Vocal Break: On Women, Music, and Power

From the acclaimed author of Flâneuse and Art Monsters, a fierce, insistent, ecstatic investigation of the female voice, its power and vulnerabilities, and the ways women sing and speak their way through the world.

For millennia, women’s raised voices have been called unruly, uncivilized, dangerous. Singing women were cast as sirens: mythical creatures who lured sailors to their death.

A vocal break is where the voice shifts from lower to higher registers—from one thing to another. What can b...