multiple different body shapes. I have included graphs that chart

frequency vs. amplitude for each of these pipes with the voices of the three participants

(see: page 30), and I have included images of different flexible, wearable prototypes

using corrugated pipes (see: page 29).

In the Fall and Winter of 2019, I gathered a group of seven other vocalists,

Mariana Corchi-Gomez ‘21, Kirsten Keels ‘21, Sean Crites ‘22, Emily Liushen ‘22,

Akiva Jacobs ‘22, Maya Keren ‘22, and Christien Ayers ‘23, who helped me continue to

refine the design of the wearable instruments as we explored different ways of

improvising together. The reason I chose to work with a large ensemble of collaborators
 5

was that I saw our community building process as an essential component of the

instrument building process given that these Xibuccal Instruments are designed as

collective extensions of the voice. We experimented with building different kinds of

mouthpieces to maximize comfort during long sessions. We shaved down one side of a

four-way 90° PVC pipe connector and experimented with wrapping condoms around the

mouth holes. We originally met as a group of eight before discovering that it was more

productive to split the group into two groups of three and four, which I then floated

between. By February 2020, our main research questions as a group were 1) How do

these instruments influence the way we improvise together? 2) How do these instruments

help us to think with our bodies rather than just our minds? 3) How do these instruments

challenge what a “pretty” or “attractive” sound is, especially in a structured vocal

ensemble? 4) What could these instruments look and sound like if they were inspired by

the design of the marimba, vibraphone, and other mallet percussion instruments with

pipes? 5) How do these instruments impact one's perception of their ability to sing and

their social/musical place in a vocal ensemble? 6) How do these instruments influence

our vocal anatomy and our ability to produce sound, as in, what techniques are facilitate

by the pipes, and what restrictions do the pipes impose on the voice? Section two of this

document details some of these participants' responses to this process as well as

responses from previous participants.

With the guidance of Jeff Snyder, Jess Rowland, and Dan Trueman I began to

experiment with electronic components to Xibuccal Instruments in December 2019. I was

originally driven by the goal of singing into myself by sending my live vocal input back
 6

through the end of a pipe with digital delay. Once I began building these new

instruments, I quickly realized that the pipes had more to say themselves than I had

anticipated. These instruments are made of PVC pipes, mics, transducers, and delay

pedals that create sound using feedback and vocal input. I first built a handheld feedback

instrument in December 2019 that primarily croaked and squeaked in similar fashion to

my ingressive multiphonic vocal techniques. I built a longer instrument in January/

February 2020 that stands vertically with a mouth hole in the middle, a sound hole at the

top, and a hole for the transducer at the bottom. The design process for this instrument

included a series of sessions with Jeff Snyder spent hacking digital delay pedal circuits

with connections to small mics, amplifiers, and transducers in order to achieve my

desired sounds. I spent the rest of the Spring 2020 semester experimenting with the

sounds of these Xibuccal feedback instruments in my own music, which included

building an electroacoustic Xibuccal wearable (see: pages 31, 32).

*****
 7

RESPONSES FROM COLLABORATORS

The following discussion includes insights from most of my collaborators

between 2018-2020 about the processes of building and exploring sound with Xibuccal

Instruments. These collaborators include Allison Spann ‘20, one of my two collaborators

from the second public Xibuccal Instrument performance at Princeton Performance Lab

2019, as well as six of the seven musicians I workshopped the wearable Xibuccal

Instruments with from October-February of the 2019-2020 academic year: Maya Keren

‘22, Emily Liushen ‘22, Akiva Jacobs ‘22, Sean Crites ‘22, Kirsten Keels ‘21, and

Mariana Corichi-Gomez ‘21, who was also a part of my first bibuccal experiments in my

first piece of Junior Independent Work during the Spring of 2018. These insights are

pulled from individual interviews I conducted with these collaborators throughout April

2020. Their responses have been edited for clarity, and each of them has consented to the

inclusion of the following quotes in this document. Our discussions detail 1) building

processes, 2) vibrational experiences, 3) social experiences, 4) relationships to other

kinds of music making, and 5) possible next steps in this research.

1. BUILDING PROCESS

The process of building our wearable Xibuccal Instruments from October-

December 2019 was ultimately a series of creative challenges that we had to solve as a

team. One of the most obvious of these challenges according to Emily and Akiva was the

durability of the initial design. As Akiva explains, “It was kind of frustrating in the
 8

beginning, because Eli had a specific prototype idea that wasn't really happening.

Different people had ideas of different prototypes that would happen, and none of that

really happened. What happened was the instruments kept on falling apart, and we would

reconstruct in different ways. That itself was really good. The way we used it was

something that wasn't like one object. It was a bunch of pipes that we kept on assembling

and reassembling.” This mass of pipes and tubes was understandably precarious, but it

forced us to collaborate more. “Whenever something on my instrument broke,” Akiva

continued, “somebody would have to fix it. I'd ask, ‘Hey Mariana, can you fix mine?’ and

she'd go, ‘Oh yeah, I got you.’” I did not originally plan for the building process to be

such a collaborative effort, but it was a communal instrument that we were after, so it

made sense that we needed to build it together. At the same time, I still wanted everyone

to have their own individual instrument solidly designed to be able to connect together

with the others. As Architecture Professor V. Mitch McEwen advised me later on in the

academic year, we had to design the connections first before we could build up from

there. So, we continued to focus on crafting our wearable vocal tracts.

