TransLash Presents: Sounds Gay
TransLash Podcast with Imara Jones
TransLash Media
4.3 • 619 Ratings
🗓️ 22 June 2023
⏱️ 34 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Imara shares a new podcast that TransLash listeners are sure to love: Sounds Gay.
In this mixtape of documentaries, host Sarah Esocoff takes you to rap battles, mosh pits, and songwriting sessions. It explores non-binary identity through emo music and trans history through a lost VHS tape. Sounds Gay tells stories of queer people whose lives have been transformed by music.
In this episode, Sarah learns about a videotape made by a trans woman in the 90s called Melanie Speaks. In the tape, Melanie offered tips for trans women looking to change their voices. Hundreds of women used the tape, but then it, along with the woman who made it, disappeared. This episode asks: how did Melanie help a generation of trans women find their voices? And who was she?
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey all, it's me, Amara. |
| 0:10.4 | This Pride Month, I'm happy to share a new podcast that celebrates LGBTQ histories and |
| 0:15.8 | voices. |
| 0:16.7 | Sounds Gay is a mixtape of documentaries that tell stories of queer people whose lives have been |
| 0:22.8 | transformed by music. We're especially excited to share this episode that explores trans history |
| 0:28.7 | through a lost VHS tape. So take a listen and make sure to subscribe. |
| 0:56.2 | Hi, I'm Melanie Ann, and in the next 30 minutes, you're going to get everything you need to develop a more feminine voice. |
| 0:59.9 | There's seven major areas I've found to be real tools. |
| 1:02.2 | And we're going to cover them all in great detail. |
| 1:11.6 | If you're a trans woman in 2023 and you want to change your voice to sound more traditionally feminine, you have options. |
| 1:16.1 | There are apps, YouTube videos, even online voice coaches. |
| 1:20.7 | But if you were a trans woman in the 90s and you wanted to change your voice, |
| 1:24.6 | you'd want to get your hands on a videotape like Melanie Speaks. |
| 1:30.4 | Over the course of her 45-minute tape, Melanie offers tips, vocal exercises, |
| 1:35.5 | and plenty of encouragement. And she points out that there are many ways to sound feminine. |
| 1:40.5 | Let me give you a couple of examples. First of all, look at Suzanne Plachette, |
| 1:47.3 | look at Marlina Dietrich, look at Cher. All of them are very feminine women, |
| 1:53.6 | and yet each one of them has a very deep voice. It's not where you pitch your voice, it's what you do with it. I'm Sarah Esikoff, and this is Sounds Gay, a podcast about the intersection of music and |
| 2:03.8 | queerness. |
| 2:07.1 | This week, we're talking about voices, not just vocals in a song, but also speaking voices, |
| 2:14.4 | the instrument I'm using to tell you this story right now. We get so much information |
| 2:20.2 | from how people talk. We hear regional accents or slang, the rise and fall of emotion, |
... |
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