"In other words, we can begin with a set of statistics about the human body, but a number of forces combine to bring out one set of this body's potentialities while dampening others — and it is with this culture- and value-driven process that The Race of Sound is concerned. I aim to indirectly, but nonetheless intentionally, address the ways in which sociophysical conditioning (rather than skin color or some other measurement) structures the naming of race. I wish to enumerate some of the many ways in which the advantage of accumulated privilege is preserved, not only across historical time and geographic space but also in sounds, to create the recognition of nonwhite vocal timbre. Thus I build on Obadike's keen observation that hip-hop music may summon the presence of blackness without an accompanying black body. Extending this concept to the case of African American singers, I suggest that her term and concept acousmatic blackness may also capture the perceived presence of the black body in a vocal timbre, whether or not that body is determined to be black by other metrics. The acousmatic question is the audile technique, or the measuring tape, used to determine the degree to which blackness is present. And because of the acousmatic question's inability to yield a precise answer, any identification of black vocal timbre is, by definition, blackness formed in response to the acousmatic question."