I present an analysis of the melodic and dramatic quality of Richard Spencer’s voice and analyze what his love for drama predicts for his politics. Just like the leading yoga gurus have a background in performance, so too does Richard. As a teen, he wanted to be a drama director when he got big. There’s a musical quality to Richard’s voice. He walks you up the stairs in many of his sentences, and then occasionally walks you down the stairs to reveal disappointment, and his melody fills the listener with energy and hope and excitement. Richard speaks on a livestream as though he’s singing his words on stage in a musical.
Roger Love writes in his book Set Your Voice Free: “A newscaster’s goal is most often to make negative information sound intriguing but not depressing. Rather than giving in to the emotions tied to news of death and devastation, they look for ways to keep a high-energy, positive sound in their voices. The feeling of energy is created in part by the way they “punch” particular words, making them louder, or lifting the pitch, for emphasis. These speakers also end nearly every sentence by either staying on the same note or going higher. In regular conversation, most of us drop the pitch at the end of a sentence, which releases tension and lowers the feeling of intensity we’re creating. But by ending on the same pitch or going higher, news voices sustain the feeling of importance that they’ve built around what they’re saying — and leave you wanting to hear what comes next.”
Greg Johnson focuses on producing essays while Richard Spencer focuses on producing drama.
