“This voice which is not one”: Amy Winehouse sings the ballad of sonic blue(s)face culture

Abstract

This manuscript explores the charged and complex cultural histories bound up in the music and performative repertoire of English retro soul artist Amy Winehouse. It considers the aesthetics of Winehouse's vocal gestures and racial mimicry, and it explores the politics of what we might call sonic blue(s)face culture, a vocal phenomenon pioneered by black and white female entertainers in early twentieth century popular culture. The essay re-situates Amy Winehouse's work within this cultural legacy, and it explores the ways that her performance aesthetics invoke a diverse swatch of twentieth-century popular music genres, everything from the turn of the (last) century's black and white women's minstrel phenomenon to the late twentieth-century white female R&B vocalizing sensation and beyond. In sum, this essay aims to recuperate the vocal legacies of white and black women's musical collaborations and (dis)identifications so as to trace a through line that runs from early interracial aesthetic encounters all the way to Winehouse's (tainted) love and (unapologetic) theft.