Rita Wilson: Sound of a Woman (Gender Studies with Ann Pelligrini) | Transcript
Listen and watch the episode here.
Singer, songwriter, actress, and producer Rita Wilson joins Sing For Science to discuss her song “Sound of a Woman” alongside NYU performance studies scholar and psychoanalyst Ann Pellegrini.
Together they explore what it means to “find one’s voice” later in life, how gender is performed and culturally shaped, and the tension between identity as something deeply felt yet socially constructed. Drawing from Rita’s reflections on feeling “muted” by propriety and expectation, the conversation moves through topics including femininity, performance, language, vulnerability, self-expression, and what it means to be heard — including a discussion of what Ann calls the “Carole King paradox”: the idea that something can feel profoundly natural while also being shaped by culture, performance, and expectation.
Matt Whyte
Today's episode was recorded in New York City on May 6th, 2026. Be sure to check out our other episodes, including one with Rosanne Cash on the science of storytelling. Don't forget to click subscribe and please rate the show on your favorite podcast platform.
Ann Pellegrini
Voice isn't disembodied. Whenever we hear a voice, we fill it in and we fill it in because we've been trained as listeners and disciplined as listeners to think that this voice goes with a male body, this goes with the female body. And we could say there's also a sonic gender line. Who do we think this voice is embodied by?
If someone here's your voice and then has a particular image of you and then says, wait, how is this person 69? This doesn't this doesn't fit any longer, right? There's something really deviant about this. Is that the pleasurable or is that alarming?
Rita Wilson
That's the sound of a woman. Speaks of my wishes. Told you. Shut up so she can. When he said she couldn't. Because she keeps flying as she needs to. When you're hurting yeah she bleeds too. When Your hiding she still sees you. Cause she knows.
Matt Whyte
Welcome to sing for science, the show where musicians and scientists talk about music and science. I'm your host, Matt Whyte. Each week, we'll talk about a song by our guest artist and how it connects with our guest scientists. Area of expertise. Today will be chatting with singer, songwriter, actress and producer Rita Wilson. In 2019, Rita gave a TEDx talk about discovering her passion for music in midlife.
To date, Rita has now released six albums and collaborated with artists ranging from Willie Nelson to Smokey Robinson. The title track from Rita's latest, sound of a woman, is about finding one's voice, what gets in the way and what it means to be heard. With lyrics that move between intimacy and resilience. Rita taps into a broader topic the desire to express, connect and be received.
Also joining us is Professor Ann Pellegrini, chair of the Department of Performance Studies at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts and a faculty member in NYU's Gender and Sexuality Studies program. Doctor Pellegrini is also a practicing psychoanalyst in New York City, and coauthor of the 2023 award winning book Gender Without Identity. Their work across all three disciplines explores the intersection of gender, affect, and performance.
At the center of Doctor Pellegrini's expertise is the examination of how identity is expressed, perceived and shaped through culture, including the role of voice, both literal and symbolic. The title of this week's episode on the podcast is sound of a woman identity, performance, and the Power of Voice. Hello, Rita and Ann.
Rita Wilson
Hi, Matt.
RIta Wilson
So nice to be here with both.
Ann Pellegrini
Of you. Thanks for this invitation.
RIta Wilson
Of course.
Matt Whyte
I do want to make sure we cover all the very heady topics I just mentioned. But first, I want to talk a little bit about what the vibes were like where you recorded this album in studio A.
RIta Wilson
Oh, wow. Okay, so I recorded the album at RCA Nashville Studio eight. This is like an iconic studio. I would think of it as like Capitol Records in Hollywood. It's got that vibe and its iconic because this is where this particular studio, so many people have come and recorded through there. But I like it for the fact that Dolly Parton wrote and recorded in the same day in a three hour period.
“Jolene,” and “I Will Always Love You.” Oh my God. I mean, in a three hour period, that's what she was doing. And that studio was made because in, I guess, the 40s or whatever, when they had all this big band of music and Sinatra was recording and using a lot of strings in pop music, let's say the country music, people thought, why can't we have strings on our albums?