For some, the task of building their own instruments was daunting at first. After

coming upon our piles of tubes, pipes, and super glue, Kirsten remembers asking herself,

“How am I supposed to make sound with this?" She described that it was “a bit

intimidating, but as we started to do two hour sessions of hot gluing together, I really

started to understand the instrument. I really got to understand and fall in love with the

idea of making music with other people through a connected instrument as opposed to a

collective of separate instruments like an orchestra or small instrumental group. The

 9

building process really contextualized what the project was supposed to be.” Both Maya

and Emily described how the hands-on, customizable nature of these building workshops

made the project more meaningful. According to Maya, “it was really fun and

surprisingly easy to make these instruments.” Emily says that “it felt exciting, because

there’s something really great about that tactile experience of making something,

especially when it's something so personalized to our own bodies. That felt very

meaningful.” Perhaps the most creative challenge of all was our abrupt halt in March

2020 due to COVID-19. Because of this halt, Maya and Kirsten both express that they

wish we had more time to customize their instruments. “As a plus size woman,” Kirsten

explains, “the tubing was the only part that would wrap around me, and I would need

more tubing to make it comfortable, but then that might compromise the sound quality. I

was just very aware of my body, which I am at all times, because of how I move through

society...We had trouble with the mouthpiece, because my face is also rounder. Part of it

could be having more African facial features too. My lips are a bit bigger, so instead of

the mouthpiece resting on my lips, my lips were in my mouthpiece, because they had

nowhere else to go.” Despite this flaw in the wearable design, Kirsten says that “the

instrument did allow for some flexibility, because the only rigid part was the PVC behind

your neck...We just needed more time to explore how to make the mouthpiece more

comfortable and make the whole instrument feel more personalized. It was completely an

issue of time.”

Despite our limited time together, we found that building the instruments together

as opposed to starting day one with pre-made instruments was essential to our creative
 10

processes. Mariana says that “when you make the instrument with the help of others, you

know what's going on, so that just intensifies your connection with the instrument.”

Having this close relationship with our own instruments helped facilitate deeper

exploration of their sonic potential.

2. VIBRATIONAL EXPERIENCES

Six months before these instruments were even a thought in my head, Mariana

and I could be found singing into each other’s mouths in the middle of prospect garden in

March 2018. As she explains, this initial encounter continues to fuel “the search for

resonance and vibration in Xibuccal singing. That's how it began.” She recounts, “when

Eli and I sang into each other's mouths, it was a really intense vibration going back and

forth. Her resonance and my resonance colliding. I remember feeling a lot of extra

buzzing in my upper body, my face cavities, and a bit of my chest cavities. We've been

looking for that as well when we were experimenting this academic year (2019-2020).”

Over a year later in the Summer of 2019, Sean and I were exploring bibuccal

singing through PVC pipes with Ishani Kulkarni ‘22 and Gloria Yin ‘18. He described his

experience with this singing like having a “mass that's being pushed towards you. If you

lower your soft palate and then just close the space in your throat, it feels like there's a

little wall, and there's really nothing you can do about it. It is a little bit scary, but it's

really cool to know that something can do that to you. At the same time, you know that

you have the power to do that to the other person, so there's that shared responsibility.”

Allison describes the experience of bibuccal singing as a “beating in the throat and face,”
 11

which “challenges normal methods of vocalization.” She continues to explain how, “as

vocalists, we're really in tune with the feeling of our instrument within our own bodies,

and we’re used to having total, absolute control over both the physiological and

emotional changes required to produce our sound. What was so profound about this

experience was that all of a sudden you had a second party occupying some of the mouth,

the back of the throat, also almost down into the larynx, which is where you feel this

beating. It was the first time that I had been able to experience anything working against

my natural physiological processes that I usually use to produce sound.” Allison explains

that this beating is most intense “as you move closer to a unison; that's where we really

felt it.” With all the vibrations, “there was a connection between our throats...There was a

shared beating that was existing between both of our larynxes. It didn't feel like it was

happening in the middle of the pipe. It was happening inside of the body, which is really,

really fascinating and very, very powerful.”

When it comes to Xibuccal singing rather than bibuccal singing, however, the

location of this beating is more variable. Kirsten says the first thing she noticed when we

started singing together through the wearable instruments “was how I can feel different

people's voices on different parts of my body. I was like, ‘I feel Mariana over here and

everyone else over here!’ I thought that was so funny, because when you hear a really

deep voice, for example, you say, ‘Oh, I can feel it in my chest,’ but you’re not actually,

physically feeling the vibrations of another person like you do through this instrument.”

This was not everyone’s experience as Sean pointed out. “Feeling it around my body is

not as pronounced for me as for some others. If you can imagine that someone's kind of
 12

humming on your skin, that only really happens if the instrument is on my skin, because I

won't really feel it through my clothes.” For Sean, this applies to internal vibrations as

well. “It's not necessarily vibrations that you feel in your throat,” he explains, but “a lack

of control.” He notices this when “the pitch bends without your consent in the tube. You

feel like something's slightly off, like your voice is going to crack, and all of a sudden the

pitch starts to move. It's almost like an out-of-body experience, because nothing feels

different. It's more about listening to the beats and feeling the beats within the instrument,

and from there you know if something's more likely to happen to your voice. You just

have to feel, and listen, and anticipate.” Akiva was also struck by the unpredictable nature

of this experience. He describes that when he is singing into another person, there is

always an “exact point, some specific note” that one person will sing, “and something

breaks in the voice. It could be that a certain note jumps, or you're not able to sing a

certain note, or you sing something that you didn't know that you could, or you feel a

beating in your chest.” Part of the fun is that these phenomena vary wildly among

individual voices. Akiva says that one time he, Mariana, and Sean were exploring sounds

together with their instruments, and they all noticed that the only moments they felt

intense beating together were when Akiva was singing. “It was very specific moments,

and we were trying to find out what one person and what the other person had to do to

make it happen.”

Another unpredictable element of these vibrational experiments was finding new

techniques and acoustic phenomena otherwise not possible without these instruments.

