Relocating the Ear: A Cross-Cultural Exploration of the Electrified Soundscape
Vincent Andrisani
“Without contrast there cannot be full comprehension”
-Peter Laslett, 1971
“You had better do as you are told,
you better listen to the radio”
– Elvis Costello
The relationship between the individual and the social environment has undergone a profound alteration over the course of an extremely short period of time. The current patterning of information, the pace at which it is exchanged, and the scale of the communicative network have escalated exponentially following the deployment of modern technological extensions. This exaggeration of information exchange has resulted in a necessary shift in both behaviour and cognition, evidenced by the socio-cultural response to communicative forms involving soundmaking and listening. Consider the thousands of years during which the essence of sound was its ephemerality, and one’s physical presence was required in order to receive its communicative potential. In this setting, sound functioned as not only the primary means of interpersonal and communal communication, but it also created an environment in which the individual was more inclined to negotiate physical space, and their place in time. However, during the last century, the transportability of sound by modern extensions has reconfigured that impulse. By embedding in the present the sounds of the past, and with the experience of remote acoustic environments becoming commonplace, these technologies have altered the manner in which we conceive of time and place.
The displacement of sound by means of electroacoustic reproduction has caused the local soundscape to relinquish the unique attributes through which it was once defined. Today, the acoustic environment is characterized by an aura of homogenization, as the transportability of sound across time and space creates a virtual or simulated soundscape, which ultimately results in the shifting identity of the unique acoustic community (World Soundscape Project 1977; Truax 2008). To be clear, electroacoustic technologies represent a world of both possibilities and consequences concerning the process of soundmaking and listening. They have offered new approaches to music making, audio production, and reproduction, and following the advent of the personal media player, they have created listening experiences that even two decades ago were inconceivable. However, we are now facing a situation in which the individual remains in a state of perceptual indifference, as aural desensitization and habituation can render such sounds barely detectable by the average listener. Electroacoustically reproduced sound, particularly in the form of Muzak (background music), has penetrated the soundscape so deeply that the notion of public acoustic space in modernity implies a sense of monotony and repetition (Truax 1992). As Western society and its far-reaching influence become increasingly defined by consumer culture, the acoustic consequence is manifest in the exploitation of music during the process of economic exchange. As Adorno points out, the sounds of music are increasingly used in order to ‘grease the skids of attraction’. The concern then remains how we as listeners will not only negotiate the surrogate environment created by neo-orality, but also our own perceptual detachment, so that we may once again begin to engage and comprehend the nature of the relationship between the individual and the environment.
It is my intention to explore the attributes of the electrified soundscape, music making, and the reproduction of the voice, and to set them against a backdrop of cross-cultural approaches to soundmaking and listening. In this setting, the engaged aural correspondent can positively employ personal perceptual sensitivities, listening habits, and one’s own unique history with sound, in order to renegotiate acoustic space with the ability of soundscape competence.
Negotiating Acoustic Space: From Orality to Neo-Orality
While the modalities of perception once exhibited an entirely distinct orientation than that of today, the extent to which this was the case remains impossible to quantify. That is to say, the information of the acoustic environment was once considered to be of equal use in negotiating physical space as that which was perceived visually. Not only were the sounds of the environment relied upon for localization, but the temporal nature of sound also offered an orienting mechanism in time. The concept of “acoustic space”, derived out of the work of Edmund Carpenter and Marshall McLuhan, makes direct reference to the breadth of spatio-temporal information exhibited by the acoustic environment. It refers not only to the sound of the environment, but perhaps more significantly, to the manner in which relationships are created or neglected through the use of the aural modality. Accordingly, the focus of acoustic space is not on the nature of the acoustic environment per se; rather, it endeavours to address the perceptual capacity of the individual and the extent to which one is attuned with their acoustic environment. Acoustic space thus represents a listener-centred exercise in cognition that draws attention to the level of information exchange between the individual and the environment on the basis of perceptual engagement.