And so this studio was in response to that. So it's very big. We recorded everything live, which was scary in and of itself. Dave Cobb, my producer, who's an incredible producer and musician, it was his idea to record it live, to get that feeling of what it means to be singing these songs.
Matt Whyte
And so does Dave have all of those RCA Studios?
RIta Wilson
He has studio A, studio B is the one that was much smaller, and so many vocalists recorded there too. And we had an experience of going in and and hearing, for example, Elvis, Are You Lonesome Tonight? And when he recorded it, he turned off all the lights so he could really get into the vibe. And that's what we did when we listened to it.
Matt Whyte
I think you and I took the same tour.
RIta Wilson
Oh, yeah, we probably did.
Matt Whyte
That studio for me is hallowed ground. Says How Great Thou Art is my favorite Elvis record.
RIta Wilson
Oh my God. His gospel stuff.
Matt Whyte
The piano is such a central piece across all tracks on that record. And it's sitting there. Yeah. And I don't know how else to describe my experience of being in the room with that instrument, but just to say there was serious juju coming off that.
RIta Wilson
Thing 100%. Yes.
Matt Whyte
Anyhow, to the topic at hand, when I listen to the title track sound of a woman, I hear a sort of declaration and I, I think that that exists independent of it being the first track on the record. It's the title of the record. But I guess what I'd want to know if that read on it is right.
What is it that you were hoping to get across most with those lyrics?
RIta Wilson
I love that you call it a declaration. I think that's really accurate. And I also would add to that that in some ways it's an exaltation, because it's in that declaration of saying what it feels like to have been for me, a woman in a generation that I think was, I would call it sort of like being on the cusp of something.
So I had my mom's generation that was very traditional and my mother was Greek, my dad was Bulgarian. Then I had me, and then there was this generation ahead of me. That was Gloria Steinem and feminists and people fighting for rights, women's rights, and not feeling like I was really part of either one of them and yet valued parts of each generation.
So I wanted to explore that feeling of what it feels like to be muted. If you're a woman in a way like grew up in my mom's generation, and then these women who were using their voices and didn't have any hesitation about doing that, and they were so vocal in every single way. So in the record, I wanted to explore both of those, because there's kind of a duality there.
It's not like you abandon one for another, but all of them inform sort of the experience. Yeah.
Matt Whyte
And what's your take on that? I hadn't considered that this song as an exultation.
Ann Pellegrini
Yeah. You know, first of all, thank you for this album, which I've been listening to all week. Oh thank you. And I, I think there's also something about the experience of listening this fascinating because I first of all, when I was asked to be in conversation with you, I'm like a geek or a professor is a professional student.
So I'm like, oh my gosh, homework. And I love it. But I'm also a psychoanalyst, which means I listen and when, and it's a very different practice. You're listening and letting what the person you're sitting with letting the words hit you and affect you. So I realized I had to stop listening to your album, like, homework and actually let it hit me, which really changed the experience of it.
And, and one of the songs in the album, I guess this song is about actually looking for that one person in the room who's really paying attention. So I felt like the album was also saying, you have to pay attention, right? So that's cool. And so that was just sort of sitting with it was really interesting and something that jumped out to me in the first song, sound of a woman, is this line where it's the shout of her voice trying to get a, is it trying to be heard about the noise?
And I'd love to hear you reflect on that some more, but I was thinking of the, I guess, the manifesto like quality or shall we pan and say the woman-a-festo?
Rita Wilson
Oh, I. Love that the woman-a-festo. Stealing it!
Ann Pellegrini
I’m gunna trademark it right now. Like. But the ways in which we know from all sorts of studies that women can make a suggestion, let's say a business meeting. And it's not until, you know, it's not until that woman's male colleague says it that everyone's like, on board with it. That's right. And we know that when women go into doctor's offices, and this is even exacerbated for women of color, their complaints are not taking it seriously, which actually leads to poorer medical outcomes.
Certainly this is the case around cardiology. And so we're really material consequences of this lack of listening to women's voices. But I think you're also in this album talking about maybe the spiritual cost of that.