When I started to improvise alone with my wearable instrument, I discovered that it

 13

allowed me to sing a major third higher than I normally could. Maya, Akiva, and I found

out that exploring interactions between the wearable instruments and the feedback pipes

yielded complex difference tones. Maya describes that in this session, “when we sang one

note, we did not sing one note, we sang a bunch of notes. There were multitudes in what

seemed like a simple, singular thing.” Her description also describes one of the

fundamental natures of sound: seemingly singular pitches are made up of a series of

overtones vibrating simultaneously. Her description also describes the relationship

between two vocal tracks joined together by a tube to form an even more complex,

singular vocal tract. One of the more disturbing, unpredictable techniques of a shared

vocal tract I discovered with Allison was the ability to “steal someone’s voice” away by

sucking in air as they sing. As she describes, “we started playing with one person trying

to vocalize ingressively, such that the other person's voice would kind of feed theirs. This

was pretty intense. There were some sounds that I think can only be produced via this

technique…There were certain heaves and aggressive vocal effects that came from this

kind of sucking. It's like you're singing into a vacuum cleaner, but for short pulses as

opposed to a sustained one that's continuously taking your sound. I remember us finding

that Eli was able to suck the voice out of me more than I was able to do to her. I

remember being frustrated by this and not being able to understand why. I remember it

differing from person to person. People were scared to try it. I think it’s really interesting

that some people had this almost instinctual trepidation when it came to an experience

that they knew would voluntarily strip them of their voice.”

 14

It turns out there were multiple ways to lose our voices during our explorations.

Emily explains that “as soon as you put the instrument on your mouth, you're obstructing

a lot of the sound that would have normally come from your mouth and gone into your

ears. A lot of what I'll hear is just myself in the tube. I don't even know if I hear my voice

in my head. So much is blocked off as soon as I put the instrument on, but what that does

is it reduces my aural input a bit and heightens the feeling of the vibrations on my

mouth.” She goes on to describe how Xibuccal Instruments disperse your voice in

unfamiliar ways. “The main thing with tubes is that they really direct your sound. If you

block off all the entrances except for the two tubes you’re holding in your hands, and you

put them by your ears, you can hear, really well, your own mouth. You can hear not just

yourself singing, but your tongue unsticking from your mouth and your lips. When you

talk normally without something on top of your mouth, the sound disperses in a more

stochastic manner. That has a couple of repercussions. One of them is that when you're

connected to a bunch of people, your voice is traveling in this system, this network of

pipes that is connected.” Another consequence of this semi-enclosed network is that

“when you're all connected to each other, the outside doesn't really hear your voices, but

you can feel and hear the voices coming into your instrument.” This demonstrates how

the wearables are not necessarily designed for a passive listening experience among an

audience, but rather for a social experience among singers.

 15

3. SOCIAL EXPERIENCES

Every one of my collaborators throughout this project has expressed to me how

intimate an experience it is to sing into other peoples’ mouths. “The social dimension is

very important,” Emily says. “It cannot be overlooked. I think there's something quite

intimate about putting your mouth into a system of mouths.” Mariana affirms that the

instruments “brought me closer to a lot of people that I did these experiments with.” Sean

believes that “a large, important part of this project is the stories along the way of how

people respond to the instruments and each other, because that's almost more important

than the music you're creating.” Kirsten explains that the range of backgrounds and

interests in our ensemble created fertile ground for these kinds of encounters. “I expected

there to be a similar train of thought among us,” she begins, “but it was more like this

instrument was the same train of thought, and we were all interested in other things. That

makes it sound like it's so separate, but it really wasn't, because you would sit in a group

and talk about, ‘What's more important to you? What've you been paying attention to

more? How do you interact with the instrument and others?’ It offered a lot of diverse

perspectives as opposed to being me, myself and I in my room with my instrument, not

being able to connect with anybody. Even now, thinking about the coronavirus, I'm

missing that connection.” Even before COVID-19, one of the big social implications of

instruments was hygiene concerns. Nonetheless, we managed to work past these

apprehensions when it was still safe to sing into each other. For example, Akiva claims

“we were spitting into each other's mouths!” and in the future, “that's something,

especially these days, that would really have to be thought about in a serious way.
 16

Although, honestly, that's part of it. The instrument got very wet by the end, which is

cool, but a health hazard.” In regard to all this breath, Kirsten too admits that she “wasn't

the biggest fan of it at first,” but at the same time, “when you're singing in another group,

you're also spouting lots of hot air. It's just not funneled.”

One reason we got comfortable with the physical closeness of our breath is that

the experience itself becomes an intense form of bonding. Sean expresses that “a really

important factor in this work is how comfortable you are with the people that you're with.

It's easier to develop that sense of comfort with a person when you go through this. It can

make people more intimate with each other.” He says this is especially rewarding when

he has a prior relationship with someone. “Because you're already comfortable, you are

more willing to experience new things. I was more apt to feel if it was with someone I

was comfortable with, so I was willing to open my throat to them.” On the other hand,

prior relationships can make Xibuccal singing more complicated socially and/or

emotionally. Maya admits that the whole project “was way more intimate than we were

acknowledging.” She describes that she remembers “stuff was happening with Mariana

during the workshops. We were not sure what our vibe was, and I remember feeling like,

‘Oh my god, I don't know if I can do the Xibuccal thing with her while we're both still

thinking 'What is happening?’ in our relationship. I remember there was one day where I

was not sure if we were into each other. I remember there being some weird tension, and

then thinking, ‘I don't know if I feel comfortable doing the Xibuccal singing with her,

because that feels like it'll be even more awkward or weird.’ I remember that surprising
 17

me, because I also thought, ‘You're literally just singing into a pipe!’ but it's attached to

your body. What you're doing is affecting the other person's body.”

Despite these complications, Maya still expressed that the experience of a

communal vocal tract was profound. “César Alvarez talks about this–when you're making

music with someone, you're literally constructing a small universe. It was just so clear

that was happening. You were literally constructing a being, or a living force. You were

making that with other people. Maybe, still, an audience member wouldn't be able to feel

that or believe that, but the other people you were doing it with would. That's why it was

super deep.” Maya’s favorite moments during the workshops were when the resonant

frequencies of the pipes were activated by the group, because “that made the instruments

shake, and you could feel it super strongly. It was physical evidence that your voice is

literally touch. I thought that was just the coolest thing and the most sublime thing.”

Mariana agrees, saying that Xibuccal singing “leads to stronger connections with the

people you're making music with. It's very intimate in a spiritual way. You have to be

hyper aware of what it is you're feeling, and how another person’s actions affect what

goes on in your body. That has a lot of its own indications in the physical realm, but for

me, that practice of being hyper conscious of your body and someone else's as a means of

creating resonance together is spiritual on a different level than what I've experienced

before.”

