Joan La Barbara – Voice Is The Original Instrument / Early Works

Born in Philadelphia in 1947, Joan LaBarbara studied music in New York City, but she soon moved into jazz circles and the entourage of John Cage, with whom she worked in 1975.

Brought up in the strict school of Steve Reich, LaBarbara adopted new vocal techniques, based on special breath and vocal chord control, simultaneous emission of multiple notes, and simulation of wind instruments; techniques she shows off on the album-research Voice Is The Original Instrument.

The singer prefers discipline and concentration to virtuosity: her vocal minimalism requires tremendous effort to control the organs of the vocal apparatus and force them to emit sounds traditionally beyond their reach. The test is passed successfully especially in the continuum field, when even exhalations and inhalations serve to make sound (as in 1975's Circular Song, eight minutes of glissando in circular breath). In Voice Pieces (1974) he explores the chromatic spectrum of a tone for sixteen minutes, still emitting long resonant breaths. Vocal Extensions (1976), the pivotal piece of the early period, uses electronics to expand the voice: in the chaos of electronic breaths and mumbles LaBarbara's shrill trills, anguished gasps, and terrified wails are reflected and diffracted into increasingly hallucinated forms. With this study of reverberations and echoes, dilations and dissolutions of the voice, the scientific re-discovery of the voice instrument is completed.

Voice Piece: One-Note Internal Resonance Investigation: 0:00
Hear What I Feel: 15:23
Circular Song: 23:52
Des Accords Pour Teeny: 31:23
Les Oiseaux Qui Chantent Dans Ma Tête: 45:08
Vocal Extensions: 1:04:29
Twelvesong (Zwölfgesang): 1:16:48
Q-/-Uatre Petites Bêtes: 1:29:07
Cathing: 1:36:35
Autumn Signal: 1:44:41
October Music: Star Showers And Extraterrestrials: 1:57:03