Voice and Speech Trainers Association, Inc.

Spring/Summer 1999 Volume 13, Number 2

South Africa

TEACHING VOICE IN A MULTI-LINGUAL SET-UP:
SOME IDEAS FOR THE FUTURE

By Marth Munro (Dept.s of Drama and Opera, Pretoria Tecknikon, South Africa)
And Daan Wissing (Director: Research Focus Area: Language and Literature in the South African Context, Potchefstroom Universtiy, South Africa)

Teaching voice and speech to the young theatre professional is no easy task. This is more so in a country where you are bound, by economy, to have quite big classes and where the students come from diverse backgrounds and with several different first languages. Sometimes the only thing that keeps the voice teacher going is the willingness of the students to improve! Such a commitment makes every obstacle look like a hiccup instead of a potential disaster. Taking the support and the eagerness of the students into account, the students deserve the best teaching methodology/set-up that the voice and speech teacher can provide. What follows are some thoughts toward this ideal teaching methodology in a set- up that is far from the ideal.

The fundamental problem is one of medium of instruction. With so much diversity (culture language, age, affluence, etc.), the teacher has to find a common denominator, and a reference field that attempts to avoid the pitfalls of cultural/linguistic metaphors for explanation. (However, the students are encouraged to develop their own culturally specific c metaphors for their own explanation of the processes). The common denominator that we use is optimal body voice/integration, and the reference field is voice building through sensory awareness. This is not new. However, we insist on exploiting the diversity of the classroom, by exploring voice building in as many first language structures as possible.

With "integrated" we refer to the structural balance of the body as it moves through space for the most effective functioning, thus including the idea of a vertical alignment but emphasizing the fact that the body must never be held or fixed in any position. The most generally used and well-known theatre voice systems acknowledge the importance of the integrated body to free, assist and support optimal voice. In the related discipline of singing, Miller supports the notion of optimal body integration to enhance good voice usage when he talks about the "noble posture." McKinney states very clearly that "good posture (translated as optimal body integration) allows the skeletal framework and the muscular components of the body to fulfill their basic functions efficiently without any undue expenditure of energy."

In correlation with this, the assumption can be made that free breathing can only take place in the human body once optimal body integration is established. To refer to McKinney's statement here, the integrated "skeletal framework" will thus allow the generator to function optimally for the task at hand. Both Linklater and Lessac focus on the indivisible relation of free breath and the integrated body. Munro and Larson (1996) have shown that the functions of the vibrator and the resonator are also impeded if the body is not optimally integrated. F.M. Alexander spent a lifetime of qualitative research on this specific issue and how to counteract it. Systems like the Alexander Technique, Feldenkrais and Laban/Bartenieff and Lessac provide a working vocabulary that is non- judgmental and free to a large extent of cultural idiosyncrasies to address this in the classroom situation.

Having established an "integrated framework," we move into voice building. It is important to detach voice building from language itself. At this stage we are "sound orientated,' not meaning orientated and thus differentiate between voice and speech. This allows us to explore the balance between generator, vibrator and resonator so that the optimal, safe functioning of the voice can take place.

The following step is to move toward projection, which is what theatre voice is all aboutãthe manipulation of projection possibilities without being limited by inflection and meaning. We approach this from the view that projection is about vowel sounds and their formants. Because we are not initially language bound, the teacher can approach this scientifically and analytically. Timo Leino has done the groundwork for this when he proved that the actor's voice, which has the capability of projecting well, has a specific F3-5 formant cluster. This cluster has been named the "actor's formant" and has a direct resemblance to what is called, in operatic singing, the "singer's formant." It can thus, with Peeters and van Dommelen (private e-mail communications), be concluded that F 1 and F2 reflect vowel formation, while F3-5 is speaker-quality specific. Munro, Leino & Wissing have shown that Lessac's y-buzz can improve the projection capabilities of the actor's voice and in analysis of such voices the F3-5 Formant clustering resembles that of the "actor's formant." This leads us to a teaching system where the students can draw on the sensory awareness of the sound-waves, and thus work indirectly with the balancing of the involuntary muscle actions of the generator, vibrator and resonator.

