THIS. ALL OF IT <3 Accents help, but a lot of playing Find the Skin Folk is TONE.
My mother's family is West Indian--Trinidad & Tobago on her mom's side and Barbados on her dad's.
I basically grew up in a family that, if it code-switched, did so with something closer to the King's English (I’m pretty sure it was QE2’s dad still running the show at that point) than any sort of American accent. And when not code-switched ... my fam sounded like SINGING ... softer-lilting Trini-Bago accents and more terse Bajan accents, but all music. My mom, gramma, aunts … sounded like rooms full of Ella Andall when they got together. LOVELY. Me, when I code-switch, even to this day ... I apparently sound like ... California to non-West Indian Black folks and a “stereotypical” (white) Brooklynite to everyone else, when I’m casually code-swtiched. I blame a childhood spent obsessing over Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. And if I’m in full-professional mode ... I sound like a "professor" or professional speaker (to Black and white people, even from long before I started speaking professionally). Definitely from the Northeast, or even just New York, but not so Brooklyn-y.
Well-meaning, older West Indians, at least in my younger days (I'm 42), would admonish me for code-switching TO a more Black American sound in public, like: "Don’t sound like these people over here," or “don’t sound like these streets." Meaning Black Americans. I had to unlearn a LOT because of those well-meaning not-so-microaggressions.
Anyway, I’m decent enough at parsing accents and have been since I was a kid. I know utterly useless gads about VO actors and VO actor history, over which I’ve been obsessing since I was a kid. I can spot Trini-Bago and Bajan roots from out of a dead sleep, no matter how far back those roots reach. Same with Jamaican, Haitian, Guyanese, Virgin Islands. Is the accent is of a recent West Indian émigrés different from less recent, different from none at all? Sure. And same with folks from anywhere in sub-Saharan Africa. I can parse accents and play spot the lines of descent with folks of Brazilian and Panamanian background. I can do it with Across the Pond accents. Scottish vs. Irish vs. South Wales Vs. North Wales, vs. familiar English accents. Australian accents from NZ, etc. Standard stuff, not tough. BUT folks from the CUHrr-rrrribeeeun (NOT Car-UH-BEE-YAN, ick) is where I hit that near-100% accuracy for picking accents. And though I’ve been notably wrong about accents sometimes, I’ve rarely been wrong about Skin Folk TONE. That TIMBRE :-) I can tell when the speaker is Black. Like, part of the diaspora no matter where they’re from-Black. Even if they're born and raised, second or third gen, wherever they’ve hung their national hat ... I can hear US in their voice. It's a tonal-thing. Warmer, rounder, richer. DIFFERENT. No ACCENT can obliterate it nor even sufficiently cover it up, for the most part. I can spot a BLACK VOICE, regardless of accent, sight unseen
That said, I do have some aces up my sleeve that might or might not be advantages: I’m autistic and ADHD, and I have weird hearing-related sensory-processing issues. Sometimes good weird, sometimes bad (sensitive enough to hear dog whistles and sensitive enough to pass out or bliss out from a loud enough sound that GRABS me). I doubt that always knowing Skin Folk is PURELY a hearing-honed skill-familiarity for me. But I've got strong patterns-recognition kung fu (even when I don’t understand the pattern I can see it, follow it, use it, mimic it) AND god-mode levels of hyperfocus when I find patterns that interest me. Accents and tones are, at base, PATTERNS. The most beautiful ones in nature.
Voices have ALWAYS interested me. Not only accents, but voices. The how and why of them.
This … Black-sense with voices has been accurate enough for me and for other Black folks. I know Hispanic folks who can do the same for their diaspora accent-wise, whether the speaker is also Black, Native American, white, or Asian. And then, level-up and know the TONE of their tribe.
People KNOW what people who've adapted in the ways they and their tribes have, SOUND LIKE. And I don't mean accents or language, not even largely. I wouldn't doubt a Yukon or even North Pole NATIVE would know the sound of their tribe’s voice-types/tone-patterns, even if that tribe-member was three generations removed to Iowa. We KNOW what our parts of the world … meaning the places where people like us developed and adapted for tens of thousands of years ... sound like. I’m sure there’s a great scientific theory in there, but even without tons of peer-reviewed work … there’s something to this, and it’s not even a stretch of “belief” but more like a sketched-in hypothesis that only wants more research and attention. And, of course, less inherently racist scientific method. What we've adapted to sound like for a million big and small reasons is IN US, and not just culturally. It’s physical, too. How we use the sound-organs we have. How those organs developed and differentiated for our climates and needs, the same climates and needs that CREATE our cultures. If the music we create as diasporas and tribes has its own sound that FITS with that part of the world and its necessities and resources, no matter where on our diaspora we've ended up ... how could our voices, our first and most natural musical instruments, not do the same?
Sorry for the novel. You REALLY got me spinnin' and chinnin'! EXCELLENT piece <3