Relied upon for time immemorial as a primary mode of communication, the oral/aural modality, assumed a new position in the sensory hierarchy following the advent of the phonetic alphabet. For the first time, vast quantities of information could be exchanged over time and space, as the development of literate society signaled a dramatic shift in communicative forms. More importantly, the aural mode of communication was displaced in favour of the visual modality, through the space/time dialectic that Harold Innis termed the “bias of communication” (Innis 1951). McLuhan and Carpenter, alongside a host of other media scholars, continued in this tradition, and maintain that today, “most of our thinking is done in visual models, even when an auditory one might prove more efficient” (Carpenter and McLuhan 1960). The shift away from an equal distribution of perceptive energy is manifest in everything from the colloquial metaphors in which we reference the sense of sight (“seeing is believing”), to the neglect for the aural modality in the modern education system. The implication of the visual bias of communication is that it weakened the engagement with acoustic space. Memory became resigned to the page, and the mnemonic patterning of speech was less relied upon (Ong 1982). The declining reliance upon soundmaking and listening not only curtailed the tendency to localize oneself through aural perception, but it simultaneously recalibrated the communicative, and therefore the perceptive framework.
It is important to note that the introduction of literacy and the visual bias of communication make reference to the state of listening, not soundmaking. This is not to suggest that the nature of the sounds themselves did not also experience a shift. To be sure, the voice and the patterning of speech assumed a new role in the process of communication. Take for instance the differences between political or religious oratory, where rhetorical discourse is definitive of the communicational form, and contrast it against that of the logical argument developed in the form of a printed text. However, to no great extent did this shift in speech patterning have any considerable consequences upon the whole of the acoustic environment. For this, we turn to yet another major development in communicative forms, activated by electroacoustic reproduction.
The reproduction of sound once again set in motion the hierarchy of perception, as consciousness moved into the domain of neo-orality. While the visual bias of communication had been mobilized nearly two millennia earlier by literate society, the ability to reproduce sound signaled for the first time its removal from an original context. Among the many consequences of this newfound ability, was that it largely undermined the capacity of acoustic space to offer steadfast spatio-temporal information. Reproduced sound and the newfound surrogate acoustic environment diminished or altogether eliminated the tendency to presume that acoustic space was necessarily comprised of only the immediate context. The unfettered acceptance of the uniformity and temporal cohesion of acoustic space had thus been weakened, if not forfeited, and is evidenced in the diminished ability and even reluctance to engage it without restraint. As a result, the notion of acoustic displacement, which is a byproduct of the virtual or simulated soundscape created by modern extensions, is continually undergoing a process of intensification as media continue to evolve. Perhaps most importantly, the disembodiment of sound and its repercussions remain a determining factor in the relationship we form with the acoustic environment.
The consequences of acoustic displacement on the fragmentation of time and space are certainly dependent upon social and cultural context, however they are most detectable, and demonstrate the greatest amount of intensity when introduced to preliterate society. In this case, the communicative process remains spatio-temporally fixed, and has yet to even experience the communicative bias demonstrated by the written word. As a result, the conscious mind that is unaware of communicative displacement in any sense, let alone the spatio-temporal fragmentation that electroacoustic reproduction affords, suffers enormous cognitive, and therefore socio-cultural repercussions. The shattering of a primary mechanism of orientation is thus accomplished upon the deployment of modern extensions, which is brought to bear when Carpenter writes, “I think media are so powerful they swallow cultures. I think of them as invisible environments which surround and destroy old environments. Sensitivity to problems of culture conflict and conquest becomes meaningless here, for media play no favourites: they conquer all cultures” (Carpenter 1973b, p191). With the absence of the two thousand year period of the communicative process being defined at least in part by literacy, the preliterate mind remains unaware of virtually any communicative form with the ability to transcend time and space. However, in the case of societies that employ several dominant communicative forms, they will inevitably culturally appropriate such technologies in a manner that is unique to the given socio-cultural framework (du Guay 1997; Katz 2004; Théberge 1990). Theirs is a society in which the cultural “devastation” of modernization is subdued, on account of an established communicational and therefore cognitive disposition that allows for technological integration. Regardless of the history of the communicative framework, Carpenter’s examination of the social uses of media in an environment separate from their point of origin opens up a world of possibility, in which the comparative method can be employed to reconstruct the dynamics of evolutionary change.
