Various Artists - Speech After The Removal Of The Larynx VINYL LP OME1025
Recorded by Harm A Drost at the Phonetic Laboratory of the Ear, Nose and Throat Dept of the University Hospital, Leiden, Netherlands.
Those unfortunate to experience the potentially fatal malignant tumours of laryngeal cancer will have their larynx removed, resulting in a traumatic loss of speech; thankfully, as this rare record issued by Smithsonian Folkways in 1964 demonstrates, removal of the larynx does not necessarily spell the end of speech for such blighted individuals.
Instead, through developments in artificial voice creation, patients could learn to employ modes of vocal communication again. The album was recorded by physician Harm A. Drost at the Phonetic Laboratory of the Ear, Nose and Throat Dept of the University Hospital, Leiden, in the Netherlands, working under the direction of Professor H. A. E. van Dishoeck.
As the advances were fairly new and surprisingly varied, Drost felt a phonograph album demonstrating the techniques would be useful for those in the field. The album thus features a narrator explaining aspects of several different techniques, followed by examples of patients employing them. Buccal speech (limited to certain consonants), parabuccal speech (collecting air in a space between the upper jaw and the cheek), glosso-pharyngeal speech (a method deemed obsolete where air is forced between the tongue and the palate), esophageal voice (made by reconditioning one’s esophagus via swallowing, suction or injection), various injection techniques and devices such as the larynxophone, pipa di tichioni and “western electric” are all explored here, along with other aspects of the larynx and its absence. Speech After The Removal Of The Larynx is definitely one of the strangest albums ever given a commercial release!
tracklist
1 Coloratura Soprano Singer
2 Man Wiithout Larynx
3 Buccal Speech
4 Parabuccal Speech
5 Singing Voice
6 Glossopharngeal Speech
7 Frogsound
8 Esophageal Voice
9 Injection--Basic Sound Two Times
10 Basic Sound Of The Esophageal Voice
11 Basic Sound Of The Esophageal Voice, An Octave Lower
12 Esophageal Voice By Telephone
13 Singing Voice With Larynxphone
14 Pipa Di Tichioni
15 Western Electric
