Holly Patch. Sounding Trans* and Claiming Voice

In this talk, I present an ethnographic case study of trans* vocality with the Trans Chorus of Los Angeles (TCLA). I begin by reflecting on my use of interpretative phenomenological analysis as a depathologizing interview method, outlining how I reconstructed singers’ lived epistemologies of (gendered) voice by tracing the mutually constitutive material and  ymbolic dimensions of their vocal experiences. I then share empirical findings that illustrate how TCLA singers re-encounter their vocal bodies and re-empower their voices through their active, aesthetic, and multisensory engagement of singing together. In particular, I examine how these practices transform how they sense and understand voice and gender. I  rgue that claiming voice is an intricate process of embodying and incorporating vocal experience into a lived sense of self. This study reveals the individual and collective political,  sonic, and embodied claiming of voice by trans* singers.

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