Cross-Cultural Approaches to Negotiating the Electroacoustic Environment
Differences in the sensory order arise as a result of their cultural construction, and are developed on the basis of the meaning and emphasis attached to each of the modalities of perception (Howes 1991). In terms of sound, this suggests that the social and cultural engagement in acoustic space is largely dependent upon its functionality as a means of communication. In the preliterate society, soundmaking and listening represent the principal communicative form, both interpersonally through the voice and communally in the form of music making. For instance, Carpenter’s anthropological fieldwork in the Canadian North has suggested that the Inuit (a non-literate society) demonstrate a phonocentric sensory bias, to the extent that they are more inclined to navigate space aurally than visually (Carpenter 1973a). Similarly, Steven Feld proposes that the ecology of natural sounds is a directive element of the Kaluli people’s musical ecology, one that is intimately bound to the rainforest environment (Feld 1994). In both of these settings, soundscape competence, which is “the ability to understand environmental sound as meaningful” (Truax 2001, p58), is most apparent, as it remains a functional, and even vital component of the communicative process. However, we can be certain that the typical urban soundscape functions in a vastly different manner than that of the Canadian North or the rainforest of Papua New Guinea. Here, the masking of unique elements, as well as the nature of the information contained within the sounds themselves, often discourages the type of listening required for soundscape competence. With the attributes of the local soundscape in peril, and the movement toward acoustical homogenization abounding, it raises questions concerning the manner in which the historical and cultural conditioning of the aural modality can remain a functional and reliable method of information exchange. That is, to what extent can the local ability of soundscape competence persist, and what is the relationship between it and the presence (or lack thereof) of modern extensions? It is precisely in this setting that the comparative approach affords the opportunity to discern localized differences in the capacity for soundscape competence, whereby the framework of soundscape studies and acoustic communication as an anthropological and an ethnographic pursuit must be considered.
The mind is conditioned with the tendency to engage in comparative analysis, and the effectiveness of its employment as a method of sociological and anthropological inquiry can be attributed to the fact that it is so often relied upon in order to make sense of the world. It stands to reason then, that the cross-cultural exploration of sound and its functionality in the modernized environment makes use of such an approach on several grounds. First, is the necessity to place at a distance the over familiar. In most any sociological endeavour, in particular that of soundscape studies where the aural modality is physiologically and cognitively conditioned toward habituation, the ability to render the familiar strange (turning the obvious into the unobvious) calls into question presumptions of what is self-evident. The electrified soundscape, increasingly defined by reproduced sounds that are foreign to the local environment, and therefore is homogenous by design, invites and even requires inquiry concerning the nature of its composition. In a cross-cultural setting, the aural correspondent is capable of achieving such a perspective, coming as a result of the social and cultural “distance” granted by their perceptive disposition. In the paper Changing Soundscapes of Cembra Village (2009) by Noora Vikman, the author reflects upon the notion of “quietness” – a feature that is promoted as one of the village assets. The local population largely considers Cembra a silent village, however the opposite is thought by tourists, who feel that the distant mechanized sounds of construction, and the more immediate sounds of motorized vehicles, create an environment that is more active and bounding with energy than advertised. Thus, the position of the cultural outsider offers a unique and even privileged listening position from which to engage both the sounds and silence of the acoustic environment. By taking note of several distinct listening positions, each of which are attainable through a unique social and cultural perceptive position, the soundscape can be examined and explored as both an objective phenomenon, as well as a product of cultural construction.
The second appeal to the proficiency of cross-cultural approaches suggests the opposite, whereby the aural correspondent is required to familiarize the distant. That is, where the individual makes the attempt to temper the distance between themselves and the soundscape, so as to attain a position of communicative comprehension. In so doing, one makes sense of, and derives meaning from environmental sound, and is thus capable of hypothesizing how the unfamiliar system may function. For instance, one would begin with the investigation of distinct local information contained within specific signals – bells, horns, whistles, etc. The incentive lies in the fact that the social function of acoustic phenomena is entirely dependent upon context: the ringing of bells in one environment could signify a formal religious service, and in another it could indicate a secular musical experience. Following the process of acoustical adaptation and acclimatization, one’s focus can then be directed toward the temporal framework of the communicative process. Daily rhythms of travel and work, weekly patterns of rest, and monthly or annual durations of tradition and custom, all require detailed aural attention at the macro level, and collectively they work toward a heightened understanding of the soundscape in question. While this endeavour does not necessarily require the equivalent engagement with acoustic space as that of the preliterate society, it does in fact demand an attention to acoustic phenomena that demonstrates soundscape competence. And, depending on the nature of the research, it also requires the prolonged attention of the aural correspondent, insofar as the durations of the soundscape are defined by longer-term relationships (Truax, 2001).
