Singing pretty: investigating female respectability in classical vocal performance in South Africa

Abstract

In this thesis, I consider respectability in classical vocal performance in South Africa by presenting research on six women who hold prominent positions in this field intertwined with my own experiences in this arena. I introduce the context and background to my research across the fields of respectability politics, music studies, and intersectionality before investigating two main modes of gendered bodily respectability that featured in my singer-participants' lives. These include first extra-bodily technologies in service of respectability, referring to anything that a singer may externally and visibly apply (on)to her body to enhance its physical appeal in specific ways, in line with respectability's requirements. In thinking through the notion of extra-bodily technologies, I outline via cyborg theory how this first mode of respectability policing operates as an intersectionally oppressive force in my own and my singer-participants' lives. The second form of bodily discipline emerges in what I call intra-bodily markers of respectability. In developing this term, I demonstrate, based on my singer-participants' experiences and my own, how the policing of intra-bodily respectability markers may shift our understanding of identity performativity from the discursive realm into the physical. In doing so, I think critically about the importance of language in respectability's shaping of women's realities. With little subversive potential found in these themes, I explore the theme of play as a subversive strategy employed by the singers in my study, contrasting the playful subversion with my own mode of 'serious' rebellion. Play, with its ambiguous nature rooted in theories of psychology and self-realization, becomes a fundamental aspect of human development, allowing individuals to explore their capabilities and confront societal limitations. I explore the gendered aspects of subversive play in various arenas such as physical appearance, sexuality, musicianship, race, and class, emphasizing and questioning its potential as a political action within the constraints of societal structures. The final part of the thesis explores my own experiences of embodied unbecoming from respectability's oppressions through vocal performance. Here, I tie together the three strands presented in the body of this thesis through my singing, transgressing body in reference to what I call a feminist musicianship practice as a way of singing beyond respectability.