Voice and revolutionary practice: The new vocality of Demetrio Stratos

Abstract

This article considers how the ‘new vocality’, showcased by Demetrio Stratos in his albums Metrodora and Cantare la Voce, was, in itself, a revolutionary practice. To do so, it begins by describing these two works as well as the posthumously published text ‘Diplofonie e altro’, in the context of 1970’s Italy. Stratos believed the voice in the capitalist system suffered from a vocal hypertrophy which restricted its communicative capacity and turned it into a vehicle for stereotyped expressions. This situation brought to the fore a ‘voice-for’ which concealed what he called the ‘voice-problem’ and which led him to a theoretical–practical search for other forms of knowledge about the voice that encompass the role of language, psychoanalysis and phonology. This led to a voice-event, a pharmakon, which aims to elude the way the voice is used in the prevailing system of economics and thought, and opens up the possibility of (what is called here) a concrete utopia

AGAUR-Generalitat de Catalunya (Premi 2021SGR00482)