Barthes - God Is Trying to Tell You Something

The contrast between the two singers, I think, exemplifies the difference between "pheno-song" and "geno-song" (The Grain of the Voice p.270). The first singer sings with clarity and articulation. Her voice is clear and supported with the breath, "here it is soul that accompanies the song, not the body" (p.271). Further, the first singer is technically sound, and articulate. "Articulation, in effect, functions abusively as a pretense of meaning: claiming to serve meaning, it basically misreads it" (Music, Voice, and Language p. 283). When Shug Avrey sings, it is loose and material, I hear "the tongue, the glottis, the teeth, the sinuses, the nose", the focus in on the vowels where there is "'truth' of language, not its functionality" (The Grain of the Voice p. 272). Shug sings with pronunciation, which "is music which enters the language and discovers there what is musical, what is 'amorous'" (Music, Voice, Language p. 283). She sings "full throatdedly: like a schoolboy who goes out into the countryside and sings for himself", with the "naked voice" (p.284). The "naked voice" orginated from the folk song, "because it was important to understand the story: something is being told, which I must receive without disguise: nothing but the voice and the telling" (p.284). Shug's singing embodies that idea; the proununciation and the phrasing tell the story of the song completely (and of the scene in the film). She conveys "what is at once outside meaning and non-meaning" (p.284)