Kyra Gaunt

I was on a date, just about to eat dinner, and I hear a growling sound.

And I look at the guy and I say, he says to me, that's your stomach, not mine.

How do I not recognize the sounds coming from my own body, not to mention my own voice?

I love the sound of my voice on a microphone, but it didn't start out that way.

When I was younger, I was in love with other people's voices.

And like so many of us, the first time I ever heard my voice on a recording, I hated it.

I was 10 years old when my mother bought me a Panasonic cassette recorder with a pack of Memorex cassette tapes for Christmas.

See, singing on tape was my version of bedroom musical play, something that girls do all around the world, and it's really gendered.

Left alone with our devices, alone in a room, girls play, singing, listening to music, dancing.

So with the gift in hand, the very next morning, the first thing I did was record my voice.

And when I played the tape back, I was shocked.

It didn't sound anything like me.

There was a huge gap between what I thought I sounded like and what the tape was telling me.

And it was traumatic because I didn't recognize me.

I think we all know that feeling, but some of us are emancipated from the doubt triggered by technology, and some of us are not.

So I stuck to dancing in the mirror and lip syncing, falling in love with other people's voices instead of my own.

Now I am a digital ethnomusicologist.

I study black tween girls, particularly the unintended consequences of their intimate bedroom musical play.

On today's mobile apps, black girls record and upload the most viral dances on the internet.

But the songs that mute their voices and sound pornographic are overwhelmingly male-dominated.