Having established a vocal "projection platform" we can move to specific vowel sounds that can be "put into" words, phrases, and sentences. At this stage we are still not completely meaning bound although the correct placement for the different vowel sounds is beginning to play a role. (We are now beginning to take the Fl & 2 formation into account.) This allows us to explore different languages for their sound placements and patterns. For example, we use Lessac's calls, in English to start with, but then we move into examples from other South African languages. The following examples the students have made up themselves:
Afrikaans: Ou vrou, met jou gaan ek nog trou. (Call)
Zulu: Sibona usisi Lili (y-buzz)
Uyathanda ukuyala (+y-buzz)
N. Sotho: Bana ba ya sekolong ka pase ya Malome (Call)
Tswana: Ke rata bana BA mmala wa sebilo (Call)
Ke ikeflele kA di biri (y-buzz)
Yame ke Yame (y-buzz)

There are a number of fundamental benefits to this approach: The students begin to explore a general system in a specific language that they know and are comfortable with; they begin to take responsibility for their own voice development; the approach gives other students in class the opportunity to be exposed to other South African languages, in a way that is non- judgmental of what they say, but emphasizes the way they speak. (As a footnote, we have found the most wonderful coherence developing in a class with this, as historically located potential animosities "evaporate" in shared difficulties.)

We have also found that the approach moves effortlessly into important issues in the teaching of accents or the "elimination" or "control" of accents later. If they receive a solid response at this point, they will not feel as if you are attacking them when you start the accent elimination process.

An offshoot of this approach has been the way that students discover that different languages appear to have "better" natural abilities to project. For example, Italian appears to have more "natural" projection ability, and this has manifested itself in the strong Operatic culture, whereas French, because of it apparent "glottal" migration, appears to suit itself more to a vocal culture that requires microphoning (Edith Piaf springs to mind). It has been my experience in South Africa, for example (and this is simply anecdotal observation and needs to be rigorously tested), that Xhosa has a glottal orientation because of the articulation of consonants (especially the "clicks") and this results, particularly in the projection of English by Xhosa speakers, in huge difficulties. The result is that the groundwork has been laid for the move toward the ideas of vowel migration modification which are generally accepted in the art of operatic singing and which the actor may choose to use depending on the size and acoustics of the theatre. We debate issues such as how far one can go with this in the professional speaking voice and how it should change according to situation and surroundings.

Once the optimal voicing possibilities of the different vowel sounds have been explored and developed, time should be taken to link these sounds with the improvisational explorations which may lead to the embodiment of emotion in the voice. We, as voice teachers, are all intensely aware of the fact that good voice quality is not enough without the subjective experience reflecting through the voice. We thus need to establish a balance between the "craft" and the "art" of voice. All the well-known and respected theatre voice systems have excellent explorations in this regard and seeing that we draw from these in our teaching, we are not spending more time on it in this article. It just has to be noted though that no voice training for theatre will be concluded without an exposing the students in-depth to this part of the work!

Basically the same approach that has been used to develop the optimal full voice usage during vowel phonation should be used when doing consonants. The Lessac approach of sensing the consonants and playing them as musical instruments works extremely well seeing that again the sound that is made can be divorced from the language. We also make "poems" using these same consonants in different South African languages. Some examples are:
Northern Sotho: N
Noka ya nokana
Noka ya nogana
Noka ya fo falala

Tswana: B
Bonang ko bomang
BA batlang mo
Babolaile motho mobane
Byanong Ba Ba tla go rehlasela

Afrikaans: M
Maar my magtig
Manie Martinus Marais Johannes Malan!
Name soos joune maak my maklik deurmekaar!

English has a relatively limited use of consonants. It is important that the consonants that exist in other African languages should be treated in the same way as the "English consonants." Again, this is a great teaching tool as the playing ground gets evened out. All of a sudden it is not just the students who have English as first language who find these consonant explorations easy, but the students who have that specific consonant appearing in their first language. What follows is an overview of examples of consonants which appear in other African languages and do not appear in English.

