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Citizen Cope: Honing the Voice (and Soul) on the Road of Trials
- Craig Deininger
- 7 minutes ago
- 8 min read
Of all the treasured things that music provides, I can think of none more valuable than how it makes us feel both sensually and emotionally—the way it bypasses our rational guard and soaks into the deep registers of felt sense. Hence, the expression “to feel the music.” In fact, we feel it so much that it compels us to engage in highly irrational behavior. Just put on the right song, and people suddenly begin to move in odd ways: spinning in circles, flopping their arms, accomplishing (apparently) nothing of practical value.
Mythologically speaking, we can say that music is a means of crossing the threshold from the practicalities of the day-to-day into the more intimate world of the unconscious, marked (in this case) specifically by emotion. With music, beauty is pretty much unavoidable. However, the feel of the notes and the message of the lyrics can often be dark, expressing sorrow, struggle and loss, all of which ironically serve to deepen its beauty. These darker elements reflect a rather large portion of the content we encounter during times of transformation. But then, here is where the deep work transpires—where the soul puts down roots.
The place I’m speaking of is found in the Initiation stage of the Hero’s Journey, which falls in the cycle’s center, between the Departure and the Return—fittingly, in the thick of it. [For a concise rendering and general refresher, see Stephen Gerringer’s “The Hero’s Journey and Joseph Campbell.”] In The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell aptly titles the first part of initiation The Road of Trials. But here, we won’t be looking at how music initiates transformation in us (which it surely does). Rather we will consider how our initiations shape music—specifically, in the voice.
For this, Citizen Cope (né Clarence Copeland Greenwood) will be our guide. In addition to nuancing Orson Welles’s classic film Citizen Kane, his stage name describes one particular thing that we all must do (i.e., “cope”) during so many of our initiations—especially the uninvited kind. Furthermore, it highlights the fact that we all share in suffering, which quite literally invites a gloss of compassion (from com- “together” + pati “suffer”). The “citizen”-component reinforces this idea of sharing by acknowledging the collective, and of being a part of it. So, from the very outset and in the name alone, all are invited into his fold.
Citizen Cope’s music reflects many of the hallmarks of one who’s traveled the Road of Trials. But more importantly, it shows the kind of beauty and depth that can come from one who has not only slogged through his fair share of trials but also has accepted and integrated them. You may ask, what are these challenging trials that qualify him to be the seasoned soul that I’m portraying here? Well, I didn’t even look into it. In keeping with the spirit of his music, I think that simply being human is quite enough. But more to the point, a long history of trials can be “heard” in his music, the meanings of his lyrics and, most notably, in his voice.
The soul behind the voice
Cope’s (if I may) voice is saturated with sincerity, passion and an unwavering fidelity to the real. And, here, I mean “real” more in the vernacular sense—as in “keepin’ it real,” which is a means of acknowledging and respecting what is, as it is, even if it’s difficult. But if I’m to address (and guess) what exactly is going on in the voice of this singer, I need to lay a little groundwork. For starters, we’d be wrong to categorize voice as simply another instrument since, unlike all the others, its body is literally the body, indicating a uniquely personal level of intimacy. Beyond being merely sounds that we make, voice is a medium that reveals the character or personality of the speaker: his or her fundamental (and situational) dispositions, intentions, emotions, perspectives—even their history. In short, voice announces the presence of “someone”—really, of a soul.
When soul comes into the conversation (as it so often does in music) and shows itself through the voice, we’ve crossed over from the concrete into a dimension of abstractions. Suddenly, we’re dealing with something that’s highly complex and possesses very indistinct boundaries. We cannot clearly see its face, so to speak. Yet, this apparent impediment makes way for a deeper encounter because its face has become more permeable, and the speaker’s presence (from the listener’s perspective) is amplified. And, as with any feature in music, we are able to experience something as vague as one’s “presence” through the application of equally vague modalities like feeling, intuiting, and even imagining.