RIta Wilson
That's right. I remember I had heard Madeleine Albright speak and she said she was always the only woman in a room speaking. And when she was young and starting out, she would be thinking something that she wanted to say in this group full of men. And she wouldn't say it. And then she noticed that the men were saying her same ideas without any hesitation.
Sometimes she had the experience where she would say something and it would get ignored. And then five minutes later, a man would say it and everybody would hear it. And I think that is very much what it's like to be a woman. I think women have that experience in general, at least women of a certain generation, maybe still now.
And that was certainly true for me. And I think it it was partly that I, I didn't see my mom have many experiences where she was actually using her voice publicly. I knew what she felt. I knew what she was experiencing. I knew what made her mad, what made her happy, made her laugh. But there was one time where I.
It was so shocking. Shocking to me. But we were she was parking the car and some guy tried to snake the parking spot from her. You know, really the perfect sort of thing. Any kind of argument in California is, you know, the impetus for a great argument is a parking spot. And but she was their first. And the guy got out of the car and he started yelling at her.
And I'm standing there and she's sort of putting the dimes in the meter, kind of listening. And then she was very calmly but very forcefully saying, I'm sorry, I was right. I was here first. You have to go find another parking space. And she was so strong, but with kindness. And I remember thinking, mom, that's badass, you know, I mean, we wouldn't have said bad aspect then, but I remembered being very impressed with her, you know, in that moment.
Matt Whyte
That's remarkable.
RIta Wilson
I know it's such a small thing, but I was like, I liked the feeling that she was standing up because I knew she was right.
Ann Pellegrini
But also, she sounds like she stood up in a way that wasn't about trying to match his decibel level. Correct. There was a calmness to it.
RIta Wilson
Correct.
Ann Pellegrini
But I also heard she started by saying, I'm sorry, which is the jury one.
RIta Wilson
Exactly right. Yeah. I like to say that guilt is, you know, one person and then that guilt has a twin sister called apology or I'm sorry, you know, that's like, yeah. And you still say I'm sorry all the time for things that you shouldn't be sorry for.
Ann Pellegrini
I'm sorry for wanting things.
RIta Wilson
I'm sorry for wanting things. Oh my God. And you've nailed it. Yeah. That is one of the things that actually got me into songwriting was this idea that a woman songwriter. Kara DioGuardi. I have to mention her because she's so amazing and she's the reason I am a songwriter, she told me when asked me one day, what do you want?
And I said, well, I don't know if I, if I could do anything, it would probably be a songwriter like you, but I can't because I don't play music or read music or play an instrument. And she said, that's okay. Do you have something you want to say? And I was like, yes, I do. And she said, I'll write your first songs with you.
And she did. And that opened the door. But just even saying that I wanted that was like standing naked, you know, in a room where you feel like you're completely exposed. And I have a lot of discomfort with even just wanting something. But then there's further discomfort when you are exposing that to someone, the thing that you want that feels very scary.
But here I am.
Ann Pellegrini
Was your first album covers? Yes. So when did you actually say it loud to someone else that you wanted to be a songwriter?
RIta Wilson
Oh, that's a whole other thing. So I read this article and it was with Oprah Winfrey, and somebody had asked her, how do you do all the things that you want to do? You have your show, you have books, you have, you know, movies. And she said, I know what it is that I want. And when you know what it is that you want, you can take the steps to make it happen.
But most people never ask themselves what it is that they want. And so when I, I heard that, I was like, what do I want? And I think because of the way I grew up, my parents, you know, having escaped their countries to come to America, what they wanted, they achieved and it was enough. They came to a country and they could live free lives.
And I grew up every day with that, that appreciation and that gratitude. And so for me, wanting something felt almost like I was tempting the fates. Like, if I wanted something, how could that be? I already had enough. And I thought if I wanted something, it felt selfish. Which is, I think, another part of being a woman. You know, we're sort of taught, at least my generation, was to take care of others, to make sure that, you know, people are being treated well, to sort of put yourself on the back burner.
And when that I started thinking about that. What do I want? And I, I couldn't answer it. I kept my brain, kept looping back like, you can't want something. And so as an actor, I started thinking, well, what if I were a character that wanted something? And so I thought, I'll play the what if game. What if I wanted something?