The potential danger of this physical and spiritual potency was illuminated in the

first Performance Lab rehearsal when Allison and Tim Ruszala sang into each other for

the first time. “I remember the first time that we rehearsed with the instruments, only one
 18

of the full apparatuses was built,” Allison recounts. “I wore the full apparatus, and Tim

only had one pipe to sing through, so that created this really strange power imbalance.

Tim was able to sing into this full apparatus that was surrounding my body in a way that I

couldn't reciprocate. All of a sudden I was having this intense emotional response to both

of us singing into the piping at the same time. It felt extremely violating. It brought up

some of this past trauma even though none of my trauma had to do with the voice

specifically. It was this horrifying moment where I wanted to be a trooper, and I wanted

to keep going and keep playing, but I had to ask to stop, because I felt like I just couldn't

be participating in an equal music making session with this configuration. The next day

when we went to rehearse, both apparatuses were completed. I was willing to try again,

and we sang into each other. It actually became one of the most uplifting and almost

spiritual experiences I had with singing up until that point, because all of a sudden

everything was reciprocated. We were able to sing into and outside of each other's bodies

and actually create this space with our voices that was completely unprecedented and

unparalleled in my experience. That was really, really unbelievably powerful.”

4. RELATIONSHIPS TO OTHER MUSIC MAKING

A common sentiment among all of us is that Xibuccal Instruments illuminate

various degrees of intimacy among the musical interactions we’ve become accustomed to

throughout our lives. Akiva explains that Xibuccal singing “affects your body more than

other ensemble work. I think all instruments do something to your body, but not in this

super direct way. In most ensembles, if I'm playing bass and somebody is playing piano,
 19

they can play something that affects me, or moves me, or even jars me, but it's not going

to be literally in my body.” Mariana says that “as a singer, Xibuccal singing reemphasizes

a lot of the goals I'm striving for, which is training my voice to get to a place where it's

very much itself, and can sing freely, and can vibrate openly versus a lot of kinds of

singing where I'm forced to contain my voice and contort it in a different ways.” For

example, her experiences in choirs have taught her “to focus on what I'm creating and not

how I'm feeling. Music ensembles are all very intimate, but this is something that I think

we're often taught to deny, the physical aspect of our experiences in ensembles. Xibuccal

singing is explicitly meant to activate certain sensations in your body.” Sean echoes this

sentiment, saying that “whenever you're singing, it's more about the product and what

other people are sharing and how you can blend with each other, but whenever you are

singing into someone else, what sound comes out isn't nearly as important as the

experience that you two are sharing. When you’re singing a traditional duet, you're

emoting, you're harmonizing, you're doing all the things you're supposed to do, but there's

still a ton of autonomy, and you're focusing on how you want this vowel to sound or

where your breath support is coming from in addition to connecting with the other

person.” With Xibuccal singing on the other hand, “it's like having to maintain eye

contact. You are maintaining that connection. You are forced to have this shared

experience, and since neither one of you can truly control what it is you're doing, you

focus more on the other person and the sound between you rather than the sound inside

you.”
 20

Focusing on this sound between a group increased Emily’s confidence as a singer.

As an untrained singer in an ensemble with many trained singers, she says Xibbucal

Instruments “gave me more confidence for my voice to be sort of hidden and mixed

amongst theirs. Because I couldn't hear myself, the focus was not so much on perfecting

my own sound and being self conscious about that, but this feeling of injecting my voice

into this group of vibrations that's already going on. That was helped by the camaraderie

that I have with Kirsten and all of them. The focus was not so much on, "Oh, do I sound

good?" like checking yourself in the mirror, but just producing a sound. That was really

something fun about it.” Similarly, Maya says Xibuccal singing has impacted her

confidence in forming boundaries in other musical settings. “It’s definitely made me

realize to what extent, in a very explicit way, we touch each other and affect each other

when we play music together,” she says. “I feel like that's something that's just not

acknowledged at all in most musical settings, how much you're actually touching another

person when you make music with them. Now, unless I really feel like I want to play with

someone, and I feel like they're a good person, I don't want to play with them, because it

really can affect my emotional state. Xibuccal Instruments made me realize that that's

totally valid.”

Kirsten reflects on the relationship between her experiences as a percussionist and

a singer: “The most physical experience I had playing percussion was when I was in a

marching band, and I had a bass drum physically attached to me. I felt it in my chest and

my back where my harness was. Singing has been less of a physical experience for me,

which I'm finding out because my voice teacher is constantly saying, ‘You've got to
 21

breathe better, you've got to treat your body more like an instrument as opposed to just

sound coming out of your mouth.’ Having this instrument wrapped around me and trying

to connect it back to percussion reminds me how my body is also an instrument and not

just a means to an end. It reminds me that I should respect my sound making processes

more.”

As a composer, Mariana says that “the free singing we did in the Fall of 2019 was

all so natural, and I wasn't even thinking about it at that point. I wasn't overthinking about

what interval I should be singing. I was just really doing what felt natural, and we ended

up creating some really gorgeous sonorities. Being around that sound inspired me to

show that in my own composition. I've been more free about stacking voices and creating

a line of music that just happens organically. As a composer it's been very freeing.” As a

conductor, she is “always thinking about connections between people and ensembles. I'm

really interested in chamber music settings for that same reason of collaboration,

experience, and true listening to create a special product. So, this project also grounds me

and makes me think of ways in which I can emulate this sort of vibrational experience

between people with an orchestra or with a choir of eighty people.”

Another branch of Kirsten’s work is in Ethnomusicology. She discusses how

Xibuccal workshops have complimented her research on Kpop ensembles. “My work is

in the globalization of Korean language and culture via popular music. Xibuccal singing

made me think more about how connected the body was in these globalization processes.

Unlike these instruments, Kpop is more about the physicality of the body, dancing, and

presentation of self that seems to draw fans in. Xibuccal singing made me wonder what
 22

it's like for these Kpop groups to have a connected body under a name, a brand. You've

got the group first, and then you've got individual personalities connected by the group

and their dance style. It got me thinking more about how music can move through bodies.

