Demo-ing, Sampling, Lip-Syncing: Commercial Misogynoir in Post-Disco EDM
Wed, Nov 4 · 4:00 PM Rome Hall
Room 205. Join the Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGSS) Program for an exciting talk from Visiting Assistant Professor Eva Pensis! Across the late twentieth century, the popular music industry faced a series of scandals in live performance with the widespread use of lip-syncing. Following the advent of recorded sound, the commercial use of lip-sync in the popular music industry sought to divide the recorded performance from the performer with the aim of controlling both, most often eliding the visual presence of African American musicians while profiting from their sonic contributions. Framed by the media theorist Moya Bailey's concept of "misogynoir," this presentation considers the case of Black Box, an Italian post-disco house music band from the 1980s who stole and misattributed the vocal demos of Martha Wash (a noted musician and vocalist from The Weather Girls and Two Tons o’ Fun) for their debut album. The ensuing crisis of representation that lip-syncing indexes forms the basis for this talk's investigation into the popular music industry's predation on African American women's song following the infamous demolition of disco and the digital quest to strip sound from song. RSVP online.