Long ago, I was fortunate enough to have had a class on voice with Peter Elbow, who at the time was deeply invested in the subject. But in that context, we were attending to the voice one hears while reading silently—a context that Robert Frost describes as “somehow entangled in the words and fastened to the page for the ear of the imagination” (Introduction, A Way Out). In that class, I learned that resonance is the finest and foundational distinguishing criterion of voice. Resonance is versatile and permeating. It straddles the worlds of the physical and the emotional. We feel, physically, the drone of an engine. But we also can feel (emotionally) some good “vibes,” or we might say “that book really resonated with me.” In this way, resonance has a unifying capacity.
I also learned in that class that voice thrives in subtlety, and that its intimacy far surpasses the more forceful phenomena like volume—in fact, it’s often the softer, more relaxed voice that possesses the richer resonance. This is unmistakably the case with Cope’s singing voice, and perhaps reflects certain more soulful attributes like openness and acceptance—especially as applied to the trials we’re handed.
Individuation, uniqueness and timbre
In myth, the pattern is that the journeys of our heroes and heroines culminate in the completion of some great task. But the invisible and understated inner event is their transformation. They return changed, initiated into a higher order of presence or being—well, something like that. Psychology calls this the individuation process, and it’s of paramount importance.
Carl Jung frequently addresses uniqueness as one of the chief attributes (and expressions) of one who’s highly individuated. They are simply aligned with who they are—with their one-of-a-kind selves. Sure, it goes much deeper, but that’s the gist. But, if we are to listen for individuation in the voice that expresses it, then timbre is surely our term. Aside from being a really cool-sounding word (pronounced TAM-ber), it is also referred to as a particular sound’s “fingerprint.” Primarily, timbre lets us know that it’s Jim (and not Bob) who’s answered the phone. All instruments, for example, have a unique timbre (even when playing identical notes). For instance, the heavy raindrops of the piano compared to the bright summer breeze of the flute (please forgive the bad poetry).
From a more structural angle, timbre is a subcategory of tone (just as tone is a subcategory of voice). The primary distinction is that timbre is subtler (and more complex) than tone. In other words, a voice may have a generally sad or angry or thoughtful tone, but to describe its timbre, we are forced to employ highly figurative terms like “gravelly,” “dusky” or “silky” (or like in my moment of bad poetry, above). One last thing about individuation and uniqueness and I’ll shut up: they summon the idea of destiny—that is, one’s (fittingly) “calling,” or their “vocation” (the etymological root of which happens to be the same as voice).
Mythologically speaking, we can say that music is a means of crossing the threshold from the practicalities of the day-to-day into the more intimate world of the unconscious
Sincerity
Okay, those are the parts I can offer in so little space, so let’s get back on the road of trials and the honing of souls. It’s not my intention to glorify the hard and heavy, but rather to address that mysterious side of it that enriches the soul, the character and (of course) the voice that reveals these. That said, I would place sincerity at the top of my list in describing Citizen Cope’s voice because this powerful force works wonders in the arts of keeping it real, of dialing down the drama and noise to let that which is shine through.
Here’s some good advice from Jung on the matter: “Whatever you do, if you do it sincerely, will eventually become the bridge to your wholeness, a good ship that carries you through the darkness...” (Letters of C. G. Jung: Volume I, 358-59).
And now I’ll leave you to the good ship of Citizen Cope, to hear what you will in the voice. Although there are many good songs to choose from, I’m compelled to recommend “Son’s Gonna Rise.” Just click here to commune.
Thanks for reading.
MythBlast authored by:
Craig Deininger has been writing for the JCF Mythblast series since 2018. He has taught at Naropa University, Studio Film School in Los Angeles and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst where he earned an MFA in poetry. He also earned an MA and PhD in Mythology and Jungian Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute in California. He has counterbalanced his studies with manual work in fields like big ag farming, landscaping, commercial fishing, trail-building, framing houses and so on. He is grateful to have somehow made it to later life after too many outdoor misadventures in backpacking, rock climbing, hiking and, especially, trying to get too close to wildlife that doesn’t want to be gotten-too-close-to. His poetry has appeared in several literary magazines including The Iowa Review, and his first book of poetry Leaves from the World Tree was co-authored with mythologist Dennis Patrick Slattery and published by Mandorla Books.
This MythBlast was inspired by the Initiation stage of the hero's journey and The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on his Life and Work.
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