Personal Voice Recognition Experience

• Speaker's date experience: stomach growling mistaken for partner's sound
• Childhood voice recording trauma at age 10
  • Mother gifted Panasonic cassette recorder + Memorex tapes for Christmas
  • First recording attempt resulted in shock - voice didn't match self-perception
  • Traumatic gap between expected vs. actual voice sound
  • Led to abandoning singing for dancing/lip syncing to others' voices

Research Background and Methodology

• Speaker identifies as digital ethnomusicologist
• 7-year study of 650 bedroom twerking videos by Black girls
• Video dataset: YouTube uploads 2006-2014
• 1,000+ girls worldwide selected 200 twerk songs
• Only 9 female voices identified: Nicki Minaj, Beyoncé, Ciara, Katie Got Bandz, 5 others
• 90% of songs produced/engineered/written by men

Gendered Musical Play Analysis

• Bedroom musical play described as globally gendered activity
• Girls alone with devices engage in: singing, music listening, dancing
• Historical context: pre-YouTube playground/bedroom voices were predominantly girls' own voices
• Current digital landscape: Black girls "drowning in musical mansplaining"

Problematic Song Content Examples

• "Booty Hopscotch": male ventriloquist grooming with "Keep that ass jumpin'"
• "Hands up, get low" commands telling girls what/how to do
• Potential appropriation from Black girls' hand-clapping game "Jig-a-low"
  • "Jig" = dance, "a-low" = get down
  • Original lyrics: "Jig-a-low, jig-jig-a-low, I do my thing, yeah, on the video screen"

Cultural and Technological Impact

• Twerking acknowledged as culturally appropriate, sophisticated African/Afro-Latina diaspora dance
• Girls across gender spectrum being exploited by male-produced content
• Music as oldest human evolutionary technology taking over conscious thought
• Music effects: lowers pain threshold, rewards social bonding/intimacy feelings
• Creates "whole mood" but grooms tolerance for psychological violence in dating

Systemic Issues Identified

• Girls repeatedly exposed to male-dominated musical content
• Technology gives "patriarchy and anti-Blackness a head start"
• Algorithms and audiences perpetuate stereotypes/stigmas
• Online bedroom play no longer "solo act" - influenced by external forces

Proposed Solutions

• Black girls producing own twerk songs
• Preference for female musicians
• Potential to "break the internet in music and tech"
• Revolution requires girls learning to appreciate their own recorded voices
• Bedroom musical play as opportunity for self-regulation and boundary-setting ("Yes!" vs "Nope, not today")