Admittedly, the electrification of the soundscape adds layers of complication to the process of familiarization, as a result of the increasing pervasiveness of imported sound. However, the social uses of modern extensions also contain pertinent information as they too contribute to the rhythmic form of the soundscape; they inform the cultural experience of time, and they are telling of the manner in which electroacoustically reproduced sound functions within a given environment. How pervasive such sounds are speaks to an infinite number of variables, yet the ultimate consequence is that they are definitive of a large portion of the local communicative process. I shall return to this issue shortly.
The final service offered by the comparative approach to soundscape studies is the revelation of absences. With the two aforementioned exercises having been considered, the aural correspondent with a functional comprehension of the communicative process is inclined toward the discovery of difference through absence. By fostering an aural awareness that reaches toward soundscape competence, the individual becomes responsive to the character and the functionality of both the foreign and the familiar soundscape, and the differences and similarities that lie therein. Consider the modern environment in which communal unification is achieved through soundmaking. Havana, Cuba offers such an example, where the social and cultural significance of the musical form is inestimable. Such emphasis on the acts of soundmaking and listening are further projected onto the nature of the city’s soundscape, as it largely exists as an acoustic community, bounding with communicative intent and dynamic information exchange (Andrisani 2009). Now, the question concerning why the Cuban culture demonstrates such a tendency is curious. (Presumably, the answer lies at the root of an examination with a scope that is at the very least historical, sociological, and anthropological in nature.) However an equally interesting question is perhaps why some of the same attributes that are definitive of the acoustic environment of Havana are absent in the soundscape of Vancouver? And moreover, to what extent does this Canadian acoustic community demonstrate the capacity to sound together in concert, and on what occasions might it occur?
Inevitably, there are dangers with the approach to the location of presence through absence, namely, when absences are identified as generalizations of features of a particular culture. As mentioned, the previous example is certainly in need of the support that can be offered by a comprehensive sociological investigation situated within a communicative framework. However, the notion of the “functional equivalent” must be also considered, so as to locate a particular feature of the communicative process that may not necessarily be absent, but rather only disguised. What this means in terms of the functionality of sound within these two particular environments, could be (and likely is, given the prevailing socio-political and socio-economic framework in which Cuba functions), contained by the interpersonal and communal exchange advanced through electroacoustic reproduction. That is to say, the obvious communicative difference that exists between these two environments is that of the dated forms of electroacoustic media employed by Cubans in Havana. Cuba’s functional equivalent to technologically mediated interpersonal communication is facilitated either by a dated form of technology, or is non-mediated at all, and the information is thus exchanged acoustically rather than electroacoustically. Therefore, in a cross-cultural comparative analysis between Havana and Vancouver, the social uses and non-uses of modern extensions can serve as a starting point to measure the differences, similarities, absences and presences that exist between the two acoustic environments.
The Social Uses of Technology
An increasing number of socio-cultural environments around the world have experienced, and continue to experience, a communicational reconfiguration as a result of the deployment of technologies. Modern media has, to a large extent, globally redefined the communicative framework, whereby the pace, pattern, and scale of information flow are facilitated by the attributes of the technological forms that are employed. Concerning soundmaking and listening, such forms set in motion the process through which the social uses and cultural function of sound is continually renegotiated. However, the manner in which the global influence of modern extensions are appropriated, also remains largely dependent upon the history of socio-cultural communicative forms in the given environment. In Capturing Sound: How Technology Has Changed Music (2004), Mark Katz discusses the notion of the phonograph effect, which is, simply put, the manifestation of sound recording’s influence. Such an approach takes into account not only the nature of the recording and the medium, but also the social and cultural context of the environment to which it is introduced. Similarly, Paul Théberge (1990) maintains that “issues relating to music and technical innovation cannot be separated from an analysis of contemporary social and economic relations”, whereby the ‘figure’ represented by electroacoustic technologies requires grounding in a socio-cultural framework. And finally, Paul du Guay (1997) approaches the same issue by making evident the distinct nature of the production and consumption of technologies, where meanings are not simply sent by producers and received by consumers, but are always made in usage. All three of the above approaches subvert the potential trap created by determinism, whereby the socio-cultural narrative is considered of equal importance and equally determinant of the communicative process, alongside the influence of reproductive media. In this sense, the thorough examination of modern extensions remains an intricate endeavour, as the interest lies in the manner in which users have adapted to, compensated for, and exploited the technological form.