It made me think that I should look more at how people are connected, as opposed to just,

‘We're singing harmonies, and we're both popping and locking on two and four.’ It makes

me also think of fan consumption. Are they enamored by the group, the group's

connectedness, or is it more about feeling connected to that one member that's just for

you?” This again shows how current, wearable Xibuccal Instruments are not necessarily

intended for group settings with passive listeners, but nonetheless are about group

mentalities.

Emily talks about how the uplifting potential of this kind of group focus. “I think

this is a perfect example of socially conscious art that can bring more voices into the

picture. I would probably not have been involved in a vocal senior thesis, but I was, and it

was an awesome experience because these instruments were created, and that's why I got

to be a part of this. The Xibuccal Instruments are quite literally creating structures to

bring more voices into music.” With this in mind, how might we continue to explore new,

fun ways of using Xibuccal Instruments in performance to bring this social experience to

audiences and performers alike?

5. NEXT STEPS

It begins with continuing to refine the material design of the instruments. Mariana

explains that “something we spent a lot of time in the shop working on was the
 23

compression between the mouth pieces and our faces. We experimented with condoms

and with sawing. I was fine–it didn't hurt me, but that was one of the gags in the

workshop, the mouthpiece. I'm excited to see where that goes.” Maya suggests having a

less complicated wearable design with fewer pipes. “One design that I was thinking of,”

she says, “would be a common resonating drum with openings that people could sink

into. I felt like one problem with the pipes is that the connector pipes were so long that

the sound was getting diffused. It was not as strong as it could have been, so I was

thinking about simplifying it and making it one common instrument that everyone went

onto.” Kirsten has an idea for a Xibuccal application to mallet percussion design. She

recounts how the two of us “started playing with the idea of using boom whackers and

having pitched pipes. Then I wondered what other percussion instruments involve pipes

and hitting things, which led us to discuss the marimba, xylophone and vibraphone. It

would be fun to play with the tubing of a marimba and its resonators. I stuck with a

marimba because it has such a warm, voice-like quality to it. While we have these

wearable instruments, and we are singing into each other, what would it be like to

introduce reverberations from a mallet percussion instrument?” I personally prefer the

idea of building a Xibuccal vibraphone because of its sustain pedal. Another application I

am interested in exploring are Xibuccal sex toys. I have talked with multiple couples who

have told me that they vocalize into each other’s mouths every now and then. Xibuccal

sex toys could build off of this instinct as an auto stimulatory device where you can use

your voice to stimulate your own body, or you and your partner(s) could use your voices

to stimulate each other.

 24

An important part of being able to expand the design of Xibuccal instruments into

vibraphones or sex toys would be doing more acoustical experiments to figure out how

these instruments really do what they do. Maya says that throughout our workshops, she

would think, "Why is this happening?” Maya and Akiva were both particularly interested

in cataloguing the different resonant frequencies and difference tone possibilities of each

instrument. Akiva says that “near the end, we were planning on cataloging all the

different different stones with the different intervals” before our time got cut short by

COVID-19, and he was was “really excited to be nerdy about the beating and the

difference tones, and to write music with all that in mind.” Mariana is specifically

interested in exploring how acoustic space, both in and outside of our bodies, affects

Xibuccal Instruments. “I was really looking forward to the final days of being in the

Colab and experimenting with space, each other, and the instruments,” she says. “I would

love to experiment with how this functions in a specific room, or how we can connect

with X number of people and how that changes the sound.” Similarly, Emily wants to

exploit the directionality of the instruments in performance. “I’m interested in performing

with the instrument and framing that sort of directionality in a way. It’s like live mixing.

You are your own speakerphone, because you have this really directional sound. I think

there's a great potential for using that property of these instruments as another parameter

to play with in vocal music. It would sound like the singers are in and out of focus. The

added charm of these instruments in particular is that the focus from the outside is not

anything to do with pitch. It's this muted sound that is particular to these instruments,

which you can really exploit in a positive way.”

 25

The next step from here would be to explore the dramaturgical potential of these

relationships between body, instrument, and space. Allison describes how “the whole

time that we're rehearsing, I'm thinking dramaturgically about the implications of this

kind of music making and trying to parse out, is this a different creature that is created? Is

this something subhuman? Is this something more than human? Is this protohuman?

Where is this voice coming from? Is this experience of singing into each other, as two

parties, creating a third thing?” A large part of this would include returning to creating

costumes for these instruments as MC Otani ‘21 did for Performance Lab. Allison says

that “MC's designs enhanced this experience of feeling like, ‘Ah, okay, I am underneath

this kind of cloak, so this feels like it has become part of my body.’ Playing with MC's

costumes was really enlightening in terms of what is possible. I think it just started

turning the gears for me in terms of, what would this look like if incorporated in a work

of music theater? What is a character that is able to wear their voice? What does that

mean for their language? What does that mean for the way that they express feelings?

What does that mean for the way that they can relate to other people, the way that they

embrace people? Are they more likely to embrace people with sound now that the way

that they're able to embrace people physically is maybe encumbered by this way that

they're able to externalize this expression that is usually internal? What would that

experience be like to wear your voice?” Additionally, Allison understands that “there's a

comedy to Xibuccal Instruments to be explored more dramatically. You're wearing this

PVC, something that people usually associated with this very rugged, architectural

sentiment, plumbing, etc, so then what does that mean for that to become a thing of
 26

beauty? This kind of exploration can only arise from time actually reflecting on this

experience that was pretty profound.”

