This Is the Voice
(Simon & Schuster, $28)
Journalist John Colapinto once took his voice for granted, said Philip Martin in the Arkansas Democrat Gazette. Back in the 1990s, when he worked for Rolling Stone and sang lead for the magazine’s office band,
“he didn’t consider the risks of rasping and ripping through garage-band standards.” But he seriously injured one of his vocal cords, which later developed a polyp that has left his speaking voice with a permanent sandpaper edge.
But the experience left him curious enough to undertake, as a staff writer at The New Yorker, a deep dive into the science and mystery of the human voice. “A tremendous work of journalism,” his new book could convince any reader not to ever take their own pipes for granted again.
The book offers “a fascinating blend of science, anthropology, sociology, and culture,” said Deborah Dundas in the Toronto Star.
Drawing on the work of cognitive scientist Philip Lieberman, he traces the origin of vocal capabilities to the oldest air-breathing vertebrate—the lungfish—and details the series of genetic mutations in humans that made vocalization and thus spoken language possible. Remarkably, a child begins to acquire language and a capacity to vocalize even before birth, learning from the muffled speech it hears from the womb. Elsewhere, Colapinto helps us understand the physiology that explains why the voice of Barbra Streisand, say, is close to perfect.
We are all quite adept at detecting subtle variations in others’ voices, of course, said Elizabeth Erickson DiRenzo in Science Mag.org. At one point, Colapinto describes how this skill can mislead us, as when simple alterations to vowel and consonant pronunciations prompt listeners to stigmatize speakers from the South as “backward,” Northerners as “elitist,” and Californians as “hopeless flakes.” Colapinto is especially good at describing the pleasures and emotional power of song, and so it comes as a surprise in the end that he chooses to forgo surgery to repair his own vocal cords. Then again, he seems to have gained something almost as valuable as what he lost: “a genuine appreciation for his unique voice.”