What would it be? Took about two months and then the answer was music. And then it just cracked open.
Ann Pellegrini
But I'm really interested in what you're describing, where you couldn't imagine or let yourself imagine what you wanted as your own person. You had to actually produce alongside yourself someone else, right? But that's also so gendered, right? That only because then you could care for that person and help that person's wants and desires take shape in the world, because that's also what those social subjects are raised to be.
Girls who will become women, who will look after others. That's performing to task. Right, right. So it's like you couldn't, like, take in that wanting for yourself initially.
RIta Wilson
I'm going to get your card. Afterwards, I'm going to ask you if you do zooms and you're going to become my therapist. I mean, I love hearing it put in that way. I kind of had to create another identity that was a woman that I could take care of and that I could look after. And I've always found it so much easier to do things for other people than to do things for myself.
Even making this album, which feels more vulnerable to me. I didn't think that the the doing of the press or the talking of the album would also be another challenge, because it's forcing me to be public about them and open about them. And I, I've been a very private person, even though I've been in this sort of public life, that and career.
But the way media asks you about things is also very gendered. And so I could hide behind the identity that was being attributed to me and feel comfortable with that. And for this album, I just couldn't do that anymore.
Ann Pellegrini
And I was thinking, like your mother, which is about your mother. And 11 years after her death. And there was something about that I thought was really profound, which is maybe the shock a child has when they realize my mother has a life outside me. Right. And it's a necessary shock because it's what launches you into a bigger social world than just the, you know, the primary parent child bond.
But that's also shocking. And then you reach a point after your your mother's death in this instance where you don't you have the loss of getting to that person as a person, not just you lose her as a mother and as and as this person who had her own life.
RIta Wilson
Right? And there's so many things that I still wish I knew about my mom and that I wish I could ask her. And and yet I still talk to her every day. I literally do. And in sound of a woman, that song, you know, it's a sigh that she makes when when she's tired. A silent tier that falls from when she cries.
It's a shot at the top of her voice. When she's trying to be heard above the noise. Like I remember my mom having conversations with herself when she was washing the dishes or sewing or cooking. And sometimes I would be watching her from behind and she'd be shaking her head like this. And I'm like, what is she talking?
What's the conversation she's having in her head? I think my mom was very private. She was Greek, and in the Greek language there is no word for privacy. It's the strangest thing in the world because everybody knew everybody's business in these little towns and communities, right? In these little villages where people grew up. And so you were very careful not to, I think, bring shame onto your family.
So you had to be correct. Right. And so my mom taught me that if when she was little, if she went to somebody's house in the village and they said, are you hungry? She was taught to say, no, I'm good. Because if you said yes, I'll eat something. Then they would gossip about you and they would say, they don't have money.
They don't have money. Of course, her husband died because my grandmothers, my grandfather died when they went back to their village for a vacation, because my mom was born in America but raised in Greece when her father died. And it was all this judgment that was coming around. So I think my mom, as she got older, definitely started using her voice more, and that was great to see.
She was very funny and very opinionated. That's really good.
Matt Whyte
That is profound. There's no word for privacy.
RIta Wilson
No word you can say. This is private property, but there's no word for I need my privacy. They're like, no, you don't let me come into your room. You have no luck on the door. Like my mom would listen in on my phone calls. I mean, it's like, you know, as a psychoanalyst, you'll be like, wait a minute.
Where are the boundaries? That was the other thing. No boundaries.
Ann Pellegrini
Although you've talked about producing an important boundary for yourself. Like, actually how to carve out some space of privacy behind the, you know, all the public facing stuff you have to do. And I think there's a potential paradox. Or catch 22 with privacy. And the one hand, it gives you a space of keeping something for yourself that doesn't get to belong to people who listen to music or watch your films.
Right? You have something that's yours, right? But it can then collude with the ways in which you think, well, what I want isn't valid right now. It has to be private to yourself as well. So it's like how to let that space in which you get to dream and imagine be a place of growth and not just, I don't know, circumscription.