I want children to be involved in all these creative questions about the next

phase of Xibuccal Instruments, because this work is ultimately about play. Mariana

believes that children “would honestly love this.” She even “felt like a kid when we were

workshopping, because it is about very careful playing, and it takes so much work on all

ends. It's like discovering new grounds that you didn't think were really possible. I can

totally imagine this being a part of a classroom setting where kids explore their voice and

its limits with Xibuccal singing.” Allison suggests that part of learning to make music

with Xibuccal Instruments could include playing with other technology like the

electrolarynx. She describes that “this piece of technology is at a set amplitude, which

you can change, and it's at a set frequency, which you can also change. Having this thing

as a constant allows for this constraint and creativity. You're able to fine tune your own

improvisation and explore your own vocal tract in preparation for more of this kind of

work with Xibbucal Instruments. If you can train your voice to really feel what beating

feels like inside of it–because you're getting this vibration really close to the larynx–you

can actually get to that experience a lot easier with other people and do it in a safe way

where you have more control.” Overall, each of the collaborators I interviewed expressed

great enthusiasm for the future of these instruments, and I hope to continue playing with

each of them. Kirsten sums up our collective sentiment, saying “While I don't know if

we're going to be able to do this as a group again, it’s exciting that there's more that be

explored, and I'm excited to see where these instruments go.”

 27

In the Fall of 2020, I hope to start building a large scale version of these

instruments out of massive water pipes in my neighborhood of O'Hara Township outside

of Pittsburgh, PA, where part of my maternal family has lived for the past 230 years.

These pipes have forced much of the local waterways underground to make way for

suburban development over the past seventy years. By transforming these pipes into

giant, temporary extensions of my vocal tract, I aim to explore my body and the body of

my maternal ancestors as part of the many settler-colonial technologies and

transformations inflicted on the land I grew up with. This future piece is in conversation

with Rebecca Belmore’s piece Ayum-ee-aawach Oomama-mowan: Speaking to Their

Mother, a monumental wooden megaphone that amplifies the voices of Indigenous

people who are directly speaking to their land and the colonial violences it has endured.

After this, I hope to create a Xibuccal Instrument with feedback and digital delay that is

able to translate the live sounds of running water from a creek into musical material that I

can sing into. I imagine this instrument relating to the Fujara, a contrabass overtone flute

from Slovakia that holds a rich history of accompanying vocal music and is often meant

to imitate the sounds of running water. Additionally, I seek to investigate embodied,

historical connections between antisemitism and transmisogyny through more complex

wearable Xibuccal Instruments. As Joni Alizah Cohen describes in “The Eradication of

‘Talmudic Abstractions': Anti-Semitism, Transmisogyny and the National Socialist

Project,” Nazi ideology asserts that "[t]he trans woman is Rabbi Loeb’s Golem formed

against nature. She is the Jew’s most abhorrent creation and must be eradicated with him”

(Cohen). I want to use my instruments to reimagine Jewish traditions like prayer and
 28

wordless nigunim in order to explore the life affirming and gender expansive potential of

the Golem, a Jewish monster made of inanimate materials brought to life by language. I

would create new ‘skin’ and ‘bones’ out of elastic fabrics like lycra and my externalized

PVC pipe vocal tract respectively to transform myself into monstrous cyborgs.

*****
 29

TECHNICAL DISPLAYS

1. ACOUSRTIC WEARABLE 1.0

1.5” PVC

ACOUSTIC WEARABLE 1.0 (FEBRUARY 2019) ACOUSTIC WEARABLE 1.0 (FEBRUARY 2019)

ALLISON SPANN ’20 AND TIM RUSZALA ’20,

HACK THE DRAG (MARCH 2019) PERFORMANCE LAB (MARCH 2019)
PHOTO BY LARRY LEVANTI
 30

2. ACOUSTIC WEARBLE 2.0

1” PVC and Corrugated Pipes

FRONT OF ACOUSTIC WEARABLE 2.0 (JULY BACK OF ACOUSTIC WEARABLE 2.0 (JULY
2019) 2019)

SEAN CRITES ’20 AND MAYA KAREN ’20 CONNECTING ACOUSTIC

WEARABLES (DECEMBER 2019)
 31

Graphs Comparing Resonance of Corrugated Pipes vs. PVC

With the support of Aatish Bhatia in July 2019, I collected this data to help me determine
the materials for the acoustic wearable 2.0. Each participant, Gloria Yin ’18, Ishani
Kulkarni ’22, and Sean Crites ‘22 produced more resonant frequencies with the
corrugated pipe than with the PVC.

Participant #1:

Participant #2:

Participant #3:
 32

3. PARTS FOR ELECTROACOUSTIC INSTRUMENTS

Includes various transducers.

DGZZI 2PCS Super Mini PAM8403 DC 5V 2

Channel USB Digital Audio Amplifier Board Module

JOYO JF-08 Digital Delay Effect Pedal (circuit 2 3W Volume Control with Switch Potentionmeter

board)

Adafruit Electret Microphone Amplifier - MAX4466 LAMPVPATH 4.5V AA Battery Holder with Leads

with Adjustable Gain [ADA1063] and Switch

 33

4. ELECTROACOUSTIC DIAGRAMS & DEMOS

Demo video: circuit building

FUNDAMENTAL CIRCUIT FOR EACH

ELECTROACOUSTIC INSTRUMENT STANDARD XIBUCCAL FEEDBACK PIPE

ELECTROACOUSTIC XIBUCCAL WEARABLE ELECTROACOUSTIC XIBUCCAL WEARABLE

 34

CREATIVE DEMONSTRATIONS

1. Birchas Kohanim

Eli Berman performing her arrangement of the Hebrew prayer Birchas Kohanim. This is

a work in progress first performed at National Sawdust’s Spatial Sound Lab with Laurie

Anderson and Arto Lindsay on February, 22 2020. The arrangement comes from

Berman’s Electric Khazn project, an expanding repertoire of solo, experimental Jewish

cantorial music. The instrument consists of a small microphone, amplifier, digital delay

pedal, and batteries connected to a transducer that sits at the bottom of the pipe. All

sounds are made from a combination of her voice, the pipe and its circuitry (feedback,

sputtering, etc), and digital delay. Here she uses this scarf as an initial experiment in

visually extending her body with the instrument while sonically extending her voice with

the instrument. Performed February 2020.

