Home 1. Introduction 2. Markers 3. Archive 4. Audible Markers 5. Visible Markers 6. Notational Markers 7. Conclusion
3.1. Integrated Silences 3.2. Inherent Silences 3.3. Silent Discourse 3.4. Meta-Silences 3.5. Silencings
California composer Pamela Z has experimented in opera and electronics with documenting the silencing of Black voices, especially her own. She wrote me a piano-vocal composition entitled Notice of Baggage Inspection (2009) about the censorship/surveillance she is subjected to while traveling.
In this audio sample, one hears the text from a Transportation and Security Administration (TSA) warning, which she repeatedly found placed in her suitcase on arrival. The TSA is the notoriously suspicious agency that scans baggage in American airports. Her baggage was always searched. Thus, a printed card with this text stared out of her luggage every time she arrived in a new place.
The performance encompasses different aspects of silence. The story begins with silencing due to racism. This was enacted by the TSA and marked by the inspection card in her luggage. In turn, this is enacted by the pianist simultaneous with a soundtrack recorded by the composer. Z has used the TSA text (which she has read in her voice, thus un-silencing herself) to illustrate her story of silencing. The silencing is not notated (a meta-silence), although there is a text that narrates it and a card that marks it.
Z’s second approach to silence is an acoustic one. Eloquent silence, marked by audible rests and dramatic pauses, plays an important rhetorical role in the composition, emphasizing the bureaucracy and Kafkaesque arbitrariness of the TSA’s inspection cards.