RIta Wilson
Yeah. Part of it is that I don't think I did a good enough job early on on defining and taking space for myself. There just wasn't room for it. I really have to think, in some ways, this younger generation of women who really are comfortable using their voices and really say exactly what they feel.
Matt Whyte
Earlier you were talking about this exercise of asking yourself what you want, which I think you bring up in your TEDx talk as well, and I'd be curious to hear more about what it is to find one's voice in later life, particularly from a perspective of scholarship. You know, I'm mainly want to know where do you delineate between what is and what is not a performance?
If there were no mics here, would this be a performance? You know, and I think I've heard you say earlier today that we're talking about performing gender. And so I'd want to know more about how those two intersect, finding one's voice in midlife and how you might look at that as a performance studies scholar.
Ann Pellegrini
Yeah. I mean, I think I would say, and I don't mean this glibly, that it's performance all the way down that the and here, you know, even think with Carole King and her very famous song which Aretha Franklin just made legendary. Right. You make me feel like a natural woman. Right. And Judith Butler, who's a very important, you know, feminist philosopher and gender theorist, has written about this song.
But it's a really strange line. You make me feel like a natural woman, so it makes you think, oh, there's such a thing as a natural woman. But to the extent that the you of a dress is the one that makes me feel like a natural woman. In fact, there's nothing natural about it. It's emerging intersubjectivity or relationally.
And if we think about genders performance, we can think about all the social cues, all the social stereotypes about what it is to be an embodied subject who is expected to take up a position. If we're thinking in terms of binary gender as a woman, as a man, we know that gender is much more expansive than the gender binary.
And we learn these scripts and we learn them. Sometimes we're punished if we don't do it right. We're told speaking a ladylike voice or, you know, don't wave your hands so much in little boy, or use your hands differently. Right? We're taught how to do our bodies in a way that accords with the sex ascribed to us at birth.
The expectation will for assigned male will grow up to be a little boy will be a man. I mean, so we learn these social cues and we get rewarded if we do it right and we get chastened, sometimes more harshly than others if we do it wrong. So it becomes a kind of accomplishment as well, right? And it doesn't mean that this is false, right?
That way you have to learn it that we're trained into it doesn't mean it's false. In fact, it comes to feel very real. It has also real consequences in the world, right? Those social subjects called women still make less than than a man doing the same job, right? Yes. So has this social fiction has real consequences. We feel it.
Many of us can use the language of this is my true gender, right? And that's not just something we're making up, right. And yet we're also, in some deep sense, making it up as we go along in. Because also in relation to others.
RIta Wilson
You're making me think that all these labels and these identities that we come into the world with, and I certainly did to like this is so much of what, what this album wanted to explore was you'd come in and like, what a beautiful little girl. What a sweet little girl. Oh, she's so adorable. And then you can be something like a sassy teen or a tomboy or wild, or then you're a good student, or you're a college grad, or you're a good wife and a good mother, and you're a good daughter, and you, you have all of these labels.
And I remember thinking like, wait a minute, but there's this other part of me, too. You know, I didn't even allow myself to really understand that my job, which was really the only job I ever had being an actor, was a job. I couldn't declare that that was my job, because I thought a job for a woman was something different.
Like I thought I had to be a teacher. That's what my sister did. And to declare and say I am an actor was a step right. And then I thought, okay, well, if I'm going to be an actor, I have to really get good at this. And I heard something on the sing for science podcast with Rosanne Cash that she had heard from Linda Ronstadt, who's one of my favorite singers on the planet.
And it was, can I read it just so I get it right? Yeah. You have to refine your skills to support your instincts. And I thought that was so great because you have to get once you know you want to do something, you have to get good at it. You have to refine your skills. And so that's what I started doing with acting.
And then of course, later with music. Still, I feel that there there's an experience that I'm having and I have been having as a person that started songwriting in my 50s, and it's this there was not one role model for anybody who is trying to do what I'm doing in music. There are artists everywhere, female artists and people who have started over the age of 50 doing painting, poetry, authorship, you name it, movies, directing.
And yet when you look at those people's work, you're looking at the work and you're taking it for at the value of what the work is. But when you put a face to something and you say, okay, now I'm this 69 year old woman and I have an album out called sound of a woman, and people will automatically judge that and say, well, but the music business isn't for somebody that age, or you can't start doing it at that age.