It may be advantageous to establish a working dialectic whereby we can consider on the one hand, the sociological repercussions of technological deployment, and on the other, the reorganization of cultural constructs out of which such technological appropriation is mobilized. Concerning the former, Marshall McLuhan championed the notion of media theory and its repercussions on the sensory experience. He maintained that media function as extensions of our senses (the “sensorium”), and that they “configure the awareness and experience of each one of us” (McLuhan 1964, p21). In this regard, the anthropological significance is biased toward the communicative potential of the technological form. While the evidence supporting the McLuhanesque framework is abundant, the examination of the particular sociological and cultural framework that precedes such forms is sidestepped. That is, rather than regard media as that which mobilizes perceptive, communicative and therefore cultural change, there also exists as Jonathan Sterne (2001) points out, a history of sound and soundmaking that requires engagement. Such an approach is sociological by design, and accounts for the set of social beliefs and communicative practices of the society in question. It is my project to articulate a framework that equally accounts for both, whereby the significance of the technological form derives meaning from its social uses.
As Carpenter (1973b) has shown, the intensity of technological deployment in the preliterate society underscores the notion that their history of soundmaking exists outside the realm of electroacoustic mediation. Theirs is a society in which the functionality of sound and its reception exists only as far as the immediate physical environment, and it remains intimately connected to a uniform and continuous conception of time. Accordingly, communicative differences between a village setting in Papua New Guinea and those of a metropolis such as Vancouver are abundantly evident, if not only by the attributes of the current communicative process, but also the local histories of communication. However, in an city such as Havana, one that is not only situated in the West, but has also experienced cultural maturation under the guise of European and American social discourse, the communicative differences between it and Vancouver are not quite as straightforward. In Havana, the history of sound and soundmaking includes a musical ecology that has been equally influenced by attributes of the West (Spanish, American) as it has by the African musical form. Moreover, modern extensions such as the telephone, the radio and the television were introduced to, and appropriated by the island colony in much the same era as they were in North America and throughout Europe. Yet today, the circumstance is much different. The triumph of the revolution in 1959 and the trade embargo with the United States that ensued, has left Cuba culturally disconnected from communicative forms that are definitive of the modern metropolis, namely the cell phone (nowadays, the smart phone), the iPod, and the Internet. As a result, Cuba remains in their own “acoustic bubble”, which is not only devoid of several of the aforementioned modern extensions, but has also appropriated their current technologies in a manner that corresponds with the island’s socio-cultural framework.
As mentioned, the technological forms that have been integrated into the Cuban socio-cultural environment are the radio (which in many ways functions as an extension of the public address system), the telephone, and the television. Today, all three are integral components of the communicative process in Havana. The examination of each form may extend slightly beyond the scope of this paper, yet it may be worthwhile to remark briefly upon the primary function of the radio and the public address system in Cuban society, so as to begin to engage in a cross-cultural analysis of the functionality of electroacoustically reproduced sound.
While radio broadcasts are certainly used for the transmission of music, equally as important is the transmission of the voice in the form of dramatized series’, news updates, and of course, political addresses. Founded in 1961, Radio Havana Cuba is one of the principal Cuban radio stations, and is the official, government-run broadcasting station of Cuba. It broadcasts in nine languages, features news items that adversely reflect upon the U.S. government, as well as political addresses by high-ranking government officials. In terms of acoustical reception, citizens are encouraged to casually listen (in their homes, in their car) to programming with elements of entertainment and cultural value (music, radio dramas, etc.). However, they are expected, as honorable and dedicated citizens, to tune in to broadcasts while content is politically engaged – particularly those in which Fidel Castro speaks (whether they do or not is an entirely different story). In this sense, the radio functions as an electroacoustic extension of the public address system. Since 1959, Fidel Castro has utilized Revolution Square (Plaza de la Revolución) in Havana to address citizens en masse. During such events, inhabitants of the capital city are obligated to congregate there to listen to him speak. Simultaneously, his voice is broadcast by loudspeaker configurations erected throughout the city. Such events renegotiate the attributes and the functionality of the city’s soundscape, as the sounds of the revolutionary ideology, through the power of the amplified voice, dominate and define the whole of the acoustic environment. A similar phenomenon (spread over greater distance although less immediately pronounced) occurs through the social uses of the radio, where the electroacoustically reproduced political address emanates from Havana to all corners of the island via shortwave radio. In both settings, one cannot help but be reminded of Jacques Attali’s discussion of the politics of sound, when he asserts “Listening to music is listening to all noise, realizing that its appropriation and control is a reflection of power, that is essentially political” (Attali 1977, p6).
