Voices, Violence and Meaning: Transformations of Speech Samples in Works by David Byrne, Brian Eno and Steve Reich

Abstract

The incorporation of pre-recorded speaking voices in musical compositions such as Steve Reich's It's Gonna Rain and Brian Eno and David Byrne's My Life in the Bush of Ghosts has opened up new modes of musical understanding that are inextricably linked with the speakers in question. Incorporating concrete, recognisable sounds from the ‘real world’ into the symbolic web of a musical composition encourages subjective readings of the source material, for example, by demonstrating how stereotypical Western constructions of African culture can be detected in the treatment of male Afro-American voices. This article will argue that the technological dehumanising of the speaker also produces a particular kind of violence. In addition to such views of violence as directed against the speakers whose words have been erased, this article will conclude that one can also interpret such works as a response to the intricate relationship between sound and speech in music.