And what is the point? And I'm here to say, oh yeah, people are doing it all the time at this age. You just don't see it or hear about it because they don't find it that that's compelling enough of a story because you're not 25, you're not at the peak of your sexual powers. You're not, you know, presenting in a way that feels like something that they're used to.
And that is is what sells in some way. And so, I don't know, I'd love to hear what you have to say about that, because it's part of the, the roadblock that you're kind of always having to navigate and go around. It's not stopping you, but it's definitely not making it easy for you.
Ann Pellegrini
Yeah. You know, I think this issue of ageism is so interesting as you brought it up because, you know, and it hits women in a way because of, in the specific way having to do with this in apparent de-sexualization that happens. I don't know when it happens. Is it when you're over 30?
It’s certainly premenopausal. Right. So wait the it's.
RIta Wilson
The is it, you know, like is it the way you look. Is it the way you act. Is it because you've had children out.
Ann Pellegrini
You’re out of circulation for the heterosexual male gaze? Exactly. And it's I think it then it really complicates the question of voice. I mean, in a literal sense, because voice isn't disembodied. Whenever we hear a voice, we fill it in and we fill it in because we've been trained as listeners and disciplined as listeners to think that this voice goes with a male body, this goes with the female body.
And we also are trained to fill in race. We think we can know the race of someone singing on the basis of voice, or someone speaking in the basis of voice. So it's never a voice apart from body, it's already body voice. This is something that Poe often says who works in music theory. So. And that body voice brings with it all sorts of cultural assumptions about sexiness.
RIta Wilson
About.
Ann Pellegrini
How you're supposed to carry that body. And it kind of it shapes the listening experience, but it's already shaped. It's like we're in culture whenever we listen. And I'm thinking of a this really, I think, important and really fascinating book. It's called The Sonic Color Line. And it's about race and the Cultural Politics of Listening by Jennifer Stover.
And she's talking about how basically racism has shaped how we listen. And we think of race. We have this fantasy that races all about the visual. But she's arguing that race is also shaped through the oral and in the sense of the ear and through the oral and speech. Right. And so this is our listening habits are shaped by all sorts of racial stereotypes.
And that becomes part of our body to and and we could say there's also a sonic gender line. What do we who do we think this voice is embodied by? And if and if, you know, if we if someone here's your voice and then has a particular image of you and then says, wait, how is this person 69?
This doesn't this doesn't fit any longer, right? There's something really deviant about this. Is that pleasurable or is that alarming?
RIta Wilson
Well, I mean, from my own experience, I think when I've talked to people about this, I would always have a question. You know, people would say something to me like, wow, you know, let's say they're over 50. I can't believe that you're doing this now. This is so great. You know, I wish I could do it. And I said, why don't you?
And they say, oh, you know, I always wanted to and there would be a fill in the blank and the fill in the blank was always something in the arts. I always wanted to be a writer, a dancer, a singer, a pianist, a musician, a poet, a comedian and actor. Whatever it was, and the message that was always given, male or female, was, you can't make money at that.
You can't do that. There's no way. How are you going to raise a family with that? How are you going to. So everything was already that plan, that little roadmap that was out for you that was like, no, these are the ages that you do these things, and this is where it leads you. And I would always say to them, but you don't have to listen to that now.
You are a person in the world, like go take an acting class and go join a community theater.
Matt Whyte
What have you got to lose?
RIta Wilson
What have you got to lose? Like even if you just had somebody come over to your house, your friends, and you hired somebody who was a pianist and you just sang your favorite songs, the amount of joy that would give you just because you were able to explore this love that you had, like for that particular gift, whatever it would be to me that's so rewarding and it just seems to stop and limit people and block them.
Ann Pellegrini
And it's hard to, you know, like to claim the value of art for its own sake. This is an old argument, right. But, but and to sort of resist measuring its importance or its value and the basis of its monetize ability.