When contrasted against the North American model, the social uses and cultural function of both the radio and the public address system in Cuba differ in many respects. On the one hand, the socio-political system following the revolution of 1959 created a unique socio-cultural context in which such extensions were set to function. That media served to further public engagement in local political discourse as well as to aid the consumption of local cultural forms (particularly music in alignment with the prevailing political ideology), seems self-evident. It fortified the revolutionary project, and as an internal function of island culture, it was employed in a manner not unlike other centralized political regimes in modern history. However on the other side of the techno/social dialectic, radio in particular also functioned as a point of great intrigue concerning the manner in which its ability to transcend time and space mobilized the Cuban cultural form. For instance, short wave radio offered Cubans throughout the island the ability to tune in to broadcasts of American music emanating from Miami. Bands like Sly & the Family Stone and Kool & the Gang were introduced to island culture, as electroacoustic reproduction via radio subverted the economic and therefore cultural embargo to which they were subjected. As a result, the prevailing influence of contemporary musical forms, particularly the lyrical structure of Afro-American music, can be traced back to the cultural portal offered by radio during the 1960’s and 1970’s (Andrisani, 2007).
What remains most interesting about the examination of the technological form, particularly concerning its introduction to an environment that is separate from its point of origin (represented in this instance by Cuba), is the mutual co-dependence of both the extension, and the context. The two are engaged in a constant dialogue, and the nature of the exchange between them is equally determined by, on the one hand, the socio-cultural framework, and by the technological form on the other. And somewhere in the middle, is the constantly evolving, illusive notion of cultural identity.
Conclusion: Soundscape Research and the Project of Identity
From the Victrola to the iPod, every medium of electroacoustic reproduction carries with it specific features and opportunities that contribute to the listening experience. Not quite as apparent are the effects on the quality of that experience, and the manner in which they have altered the relationship between the individual and the acoustic community. However, we would be remiss to discontinue theorizing and developing approaches that may inform our understanding of the manner in which sound can function locally on this account. By beginning with the notion of acoustic space and the extent to which it is engaged, it offers a functional underpinning for dealing with sound and its communicational utility. Acoustic space speaks to both soundmaking and listening, which offers insight into the cultural framework, insofar as both production and reception remain products of cultural construction. In this sense, the functionality of sound, and the extent to which it is relied upon during the process of communication, represent an entry point into the question of cultural identity and the act of identification. Consider for instance, the significance of sound and soundmaking in cultures within the Caribbean, of which Cuba is a part. The oral focus of such cultural settings has offered fertile ground from which aesthetic and communicative acoustic forms have emerged: “Caribbean people are musical people. They don’t behave aesthetically through other art forms as strong as music…We have people that need music as part of their lives. To keep on living” (quoted in Andrisani 2007). Here, Cuban musicologist Olavo Rodriguez stresses the significance of the aesthetic approach to soundmaking in the form of music, and its functionality as a means through which the Cuban culture is able to experience their narrative. To perform, to listen, and perhaps even more significantly, to dance to music, is to figuratively and literally ‘touch ground’ as it were, in the name of their cultural identity.
Stuart Hall maintains, “identity is always a question of producing in the future an account of the past…it is always about narrative, the stories which cultures tell themselves about who they are and where they came from” (Hall 1995). Part of the intrigue of studying sound lies in the fact that it represents the specific medium through which those stories are told. Whether through the voice, music, the nature of the acoustic environment, or the electroacoustic form and its content, the propensity for sound to carry information across space and time renders it worthy of examination as an essential attribute of cultural identification. Sound is simultaneously representative of, and mobilizes the cultural form. It is dynamic, always in flux. In this respect, sound is analogous to identity, whereby “identity is not a thing, but a process – an experiential process most vividly grasped as music. Music seems to be a key to identity because it offers, so intensely, a sense of both self and others, of the subjective in the collective” (Frith 1996, p110). While Simon Frith limits this particular discussion of soundmaking to the attributes of music, such an evaluation is also applicable throughout the continuum of sound. Although speech and the acoustic environment may not demonstrate the level of organization as that of the musical form, they are equally a byproduct of cultural construction, and both offer a valuable point of entry to engage the project of identity.
