Voicing the ‘Inappropriate:’ The Muted Memories in American and Ukrainian Female Singers-Songwriters
Iuliana Matasova
The study focuses on the creative techniques used by American and Ukrainian female singers-songwriters to locate the points of repression and elimination within the official national historiographies. The efficiency of the chosen tools is provided by the use of a comprehensive transformative ‘language’ constructed by the singers-songwriters in their agency as Authors and comprised of musical, visual and lyrical layers.
This research presents a comparative case study of the creative subversive efforts of American Tori Amos and Ukrainian Iryna Bilyk, the singers-songwriters starting out in the 1990s. Both artists are representative of their artistic generations and of the social changes reflected in their creativity and influenced by them. The research particularly considers the lyrical layer of Tori Amos’ “Home on the Range (Cherokee Edition)” and Iryna Bilyk’s “Ne Plach, Marichko.” Read as those based on hypotexts, Amos and Bilyk’s songs aim to discover and pronounce the previously muted versions of either a certain national event (as in Amos), or a central and definitive national condition (as in Bilyk) – thus, acquiring the ability of transgressive texts. It is significant that the voicing of those equals bringing forward the voice of a woman. The way Amos and Bilyk accomplish this endeavor proves they disruptively work upon patriarchal logic.
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Key words: female singers-songwriters, 1990s, American, Ukrainian.
Name: Iuliana Matasova
Academic title: PhD
Country: Ukraine
University: Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv