Transounding

Transounding Synopsis

"In Transounding, Daniel da Silva presents a theory of "trans tessituras" as a way of tracing queerness, Blackness, and diaspora across popular culture forms in the Lusophone world. The book examines several commercially successful musical artists from Portugal, Brazil, and Angola who self-define as trans and whose singing and performances blur boundaries of gender and genre. Using tessituras, a term for the "texture" of vocal registers, da Silva explores the cultural and historical context of these performances, and how they have been received and heard or misheard by music critics and the public.

This analysis enables an exploration of what is heard when non-normative transgressive voices are expressed in song. Through study of how forms, genres, and practices developed through shared languages and colonial processes, da Silva demonstrates how the work of disparate Lusophone artists intertwines in South-South collaborations across geo