RIta Wilson
That's right. That is not at all what it's about. You know, I'm fascinated, fascinated with so many women that have been in very, very high profile marriages. Like, you can take Josephine Hopper, who was married to Ed Hopper, and she was an incredible artist in her own right. And yet her primary preoccupation was taking notes of what he did and what paints he used and how he mixed them, what the weather was like.
And she kept meticulous notebooks. And I recently went to see Edward Hopper's home, childhood home. And there were her paintings on the wall, and they were so beautiful. And then she became the subject matter in most of his paintings, the representation of a female. But I was like, what happened to her work, you know? And if she hadn't been married to him, would it have been different?
And would she have had the courage to go out in the world? You know, just you don't know if that's the case or not. And obviously, I see the similarities about being in a high profile marriage. And at the same time, I just didn't know how to carve that path for myself. And it really wasn't until I started songwriting that I was like, oh, I know what it is that I want to say now.
It's like Joan Didion, right? I always get the quote wrong, and it's much longer than this, but this is the bastardized version of it. But she she said something like, how do I know what I'm thinking unless I'm writing about it? And that, I think, is a really great way to, to do it. You know, just actually writing.
Ann Pellegrini
You're describing here and songwriting kind of like cracked you up. And it was a kind of almost experiment in yourself. Right? Right. That you didn't know it was going to come out necessarily.
RIta Wilson
Had no idea what was going to come out. And sometimes it was scary.
Matt Whyte
This is purely anecdotal, but I've heard that Ravi Shankar wife could play circles around him on the sitar.
RIta Wilson
Really?
Matt Whyte
Again, I haven't I haven't investigated that claim, but given what I know about misogyny in that culture, I wouldn't be entirely surprised.
RIta Wilson
That's so interesting. Yeah, but there's just millions of stories out there like that.
Ann Pellegrini
The silent muse.
RIta Wilson
Yeah, the silent muse. But but, you know, I think it Josephine Hopper's case. I think she was actually kind of angry. I mean, I don't think that she was okay with being muted in that way.
Ann Pellegrini
The pedestal ends up being pretty uncomfortable.
Matt Whyte
Yes, yes.
Ann Pellegrini
You know, I was staring at this mic and we made an adjustment right before we started taping, and it makes me think in a different way of that line from your song. It's the shadow of her voice trying to get about the noise, right? And I'm thinking about literal noise and the history of microphone and recording technology for the radio, and it was designed for lower frequency voices.
It is designed, that is to say, for male voices. And Tina Talan has written about this and that. So it was designed to actually help amplify and transmit lower frequency voices and at a and higher frequency voices, which tend to be female voices, actually couldn't be heard in terms of the crispness and the definition of the voice on the technology that was developed.
And so an engineer would turn up the volume to help, it was thought, amplify a woman's voice, but it would sound scratchy and lose definition. And that was actually to do the technology. So this was technology for men's voices because they were the runs, you know, like developing the technology and the ones who were meant to be the public voices of radio.
And then it reproduces itself as a problem, because then companies keep making the same technology for this frequency, for these voices. So we actually have cultivated a habit in our listeners. Again, this is like being trained to listen. We've cultivated the expectation of listeners that women's voices are screechy and even shrill. And that's think of that stereotype against women as having voices.
RIta Wilson
There needs to be a whole documentary just on all of this. I'm not kidding. There is. This is so fascinating. There was a documentary a few years ago that was incredible, and it was showing how women are portrayed in film cinematically. For example, if men were seen in the real setting, in the real world, there was a clip that they showed.
It was a man on a ship, and the men were portrayed being outside. And there's you see the sales and it's evening and it's, you know, they're being masculine and there's waves in the background. And then they cut to the woman, and the woman is lying back on some sort of soft kind of mattress bed thing, and the moonlight is hitting her, and she's very soft and she's very vulnerable and very, you know, exposed.
But the men are gritty and sweaty and, you know, they're masculine. And they do this throughout the entire documentary. And even how women are framed in film and to be less than a man in a frame. And they showed this right through the history of cinema. You're basically saying the same thing about sound.
Ann Pellegrini
At the level.
RIta Wilson
Of audiences.
