Nina Sun Eidsheim is a Professor of Musicology at UCLA. The Race of Sound: Listening, Timbre and Vocality (2019) is a companion volume to her previous book, Sensing Sound: Singing and Listening as Vibrational Practice (Reference Eidsheim2015), and as such it enters a scholarly conversation on the topic of race and sound that is well underway. Other scholars who have made recent significant contributions to this area include Jennifer Lynn Stoever (Reference Stoever2016) and Matthew Morrison (Reference Morrison, McAuley, Nielsen, Levinson and Phillips-Hutton2019 and Reference Morrison2020). By focusing on how race is understood through the timbre of the human voice, Eidsheim's book offers a unique contribution to the field. Eidsheim has scholarly outputs in American studies, African American studies, gender, popular culture and postcolonial studies. She combines this knowledge with a background in experimental music, music theory, vocal performance and pedagogy, and voice studies. As such Eidsheim is uniquely placed to write on this topic.

Eidsheim opens with several scenarios that form a provocative backdrop for her argument about race and sound. She references the 1995 trial of OJ Simpson, ‘the second voice that you heard sounded like the voice of a black man; is that correct?’ (p. 1). She also quotes Ralph Nader saying to the ‘Rocky Mountain News’ in 2008 that President Obama is ‘talk[ing] white’. The examples illuminate long-held assumptions that, in the absence of a visually presented or otherwise known source, one should be able to identify who it is that is speaking (or singing). Eidsheim observes that any difficulties that one encounters in identifying the source are usually assumed to be due to ‘ignorance or inexperience’ with the voice encountered (p. 2). This discussion forms a central thread of the book by asking an acousmatic question (referencing Pierre Schaeffer): ‘Who is this? Who is speaking?’ (p. 1). This book contests and complicates the idea that the sound of a vocal timbre should be tethered to a particular racial identity. It contributes to race and ethnicity studies by addressing the perception of the voice as understood in American music (p. 26).

By interrogating accepted ways of thinking about race and sound, Eidsheim takes on the work of a scholar-activist. She exposes the discrimination that often accompanies racial assumptions made on the basis of the timbre of the voice. Eidsheim offers new insight by arguing that timbral discrimination should be considered alongside discrimination on the basis of skin colour or hair texture (p. 4). This is an under-examined field which carries all kinds of implications for vocal pedagogy. Eidsheim reveals that the listener has a central role in the construction of the meanings of sound and identity. As she puts it, ‘each designation [of meaning given to sound] is already the result of chains of associations made by an individual under the pressures of the social and cultural context in which that individual participates’ (p. 36). Eidsheim's case is that listening is never neutral but rather always actively produces meaning: it is a political act (p. 24).

A case study of the voice of Jimmy Scott in Chapter 4 ‘[challenges] the popular image of masculine blackness’ (p. 36). Scott was a male African American vocalist whose voice naturally occupied a high vocal register. Eidsheim skilfully demonstrates that listeners will ‘take extreme measures when a voice does not fit within preconceived, culturally dependent notions’ (p. 35). This case study interrogates the perception and reception of black masculinity. At this point it is helpful to see Eidsheim make connections to the work of ethnomusicologist Alisha Lola Jones. In Singing High: Black Countertenors and Gendered Sound in Gospel Performance (2019), Jones presents an assessment of gendered vocal sound. It contests the binary gender framework that the listening public expects of men singing low and women singing high (p. 108). Eidsheim develops this discussion by examining the economic implications of allowing the listener to assume that the voice of Scott is female (p. 97).

Eidsheim's repeated close reading of the anatomy of the voice and carefully selected case studies ensure that this book is grounded in musicology. Eidsheim posits that some correctives are needed to our understanding of what the voice is and how we connect identities with the voice. In particular she states that the ‘voice's source is not the singer; it is the listener’ (p. 23). Here one can perceive resonances with concepts of the French literary critic and theorist, Roland Barthes (1915–1980). In his essay ‘Death of the Author’, Barthes (1967) posits that the author is not able to create or decide the meaning of her work, instead the reader creates the meaning. By positing that the voice's source of meaning is not the singer but instead the listener, it could be argued that Eidsheim holds a similar position to Barthes.

In her exploration of the creation of musical meaning through vocal timbre, one senses that, across the book, Eidsheim could have placed more of a focus on the intention of the performer. Her conceptual framework mainly suggests that ‘in order to more fully understand the operationalisation of race through vocal timbre, we must turn our inquiry to the listener who materialises his or her own values when naming voice’ (p. 37). To some extent Eidsheim addresses this intention in Chapter 4 with an exploration of Vocaloid. Vocaloid is a vocal synthesis software that allows users to create human-sounding voices. Through analysing the launch of the software and the marketing intentions of the company, Eidsheim demonstrates that the software is ‘wrapped in imagery that plays on blackface iconography’ (p. 121). In this way Eidsheim enters the discussion of blackface minstrelsy taken up by Matthew Morrison in his theory of Blacksound. Perhaps Eidsheim could have gone further with the discussion of intent; maybe (like Roland Barthes) Eidsheim agrees that the intentions of the performer cannot truly be known. In an age where identity is at the core of discussions in both academic and popular discourse, a deeper examination of the intent of the performer could provide further understanding of the identities attached to vocal timbre.