I was on a date, just about to eat dinner, and I hear a growling sound. And I look at the guy, he says to me, "That's your stomach, not mine."
有一次我在約會,正要吃飯, [TED 凱拉•高恩] 然後聽見咕嚕咕嚕的聲音。 我看著那位男士, 他對我說,“是你的肚子叫,不是我。” [2022年4月 溫哥華]
(Laughs)
(笑聲)
How do I not recognize the sounds coming from my own body, not to mention my own voice?
如果我無法辨認自己身體的聲響, [TED 錄製] 如何辨認自己的嗓音?
I love the sound of my voice on a microphone, but it didn't start out that way. When I was younger, I was in love with other people's voices. And like so many of us, the first time I ever heard my voice on a recording, I hated it.
我熱愛自己在麥克風裡的聲音, 但之前並不是這樣的。 小時候, 我非常喜愛其他人的聲音。 和很多人一樣, 第一次聽到錄音裡面自己的聲音, 我討厭它。
I was 10 years old when my mother bought me a Panasonic cassette recorder with a pack of Memorex cassette tapes for Christmas. See, singing on tape was my version of bedroom musical play, something that girls do all around the world, and it's really gendered. Left alone with our devices, alone in a room, girls play. Singing, listening to music, dancing. So with a gift in hand, the very next morning, the first thing I did was record my voice. And when I played the tape back, I was shocked. It didn't sound anything like me. There was a huge gap between what I thought I sounded like and what the tape was telling me. And it was traumatic because I didn't recognize me.
我當時十歲, 媽媽買了一個松下卡式帶錄音機給我, 還有一盒錄音帶,是聖誕禮物。 唱歌錄音就是我的臥室音樂劇。 全世界的女孩子們都會做, 和性別有關。 只有設備,單獨在房間,女孩子們的嬉戲。 唱歌、聽音樂、跳舞。 有了這個禮物,第二天早上, 我做的第一件事就是錄下自己的聲音。 當播出錄音的時候, 我驚呆了。 完全不像我的聲音。 差異十分巨大, 我以為自己的聲音和錄音帶裡的完全不同。 最痛苦的是我無法辨認出自己。
I think we all know that feeling. But some of us are emancipated from the doubt triggered by technology, and some of us are not. So I stuck to dancing in the mirror and lip synching, falling in love with other people's voices instead of my own.
大家應該都明白這種感覺。 有的人會覺得自由了,沒有了科技所引發的疑惑。 有些人則不是。 於是,我繼續在鏡子面前跳舞,對著嘴型, 沉浸於其他人的聲音而不是自己的。
Now I am a digital ethnomusicologist. I study Black tween girls, particularly the unintended consequences of their intimate bedroom musical play. On today's mobile apps, Black girls record and upload the most viral dances on the internet. But the songs that mute their voices and sound pornographic are overwhelmingly male. For example, the song "Booty Hopscotch" entices very young girls to record themselves while a male ventriloquist grooms them to "Keep that ass jumpin', Keep that ass jumpin'." Girls say they don't listen to the lyrics, but when asked, they can sing every word with no concern for the consequences.
現在,我是一個數位民族音樂學者。 我研究黑人青少年女性, 特別是她們私密的臥室音樂劇 所產生的無意圖的後果。 在今時今日的手機App上, 黑人女孩錄製和上傳網路最受歡迎的舞蹈。 但是沒有她們的聲音, 而那些色情的聲音清一色都是男性。 例如有一首歌叫做 “屁股跳房子”, 引誘非常年輕的女孩去錄製她們自己, 同時有男性腹語的聲音培養她們”繼續扭屁股”, ”繼續扭屁股”。 女生們說沒聽歌詞,但被問到的話, 她們可以唱出每一個字卻不關心後果。
Before YouTube, before WorldstarHipHop, the Black YouTube, on the playground and in the bedroom, the voices that Black girls heard in their own musical play were predominately their own. But these days, online Black girls are drowning in the sounds of musical mansplaining while bouncing ther booty to the beats and rhymes of rap that tops the Billboard and YouTube charts. Songs like, "Hands up, get low. hands up, get low, hands up," tell them what to do and how to do it. Curiously, the hook for that song may have come, may have been appropriated from a Black girls' hand-clapping game called "Jig-a-low." Jig-a-low is a contraction, “jig” meaning to dance and “a-low”, well, to get down. "Jig-a-low, jig-jig-a-low, I do my thing, yeah, on the video screen. Yeah, well, my hands up high, my feet down low. And this the way we jig-a-low. Hands up high, my feet down low. And this the way we jig-a-low.”