I have suggested here that by employing a cross-cultural approach to listening and soundmaking, and by using the notion of soundscape competence as a working indicator, we can gain insight into the composition and function of local communicative processes. The comparative method underlines functional differences concerning social and cultural form; it offers the opportunity to remedy the acoustical blurring of environments created by electroacoustic reproduction, and in so doing, it nurtures the ability for the agent to fully evaluate, analyze and engage with what is unfamiliar. However, cross-cultural approaches function as more than a mere methodology through which one may examine the unique attributes of a foreign environment. Rather, by experiencing the unfamiliar acoustic environment, one simultaneously furthers comprehension of what is local as well. Thus, by cross-culturally engaging the acoustic and electroacoustic communicative process, the aural correspondent not only experiences what it means to be part of, and identify with, the culture in question; but in so doing, they also unearth a new manner through which to identify with the culture to which they belong.
Vincent Andrisani is a PhD student in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University. With a background in environmental studies and ethnomusicology, Vincent’s current research interests converge at the intersection of cultural studies and acoustic communication. His project can be best described as a cross-cultural comparative study of soundmaking and listening in Vancouver, Canada, and Havana, Cuba.
Bibliography
Andrisani, Vincent. La Clave Esta Marcando el Reloj: The Clave Marks the Time. Masters Thesis, Faculty of Environmental Studies, York University, Toronto: Unpublished, 2007.
—. "The Soundscape of Havana and the Rhythm of the Clave." WFAE Sound Megalopolis: Cultural Identity and Sounds In Danger of Extinction. Mexico City: Fonoteca Nacional, 2009. 257-270.
Attali, Jacques. Noise: The Political Economy of Music. Minneapolis, MN: The University of Minnesota Press, 1977.
Carpenter, Edmund Snow. Eskimo Realities. New York, NY: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1973a.
—. Oh, What A Blow That Phantom Gave Me! New York, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1973b.
Carpenter, Edmund Snow, and Marshall McLuhan. "Acoustic Space." In Explorations in Communication: An Anthology, 65-70. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1960.
du Guay, Paul, and et. al. Doing Cultural Studies: The Story of the Sony Walkman. London: Sage Publications, 1997.
Feld, Steven. "From Ethnomusicology to Echo-muse-ecology: Reading R. Murray Schafer in the Papua New Guinea Rainforest." The Soundscape Newsletter, June 1994: 4-6.
Frith, Simon. "Music and Identity." In Questions of Cultural Identity, edited by Stuart Hall and Paul DuGay, 108-125. London: Sage, 1996.
Hall, Stuart. "Negotiating Caribbean Identities." New Left Review NLR I/209 (1995): 3-14.
Howes, David. The Varieties of Sensory Experience: A Sourcebook in the Anthropology of the Senses. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, 1991.
Innis, Harold A. The Bias of Communication. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, 1951.
Katz, Mark. Capturing Sound: How Technology Has Changed Music. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2004.
Macfarlane, Alan. "To Contrast and Compare." Social Dynamics and Complexity (Working Papers Series) (UC Irvive), August 2006: 94-111.
McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1964.
Ong, Walter J. Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. New York, NY: Routledge, 1982.
Sterne, Jonathan. "A Machine to Hear for Them: On the Very Possibility of Sound’s Reproduction." Cultural Studies 15, no. 2 (2001): 259-294.
Théberge, Paul. "Consumers of Technology: Musicians as Market." ONETWOTHREEFOUR 9 (Autumn 1990): 53-60.
Truax, Barry. Acoustic Communication. 2nd Edition. Westport, CT: Ablex Publishing, 2001.
Truax, Barry. "Electroacoustic Music and the Soundscape: The Inner and Outer World." Companion to Contemporary Musical Thought (Routledge) 1 (1992): 374-398.
Truax, Barry. "Soundscape Composition as Global Music: Electroacoustic Music as Soundscape." Organised Sound (Cambridge University Press) 13, no. 2 (2008): 103-109.
Vikman, Noora. "The Changing Soundscapes of Cembra Village." In Acoustic Environments in Change, 56-71. Tampereen: TAMK University of Applied Sciences, 2009.
World Soundscape Project. Five Village Soundscapes. Edited by R. Murray Schafer. Vancouver, BC: A.R.C. Publications, 1977.