Henriques' Framework; Generalizability and Limits
Hi everyone. I came across an interesting question that I’ve been thinking about while answering one of Hannah’s posts regarding “Dancehall Culture and Ties to African culture/Heritage”. In an attempt to help illustrate the significance of historical context to the (re)performance aspect involved in experiences of sonic dominance and the sonic body that we have discussed thus far, I related the collective performing experience of dancehall sessions to ball culture of New York throughout the late 1900s. I will copy and paste a paragraph from that previous post describing the premise of the ball culture for context, and then I would like to pose a question that I am interested in hearing opinions from everyone.
“Paris is Burning, 1990 (link here https://watchdocumentaries.com/paris-is-burning/) is a documentary style film that investigates the ball culture of New York and the African-American, Latino, gay, and transgender communities that often participated in it. At these events (called balls), individuals gather, dress-up in differently themed outfits, perform various dances (often voguing, posing style). The event is in the style of drag competition, judged primarily on the "realness" of the outfit according to the category (e.g. business man, school boy, etc.). The premise of these balls is to facilitate the sense of comfort in one's own skin with likeminded individuals via crossing lines of sexuality, race, body figure through appropriation. In this way, participants perform as a way of taking back or resisting dominant oppressive norms regarding gender, race, and the underprivileged socioeconomic class.”
Henriques provided a framework for understanding the sonic through the sonic body in a holistic way which he coins as sonic dominance. In this framework he offers the material, corporeal and sociocultural wavebands as ways of contemplating the propagation, performance/participation, and “vibes” or “making sense” of the dancehall sessions. He then suggests that transmissions of vibrations at these wavebands require a medium for propagation, instruments, and techniques of using the instruments. Both examples of the dancehalls and the balls evoke multimodality, such that both create a sensorium using both the auditory and the visual, despite dancehall’s focus on the music, and the ball’s focus on the outfits, runway walks, and dances.
So my questions are:
1) Does Henrique’s framework apply to the ball culture as well? What is the same and what is different? What works and what doesn’t?
2) Are there limits to the types of collective experiences that Henriques’ conceptualization, or is it a generalizable model for understanding collective experiences in this way?
Hi Jonathan, really interesting post, and great discussion questions! I found that your example did do a really good job of drawing upon and applying Henriques framework to a different narrative and in a historical context. I also found your example interesting as I had only ever known of balls in a different context to be big fancy parties and dances that rich, upper-class individuals attended back in the 1800’s and early 1900’s.
ReplyDeleteTo answer your first question, I think that in some ways Henriques framework does apply to ball culture. Even though the ball culture of the 1980’s focuses more so on fashion instead of sound, both balls and dancehall sessions require the use of movement and unity to create a common “vibe” and shared experience amongst participants. In the case of balls, the unity of dressing in drag and the movement performed on runways and in dances further adds to and propagates these “vibes” and experiences that Henriques framework encompasses in order to create that sonic dominance experience.
Regarding your second question, I think that Henriques’ framework and conceptualization can be applied to a variety of different collective experiences however, I do think there is a limit. For example, I think that there is a limit of applying this framework to different collective experiences that specifically focus more on visual aspects. For example, I think there could be limits applying this framework to the likes of going to the movie theater and collectively watching the same movie with a group of other strangers as even though you are all watching the same movie at the same time, different members of the audience may have drastically differing opinions and experiences with the movie thus, not experiencing similar “vibes” or creating a sonic dominance experience.