Pop Conference 2025

Melismas, or vocal runs, feature many notes sung on one syllable of a word, and are found
throughout contemporary popular music. Their most popular iterations have their roots in Black
vocal singing, from the gospel and soul singing of artists like Sam Cooke and Aretha Franklin to
contemporary R&B of groups like Dru Hill and Jodeci. Melismas are a critical part of Black vocal
technique, but they are not simply a technique or a collection of notes: they are a cultural process, a
mode of constructing and amplifying Black life through sound. We are proposing to engage this
cultural process at PopCon through a game show called Name That Run. This show, conceived of
by Richel Cuyler and produced by the Black Sound Lab at Dartmouth College, is an informative and
engaging exploration of Black melismatic singing. The show will be approximately an hour long (a
90 min session would be best for setup and breakdown) and we will solicit contestants in advance.
The entire show runs out of a Canva presentation and can be done in a room with standard A/V
capabilities and mics for individual participants. The show features explanations of melisma and
related vocabularies, questions on naming artists and songs just by melismas,“melisma moments,”
and “vocal run challenges” for audience members to participate in.

Name That Run is the public engagement component of research the Black Sound Lab has been
doing to study Black melismatic singing. The Black Sound Lab is a research space dedicated to
decriminalizing Black life sound and amplifying Black life through digital practice. The show speaks
to this year’s thematic work with style, as we consider melismas and vocal style as a critical space in
which to learn, play, and build the kind of practices that will sustain us in a world of rapidly
advancing generative AI. The Black Sound Lab is working to slow the datafication of Black life,
thinking towards a time in which large language models will be able to recognize melismas and
melismatic genealogies. Drawing on ethnomusicology, digital humanities, data science, and Black
Studies, the lab considers how we might train these models without flattening elements of contour,
timbre, emotional weight, and more. While we recognize that this kind of work is all but inevitable
in the music industry and will lead to the continued mimicry and appropriation of Black style, we are
working to be on the forefront of these conversations in order to prevent as much harm as possible.
Name That Run is but one way to critically introduce (or re-introduce) listeners to the broad stylistic
universe of Black melismatic singing.