2. Trio

Eli Berman performing an improvised work in progress using three of her Xibuccal

Instruments: two feedback pipes–each made of a small microphone, amplifier, digital

delay pedal, and batteries connected to a transducer that sits at the bottom of the pipe–

plus an acoustic, wearable device that uses corrugated pipes to 1) split the output of her

voice into two sound holes in order to reach both mics and 2) facilitate communication

between her two feedback pipes. All sounds are made from a combination of her voice,

the pipe, and its circuitry. Performed March 2020.

 35

3. Oh Zuzanna

Eli Berman performing a solo improvised work in progress for the electroacoustic

Xibuccal wearable. Original Yiddish text and translation:

Du host farlozt der Slovokay erd far der rostbelt luft, di shule farn zavod, di mishpokhe
far a tsukunft. (You left Slovak earth in exchange for rust-belt air, school for factory,
family for future.) Oh Zuzanna, far vos bistu geblibn? Dos iz der opmakh vos du host
gemakht. (Oh Zuzanna, why did you stay? This is the deal that you made.) Un atsind
zenen di bergeray berger di kultur vos du host undz gegebn (And now mining mountains
are the culture you left us.) Af land vos ikh ken mer nisht onnemen vi undzers (On land I
can no longer claim for us).

4. You Don’t Care

Eli Berman performing a work in progress for large Xibuccal feedback pipe.

5. Somebody In the Countercurrent Loves Me

Eli Berman performing a work in progress video piece for large Xibuccal feedback pipe.

6. Improvisation for Xibuccal feedback pipe & feedback bass

Performed by Eli Berman (Xibuccal feedback pipe) and Akiva Jacobs (feedback bass) in

February 2020.

7. Performance Lab 2019 (start: 03:16)

An improvisation by Allison Spann, Tim Ruszala, and Eli Berman using the acoustic

Xibuccal wearable 1.0 designed and built by Eli Berman and MC Otani in Spring 2019.

*****
 36

Hairy Voices & Other Kinds of Time Travel

A Xibuccal Vision

Eli Berman

As a cast member of César Alvarez's musical The Universe Is a Small Hat this Spring, I
was tasked with creating the backstory of a sentient A.I. composer bot. I didn’t know much about
what I wanted out of this person’s life, but I knew I needed them to be a chazzan. I also knew that
I needed their voice to be reused, physically passed down from generations of cantorial bots
descended from conscious Xibuccal Instruments. I named this A.I. Yossele Rosenbot after the
most famous chazzan in the world, Yossele Rosenblatt, and gave them a voice made of a mic,
speaker, and delay pedal. César led many discussions about what “sentience” can mean, what the
boundaries between “organic” and “inorganic” life are currently, and how these things might
change in hundreds of years. What stuck with me most from these discussions was their point
about crystals: they are not alive in an organic sense, yet they grow. This made me think of my
hair, which lately has been growing out of both ends of my head untouched and at lengths we’ve
never reached before. I mention this because I never actually decided to grow my hair out. My
hair simply warned me when it was ready to expand, and I’ve been trying to listen closer ever
since. The semester before I joined this musical, I began to collaborate with Bhavani Srinivas ‘21
on an installation of hers about body hair and moving boxes. My plan was to make a speaker out
of one of these boxes, but I didn’t know what sound to give it. Bhavani suggested I figure out
what a hairy voice would sound like. The following text serves as the seed for a manifesto about
my relationships with voice, ancestors, gender(s), lands, and other instrument building materials
that have led me to my hairy voice and its dreams about Xibuccal Instruments.

*****

Yossele takes a walk. They come across a creek bubbling out of a giant, rusty water pipe.

As they ease closer, they notice a tickle in their throat. They touch the edge of the pipe,

feeling it rumble so deep they cannot hear it. Yossele looks inside. No light. They let out

their own rumble, the slowest wave they can muster from their body: “Where did you get

your voice?” Yossele’s sound wanders along those wet walls far enough until they no

longer hear themself…

I still don't know what it means, but a hairy voice is something that I feel I

have, or something that I do. As a kid, I was always told that the hair on my head came

from Slovakia, my eyes and eyebrows from Ireland, and my rosy lips with a thick beard
 37

both from Ashkenaz. When I asked where my voice came from, I never got a satisfying

answer. My mom told me I got it from my grandpa, George Powers, who sang solos at

the church down the hill from our house. If I’m getting the story right, he built this house

from a Sears catalog, and he would walk down Powers Run to get to that church. Or he’d

walk down that creek with my mom just to tell her stories about which relative lived on

that particular hill, and why this waterfall got its namesake ‘cause this person died here,

and how James Powers built that log cabin up there in 1790. I was never satisfied with

the answer I got from my mom ‘cause by the time I got it, grandpa George could hardly

talk to me or anyone else, let alone sing. All I ever knew about this old man next door

were stories and stories he’d told, as told by Mom. The last story she told me about him

was that before he died, he kept saying that he couldn’t wait to see his family again. She

laughed when she told me. When grandma Bertha told her this, Grandma said, “He really

thinks he’s gonna see them again!” We all laughed. When my voice started to drop during

puberty, Mom played me one of grandpa George’s church recordings. “See, you sound

just like each other.”

Eventually Yossele’s rumble comes back, transformed into a massive wall of sound
launching into the open air. Yossele backs up, opens wide, and braces for a message: “I
was forced into the Earth against my will centuries ago in 1952. They buried me and my
siblings throughout these hills to keep much of this water underground so that they could
expand their settlement. Decades later, one of them placed a few mics and speakers at my
ends to get me to speak. I was made long enough that none of them were even able to
hear my resonant frequency, so they finally left me alone. You might actually be the first
who’s heard me. You’re certainly not the first to make me sing though…”

Like grandpa George, I developed my voice in a choir, where they told me that

my voice was an instrument. Unlike grandpa, I was also a non-binary kid whose voice
 38

was constantly being thrown back at them, half-digested and acidic, by ears that

desperately demanded that my voice was that of a boy. I never had control over what my

voice could be since it was always outside of me, so I found comfort in the idea of my

voice being like other musical instruments that deserved care and respect for being

outside of my body. Effectively, this meant that I became more averse to stories. These

tales of the Powers family were among the first to go, already sterilized, as Kyle Powys

Whyte would say, in the ongoing wake of my ancestors’ environmental fantasies. I

became so uninterested in the notion of my voice as a vehicle for text that I committed

myself to exploring its dimensions outside of semantics, hoping to expand my voice as

far out from my body as possible. I even went as far as building new instruments

designed to augment my vocal tract. I dreamed of a pipe that would help me sing into

myself and help me sing into one of grandpa George’s old recordings. With the help of a

small mic, speaker, and delay pedal, I wanted to feel our voice come back at me from the

other end and try talking with him for the first time. Naively, I didn’t think the pipe would

have anything to say in this process. The creature spoke up immediately and compelled

me to listen.