Xhosa has a wide variety of consonants, of which quite a few are not present in the English sound system. We mention but a few of the most salient examples: the voiced bilabial implosive stop, the voiceless ejectives (like [p'] [t'] [k'] and [s']), as well as the bilabial, apico-alveolar and velar plosives with full breathy voice which occurs in nasal compounds (i.e., a nasal plus [b-], [d-] or [g-], e.g. mb, nd and ng, as in indoda, imbuzi and ingubo). Apart from this, the consonants bh, dh and gh, the so-called plosives with delayed breathy voice also exist in this language. A range of affricates (compound-like, but nevertheless singleton consonants such as ts [t, ths, dz, tl, tsh, j, hl and dl ] are also unfamiliar to the English ear. Furthermore, Xhosa has a range of nasals with breathy voice (mh, nh and nyh). And then there is the infamous Xhosa clicks (non-pulmonic consonants), fifteen of them, of which I mention only a few: the voiceless aspirated apicolamino-palatal click, (as in the language's name isiXhosa), the voiceless aspirated apicolamino-dental click; the voiceless unaspirated apicolamino-palatal click and the apicolamino-dental click with delayed breathy voice.

Zulu has some sixty plus consonants, most of them corresponding to those of Xhosa, so that a similar situation exists, in that a great number of them are absent in the English consonant system. Here we only mention the place and manner of articulation:
Place of articulation: bilabial, labiodental, apico-lamino- dental, apico-alveolar, lamino-postalveolar, apico- lamino-palatal, dorso-velar, medio-palato-lateral and glottal.
Manner of articulation: pulmonic (voiced, breathy voiced, voiceless, (un)aspirated, partially voiced; laryngeal (ejective) (voiced); lingual (involving the tongue, especially in the articulation of the clicks; lingual and pulmonic (breathy voiced, nasalised, aspirated), and oral and laryngeal (voiced). Tswana's consonant system is much less complicated. For one thing, the clicks are absent. The most notable exceptions from that of English is the ejectives ([p'] [t'] [k'] as well as the laterals [tl'] and [tlh]), most of them also mentioned in the cases of Xhosa and Zulu. Other non-English consonants that exist in Tswana are the class of affricatives: [ts' tsh t| ' t|8 kx~ ].

The two most used different consonants that appear in Afrikaans are the rolled "r" [r] and the velar fricative [x] with their slight variants. (The interested reader may consult the phonetic transcription system of the International Phonetic Association for details.) Only once the students have experienced the playing of many, if not all of these consonants, can these sounds be put into structured sentences, taking the language into account.

At this stage the students have good strong voices (which, in a multi-lingual set-up, should ideally be scientifically provedãand for this testing we make use of the LTAS analysisãso that the voice teachers own preferences about aesthetics should not cloud the decision), the teacher can move into the speech and pronunciation aspect of the training. This part of the work is much more difficult to teach in multi-lingual set-up with big classes. Speech combinations of vowels and consonants with specific rhythmic patterns and inflections according to the language need to be explored. The different placements of the vowel and consonant sounds in the different languages need to be closely monitored. We have to admit that the ideal set-up here will be to have only first language speakers in one class, but seeing that this is not possible, the teacher needs to be inventive. We found that a good way to circumvent possible problems is to group the students in multi-lingual groups and let them guide each other. The off-shoot of this is greater understanding for each other language patterns, including rhythm and inflection as well as respect for each other.

Once the process of optimal body/voice integration, voice building and speech development is completed, the training should focus on voice with heightened emotions, character voices, voice for different performance genres, etc. If the fundamental voice and speech development has been handled with care and imbedded in the body/ voice integration "vocabulary" of the young theatre professional, he/she will be able to handle the strenuous work that will be expected when joining the professional ranks in a multi-lingual country.

Finally, it is absolutely vital to stress that the work that is described is the part of the voice and speech training that differs from other approaches because of the multi- linguality. From here on, the processes of connecting voice with emotion, the development of character voice and text explorations through voice and breath, in fact all of the aesthetic dimensions (as opposed the craft orientation of the system described above) will be very similar to all other training programmes. We, too, draw from all of the established systems. As all other systems at this stage take (or should take) cultural demands and specifics into account, so do we. And what a joy and sharing this part is!

BIBLIOGRAPHY Available upon request trom the editor, preferably via email.

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