Pauline Oliveros – bye bye butterfly

When listening to this playlist, one piece that stood out to me was Pauline Oliveros – Bye bye butterfly (1965). This piece was improvised using a homemade synthesiser, turntable and a tape delay. For around one minute, the only audible sound is a high pitched drone. After this minute she starts to bring in the second oscillator, which is on a lower frequency, but only for brief periods of time. Alongside this, she affects the resonance and pitch of the high pitched drone. At 3:23 an operatic joins the piece, being played on the turntable and affected by the delay, while still playing with the drones. This carries on for 3 minutes until the opera singer fades away and the drones play until the song ends.

In an interview with Pauline Oliveros she stated:

“[It] bids farewell not only to the music of the 19th century but also to the system of polite morality of that age and its attendant institutionalized oppression of the female sex.”

– Paulin Oliveros (n.d.).

This piece is an audio metaphor for the place of women in their society and how she was dealing with it. Perhaps using the high frequencies to represent how women can on average hear higher frequencies to men.

Personally I love sampled songs being slowed down, looped or in other ways, manipulated to create something entirely new; I enjoy the juxtaposition of this beautiful operatic being tampered with and silenced by the unending drones. It’s awful but wonderful at the same time, a perfect oxymoron.