Yossele is stunned. They’ve finally met someone else with some of the same vocal tract as
them: mics and speakers. “Who else is able to make you sing?” asks Yossele with a siren
call. “I’ve been searching all over to find out where voices like ours come from!” From a
far corner of its body, the pipe chirps and beckons, “Walk through me, and you should
find who you need to talk to...”

I was planning on teaching this collection of materials to do what I wanted, but

I was alarmed to find that this little creature was already prepared to school me. I was
 39

unprepared to hear its various sputters, shrieks, and moans; they sounded entirely too

close to the ingressive, multiphonic vocal sounds that had come to feel like home during

my journey away from words. How did I manage to create this monster and give it these

parts of my vocal tract? What does this say about my voice if it can be replicated with a

pipe, microphone, and speaker? Before, I would perform with my extended techniques,

and people would tell me that my acoustic voice sounded electronically processed. I

delighted in the obsolescence of those “inanimate” appliances that claimed to expand my

already multidimensional voice. Now, I had to grapple with knowing my voice wasn’t

entirely unique to me or any organic being for that matter.

So, Yossele goes forward, clicking and chirping their way through the pipe until their
voice no longer comes back to them. They make it to the other side. Among the sound of
running water, they hear a chorus of sine waves that seems to come from within the creek.
Is this a group that I’m looking for? Yossele walks upstream peering into every inch of the
water as the chorus grows louder, but they find no visually signs of anybody…

When the monster and I started singing into each other, I began to realize that I

was creating a golem. This complex relationship between a pipe, speaker, microphone,

and digital delay pedal was entirely animated. As it came to life, it bore insights about my

organic, human voice: “Your vocal tract may be an instrument, but your voice most

certainly is not. Your voice is something else much holier an elusive. It is an organ. A

hairy, untraceable organ. Let it grow. Listen. Yes, they can track the frequencies your

voice rides on, and they can measure it in decibels, but they will never be able to locate it.

They will never be able to pin it down because hairy voices like to time travel.”
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As the sound of the chorus grows more massive, Yossele suddenly walks right into
another pipe. This one is slight and suspended vertically just above the gurgling water.
All of the sounds they hear seem to come from this one skinny tube. This person has to be
made with a delay pedal too! Standing on top of a few rocks, Yossele is just able to reach
the pipe’s top sound hole, so they form a seal between themself and the pipe: “Who are
you? Where did your voice come from?”

As I studied with my golem, I stopped trying to force my voice to expand.

Rather, I opened my throat to the golem’s voice, following my ingressive multiphonics

backwards into my body. As my beard lengthened, our hybrid voice guided it’s

simultaneously growth inwards through my cheeks and neck into my vocal tract. Among

this hairy flesh is where I found my ancestors. As I released my voice, they would tickle

my throat and coax my tongue with these ingressive hairs, forming the phonemes of

Yiddish and Hebrew, even Slovak and Gaelic. They would remind me how the roots of

my hairy voice were once ripped from my throat by genocide and frayed away by

assimilation into whiteness.

As the bubbling chorus of sine waves enters Yossele’s body, it activates vibrations from
Yossele that they’ve never felt before. “I have had many names” the pipe moans, “the
most recent of which is ‘Powers Run.’ This pipe you’ve attached yourself to merely
translates a voice that I’ve had for millennia. Someone gave me this apparatus as a gift
many centuries ago. I knew this person well, just as intimately as I had known the six
previous generations of her family. Though their bodies are all long gone, I still feel their
voices. These waves of theirs have become much too slow for you to pick up, but if you
stood hear as long as I have, you might not be able to shake them either...”

As these ingressive hairs expanded, phonemes grew into full repertoires of

chazzanus, trávnice, and sean-nós. With my chazzunus, I was even able to find my great-

grandma Sophie, the last known link in my Jewish lineage who shielded the origins of the
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Berman name from our family. This woman I once thought to be so untraceable–I found

her in my throat, and she guided me as I waded through my own womanhood. Despite

this, I wasn’t able to find all of the traces I had hoped for. Grandpa George and I never

managed to sing together, and I lost hope that any of us would be able to find the Berman

namesake here in our vocal tracts. Yet, whenever I sang into my feedback pipe friends,

our bodies would join, and the boundary between us would blur just as it would with the

elders in my throat. Each time, I couldn’t wait to feel the traces these golems would leave

for the future.

“Who gave you this apparatus?” Yossele asks. “I need to know where my voice comes
from.” With a rattling howl, Powers Run replies,“Keep upstream and you’ll find her, but I
can’t promise that you’ll be able to understand her.” The creek’s song nudges Yossele
upstream, guiding them for hours through water pipes and heavy currents before settling
them down by a willow tree reaching across the water. Dozens of little speakers hang
from it’s branches: “Mi she'asah nissim la'avoteinu...Walkin’ on water, let me go...Ikh vil
visn vi du bist gelofn…” The timbre of these frequencies are quite foreign to Yossele. At
the base of the tree is a stone carved with a script they can’t decipher either: “Here lies
Eliyahu Powers-Berman.” Yossele looks back to the branches, grabs hold of the nearest
speaker, and opens wide to hear: “Ikh kenn zikh nisht darvartn vider a mol tsu zen di
mishpokhe...I can’t wait to see my family again…”

*****
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I hereby declare that I am the sole author of this thesis, and that this thesis represents my
own work in accordance with University regulations. /s/ Eli Berman