YouTube之前, 世界之星嘻哈、黑人Youtube之前, 在遊樂場和臥室, 在黑人女孩子們自己的音樂劇中, 最主導的聲音是她們自己的。 但現在網路上, 黑人女孩們被淹沒在音樂裡男性的說教。 還跟隨著Billboard和YouTube榜首嘻哈音樂 的節奏扭著屁股。 歌曲例如 “舉手、放下、舉手、放下、舉手、放下” 告訴她們做甚麼和怎麼做。 奇怪地是,歌曲表現的引誘可能是 源於黑人女生的”Jia-a-low” 拍手遊戲。 Jia-a-low是一個簡稱。 “Jig”是跳舞,“a-low”,就是向下。 "Jig-a-low, jig-jig-a-low, 我做的,就是在屏幕上的。 我的手向上,腳向下, 這就是 jia-a-low。 手向上,腳向下, 這就是 jia-a-low。
Girls across the gender spectrum, who love to twerk, which is a culturally appropriate and sophisticated style of dance found throughout the African and Afro-Latina diaspora, are being enticed by sounds that are produced, engineered and written 90 percent of the time by men who are enticing and taking advantage of girls who love to dance and treating them like adults in their intimate bedroom musical play. How do I know? For seven years, I've been studying a set of 650 bedrooms twerking videos by Black girls. They were uploaded to YouTube between 2006 and 2014. Over 1,000 girls from all around the world selected 200 twerk songs and only nine voices of women, including Nicki Minaj, Beyoncé, Ciara and one indie artist named Katie Got Bandz.
女孩子們,在整個性別光譜, 都有人喜歡扭臀舞。 是一種文化適宜和有品味型格的舞蹈。 離鄉背井的非洲裔和非洲-拉丁美洲裔 被九成由男性製作、編曲、創作 的歌曲所誘惑。 他們引誘並利用愛跳舞的女孩子們, 並像對成人一樣,利用她們的私密臥室音樂劇。 我怎麼知道的? 七年了, 我研究了650個臥室扭臀舞,都是黑人女孩子的。 她們的視頻在2006年到2014年期間上傳到YouTube。 一千多個來自世界各地的女孩 挑選了兩百首扭臀舞的歌曲。 而只有九首是女性的聲音, 包括: 妮姬•米娜、碧昂絲、席亞拉 和一個獨立歌手,叫做琪拉雅•格•斑斯。
So what's behind all this? While girls are twerking, feeling themselves, feeling empowered, arguably the oldest technology in our human evolution, music, is taking over. Beyond our conscious thought, music lowers our threshold of pain while it rewards us with the feeling of social bonding and intimacy. That's why we go to concerts, that's why we crave that feeling even when we're alone, that's why music is self-soothing. And it is. It's a whole mood. But that mood is grooming younger and younger girls to tolerate psychological violence in dating situations and in their own intimate bedroom musical play.
這說明了甚麼? 當女生們在跳扭臀舞,感受自己、增加力量的時候, 可能是人類進化過程中最古老的科技 - 音樂在主導。 超出我們的意識思維以外,音樂減低了疼痛, 回饋給我們社會歸屬感和親密的感覺。 因此我們有音樂會, 因此我們雕刻出感覺,即便孤身一人, 因此音樂可以自我安慰。 就是這樣。 所有的情緒 在越來越小的女孩子身上形成。 要去忍受心理暴力,包括約會的時候 和她們自己私密的臥室音樂劇。
Girls repeatedly do what they're repeatedly exposed to. Left to their own devices, music as technology gives patriarchy and anti-Blackness a head start. Faced with doubt about my own voice when I was ten, the tendency to think that the situation was about me, about feeling insecure, that was the tendency, not the situation. The role technology plays gets lost. Being best friends with my own voice could have been my first intimate relationship. If very young girls were surrounded by the voices of Black female voices, chances are they'd assign value to their own. Bedroom musical play could be the first time a girl tunes in to her own internal signals, self-regulates it, and learns to say "Yes!" as well as, "Nope, not today." But online, bedroom musical play, like listening to your gut or your stomach, well, it's not a solo act. Stereotypes and stigmas fed by algorithms and audiences are silencing us. But if Black girls produced their own twerk songs and preferred female musicians, well, they could break the internet in music and tech. But that revolution in sound can only begin if they learn to like the voice on their own Memorex tape.
女生們反覆做的事情總是在被反覆攻擊。 除了自己的器材, 音樂、作為科技,令父權和反黑人有起步優勢。 十歲的時候,面對自己聲音的疑惑, 傾向認為是自己的問題, 有不安全感, 是傾向,並不是處境。 科技扮演的角色沒有了。 和自己的聲音做最好的朋友, 可能是我第一段親密關係。 如果年輕的女孩子們被黑人女性的聲音環繞, 可以令她們給自己賦予價值。 臥室音樂劇可能是第一次, 一個女孩子聽到她內在的信號, 自我調節, 學會說,“是”,同樣,“不, 不是今天”。 但網路上,臥室音樂劇 好像聽我們的肚子或者是胃的聲音。 當然,這不是單打獨鬥。 演算法和觀眾行成的性別偏見與羞辱 壓抑了我們的聲音。 但如果黑人女孩可以製作自己扭臀舞的歌曲, 並選擇女性音樂人, 那麼就可以突破網路音樂和科技。 但是,這場聲音革命 只能是她們學習了解自己的聲音, 從自己的卡式帶開始。
Thank you.
謝謝。
(Applause)
(掌聲)