Ann Pellegrini
But I mean, but it's also if we really take seriously that we're trained to listen to voices in different ways, and then we attach it to different kinds of bodies, it actually creates all sorts of impediments, not just to find your own voice, but to think it would be worth listening to.
RIta Wilson
The value of it. Absolutely. I took a chance the other night. I had a small show and I thought, I'm going to open with this song, which is a very quiet song and a very intimate song. And I wanted to experiment, like, would people listen? And I came out. It was the first song, you know? Was that exactly like how I do it on the album, where you hear the dishes clanking and the people talking, and it was so wonderful that they immediately stopped and started listening.
And that was a new experience. I thought, okay, that's really good. You know, I like that. And I did it totally as an experiment just to see if anything had changed.
Matt Whyte
Yeah.
Ann Pellegrini
You called them into the room.
RIta Wilson
Yeah. Yeah, it was great. They were so wonderful. The audiences I, I feel you get so much from the audience in terms of what a show is like, because you're feeling them. They become this really important element in the experience of performing.
Matt Whyte
There's so many great examples of that across many genres, that technique to capture the attention and set a mood. Rafi would do that with a theater full of rambunctious children, and he would. I think he would take a moment to just get everyone to settle down with silence. And I've also seen it with the Mahavishnu Orchestra was this prog rock band that I mean, they were.
They'd play the garden, but they would come out and they were very aggressive and very technical. But it was all it was all very guru inspired and they were wearing white, but they would come out to the garden and just stand there for 30s until there was, you know, close to silence and then just rip.
RIta Wilson
Wow. Oh, I love that.
Matt Whyte
So you've tapped into something.
RIta Wilson
The thing about silence is how powerful it is. And when you can be quiet, whether you're on your own or in a room full of people, is I do associate power and strength so much with silence. And yet it's not the only thing right? You have to be able to use your voice, use it in the right ways.
I read this thing the other day, which I think is probably true, but it's sort of bugged me. But it said, if you are the last person to speak on a topic, whatever the topic is, and there's a group of people and you're trying to work through a problem and you're the last person to speak, you will more likely be the person that has the opinion that is taken or adhered to, because you've waited to hear everybody else's point of view, and then you've spoken.
Ann Pellegrini
So you're like the synthesizing moment.
RIta Wilson
I guess. I don't know, but I think it's also that it feels as if maybe you've had a moment to process everything that everyone has said and then distill.
Ann Pellegrini
It didn't.
RIta Wilson
Rush the synthesize, didn't rush to speak or be heard like, I have to be heard. I have to be heard. You're kind of processing it in the moment.
Matt Whyte
But also the power of silence that calls to mind what you said about your mom. That wasn't silence, but that was quiet with the parking.
RIta Wilson
Yeah, yeah. One thing I wanted to say about when we were talking about moms and that song, your mother having that realization of, like, my mom was a person and she had so many, she had many lifetimes before I came into the picture. And then the reverse of it. Do our kids really know us? Like they come into the world and they know you as mom?
They meet you as mom. They don't meet you as Rita, they meet you as mom. And over the years now, I feel like it's so much more rewarding to be less filtered and more truthful and more honest with them about my own personal experiences and stories and things that maybe they wouldn't have been mature enough to take in or understand.
And I really like that, you know, to have those conversations. Avon calling.
You cover everything.
Matt Whyte
Thank you both so much. And Rita, thank you so much.
RIta Wilson
Thank you.
Ann Pellegrini
It was really interesting.
RIta Wilson
Thank you. This has been great. I loved every single second of this.
Matt Whyte
Be sure to check out Rita's new album, sound of a woman, and you can catch her on tour this spring. For more information, please visit her website Rita Wilson to find out more about Ann's research, books and psychoanalysis practice, you can visit their website. Ann Pellegrini Sing for science is co-produced by talk House and made possible in part by a grant from the Simons Foundation.
Music is by Panorama. Social media director and video editor is Bailey Constas. Location recording provided by bass at the podcast NYC and our digital producer is Keenan Kush. If you like sing for science. The best way you can support us is to give us a review. Tell a friend about the show and subscribe on your podcast platform of choice.
For more information, please visit singforscience.org and follow us on social media @singforscience. Thanks for listening.