The “bone voice” — a listener’s memory (1987)

Documentary testimony. A memory reported by Toni Maha Evangelopoulos, psychologist, scientific director of the Tomatis Centre in Greece, during her appearances on Greek public television (EPT TV, April 2010). Translated from Greek. She places the scene at a presentation to the French Academy in 1987 — place and date to be checked against the archives.

Tomatis distinguished air conduction from bone conduction of sound — the latter passing through the skeleton, the one by which the foetus recognises its mother’s voice. Evangelopoulos recounts having seen him demonstrate it in public:

“They asked Professor Tomatis to let us hear a ‘bone voice.’ He said: ‘All right, take the microphone’ — he set it down beside him, sat, lips closed, perfectly calm. And all of us, in the audience, were hearing a voice come from the door opposite, from the ceiling, from everywhere. We wondered: ‘From which microphone is this voice coming?’ When it was over, he said, laughing: ‘From me — mouth closed.’ With such a pulsed vibration that no one could locate that the voice was coming from his mouth: it was coming out through bone.”

She adds that she herself learned this technique — “not to sing, but to teach it” to those who follow the sessions.

Editor’s note: a direct witness account, reproduced as reported by its author.