Sounding like a Sindhen. First Results of an Ethno-Phoniatric Investigation on the Javanese Female Voices

Female traditional singing called sindhen is one of the most renowned and widespread vocal genres in Java. Early ethnomusicologists defined the sindhen’s voice as “nasal” or «similar to a rebab» (Kunst 1973) while other scholars have mainly concentrated on the semi-improvisational singing technique, without focusing on the mechanisms of voice production. Despite the important role that sindhen play in contemporary Javanese performing arts, the specificity of the vocal technique has not been thoroughly investigated. Practice-led research has been useful to determine how local singers achieve this voice quality by imitation, what is the most used terminology and how it is related to Javanese aesthetic. However, for a deeper investigation it is necessary to rely on international singing methods (as EVT, Estill Voice Training and CVT, Complete Vocal Technique) and on the inter-disciplinary approach. Methodologies borrowed from phoniatrics, phonetics and acoustics can be applied in the analysis of the singing voice under an innovative perspective. The multi-disciplinary approach is what we have adopted in our team research project (sponsored by La Sapienza University) concerning a phoniatrical study of sindhen voice quality. The fieldwork was conducted in four different districts of the Special Region of Yogyakarta, with the support of the Indonesian Arts Institute (ISI) in Yogyakarta. We collaborated with 22 female singers (sindhen) of various ages and experience levels who underwent analysis of the vocal tract during singing activity via fibro-endoscopy. The fibro-endoscopy data analysis was closely correlated with the ethnomusicological practice-based data collection, in what we defined an “ethno-phoniatric” study. This interdisciplinary research project revealed the main physiological traits of the sindhen voice with common features and differences, the mechanisms of voice production, and the principal stylistic aspects that sonically identify the factors that contribute to the development of this vocal practice within the Javanese performing arts context.