Soundscape of New York City
A Sound Ethnography Example
What kind of place do you live in?
When asked this question, I usually try to describe where I live and visualize it for people by showing photos, sometimes even videos. However, images alone are not enough most of the time. Seeing, showing, and visualizing, are all ways of understanding that appeal to the sense of sight. However, we, humans, understand the world, make sense of it and interact with it through our five senses.
How about understanding an environment just by listening? I had a chance to try to understand the city that I live in by making a soundscape for my Music and Art Anthropology Class in the Fall of 2021.
For this assignment, the task was to create a 2-minute soundscape recording based on my own experience in the city to analyze the "acoustemology" of New York City. During the project, I realized that when I tried to perceive the city by focusing on sound, I was able to pay attention to various elements that I had not noticed.
Before continuing to read, I would recommend that you listen to the 2-minute soundscape recording to grasp and interpret my analysis better.
What sounds do I hear in the city?
What would you say if someone asked you to describe the sounds you hear in the city? Most people would answer; traffic, sirens, or the subway. But what sounds do we really hear in the city? Before recording the city's sound, I asked myself this question. It seemed like an easy question, but the answer was not as easy.
Schafer states that although we continuously listen, this does not mean our ears are always open. He highlights three main questions to highlight various ways of listening or hearing:
“Who’s listening?”
“What are they listening to?”
“What are they ignoring or refusing to listen to?”
Schafer, 2003.
While recording my soundscape of New York City, I started by answering Schaffer's questions.
Hearing the sound of New York City
Before moving to New York City, as an outsider, I had started to have an opinion of the sounds due to what I overheard from the streets of New York while talking to my partner on the phone. New York was noisy! However, at the time, living in Istanbul, another notoriously noisy city that I had not thought about.
After moving to New York, I started hearing sounds other than the sirens, subways, and construction which I categorized as noise; I noticed that I was also hearing nature sounds, music, and various languages. As a newcomer, I opened my ears to hear every sound with the curiosity and excitement of moving to a new place.
Today, as a person who has been living in New York City for over two years, I got used to the sounds of the city; these sounds had become the norm for me. Sometimes I do not even realize the nature sounds, and I only hear sounds that interest or may concern me. According to Schaffer, this is the modern world's effect on ears, and "busy" people close their ears to the sounds of nature and listen mostly to signals of activity.
How is a place heard?
Movies provide us a way to gain insights into other cities, places, or spaces that we have never been to or seen before. Sometimes movies can also help us to look at places from a different perspective. While films show places, sound is another element used to support the presentation.
Last year, I watched a movie called Soul by Pixar and Disney; the computer-animated movie centers around a jazz enthusiast and music teacher Joe Gardner and his adventure to reunite with his lost soul and his body after accidentally dying.
I found this movie different from other animated movies; one of the reasons is that it shows the city's multicultural structure with its architecture, conversations, colors, and human diversity.
“Soul is a movie about death, about jazz, about longing and limitation. It’s also a New York movie.”
A.O. Scott, New York Times
Another reason that makes this movie different from others is that it presents a glimpse of the sonic experience of being in New York City with the City's iconic sounds that can be clearly heard like traffic, subway, sirens, contractions, dog barking, and fast-paced steps.
Veit Erlmann, a Professor of Ethnomusicology, thinks that in order to understand the relations in a society, it is necessary to examine the forms of communication with the sense of hearing, as well as the signifiers and symbols. He suggests the "hearing culture" concept that allows gaining an understanding of a culture and society's structure.
Sound as a way of knowing
Ethnomusicologist Steven Feld states, "as place is sensed, senses are placed." In his study that focuses on the people of Kaluli and their sound-centered lives, he explains the connection of the perception, sensation, and interpretation of sounds with the place. While explaining this connection, he suggests the term acoustemelogy, which is a combination of the words acoustic and epistemology. The term implies that sound is a way of knowing.
“Acoustemology means an exploration of sonic sensibilities, specifically of ways in which sound is central to making sense, to knowing, to experiential truth.”
Feld, 1996.
Feld also talks about the body in mind; he mentions Bergson's thoughts on the perception that feeds on past experiences and memories and Casey's statement that the body, which is moving in a place, imports its past experiences into the present. Based on these two thoughts, Feld explains that acoustemology not only looks at sound as a source of information but also at the place and the environment. The place where sounds are created and consumed has cultural and social importance for that community, and the people also shape the acoustic properties of the place in it.
New York City has a multicultural structure that includes various cultures and elements of these cultures, such as art, languages, foods, and religions. It is also known as the city that never sleeps, partly due to the city never being silent. Anyone who listens to my soundscape will understand the dynamic structure of New York City, with the music, siren, and subway sounds it contains.
Experience is subjective
Kant is one of the philosophers who work on sensing the world; according to him, every person perceives the world differently. Similar to Schaffer's ways of hearing, Maquet talks about different ways of looking at art and experiencing it. Both Schaffer and Maquet talk about how the experience differs from person to person.
At this point, I would like to ask once again the questions suggested by Schaffer:
“Who’s listening?
What are they listening to?
What are they ignoring or refusing to listen to?”
Through my soundscape recording, inferences about New York City will differ depending on the listener's relationship with the city.
Whose New York City?
The sound that dominates my soundscape and probably many others in New York City is the sound of the subway. Feld states the importance of water for Kaluli people because it is "always heard even when it cannot be seen," and he highlights the water's acoustic and visual presence.
The subway has a similar importance for New York City. The subway is, too, "always heard even when it cannot be seen." Due to having an extensive transportation network, the subway forms a large part of city life and experience. The New York City Subway is a hub for New Yorkers; this causes the life above ground to be moved underground, which can also be heard in my soundscape recording.
As a social place, the subway allows conversations to continue while moving within the city. In the subway, a conversation between friends, a singing drunk person, and arguments among people can be encountered. Another example of life underground is the performances of musicians and dancers, who can be frequently encountered on the streets of New York.
New York is crowded; people running to work and tourists wandering the streets create a dynamic city. With crowd comes noise; as one of the most densely populated cities in the world, for NYC to be a loud city would not surprise many. However, "my" New York City also has silence. A non-New Yorker would be surprised about the silence in my soundscape, but I bet New Yorkers will agree that New York also has its silence.
Similarly, my soundscape has multiple languages and religious practices. A listener would think about the multicultural environment in New York. However, a New Yorker might also try and guess the location of where the sound was recorded according to the language or religious sounds heard in the recording.
As Erlmann suggests, the interaction established through hearing is also very effective in understanding culture. Feld thinks that an ethnography should include the voices that people hear every day. The sounds of New York City, traffic, construction, and sirens, may resemble the sounds of a typical big city. However, when listened carefully, it can be noticed that it carries essential clues about the City's culture. Insights may differ depending on who is listening to the sounds and what people want to hear. I think my soundscape will give most people an idea of what it's like to be in the City that never sleeps.
Well, what are you listening to?
What sound do you hear in your environment?
What does your city sound like?
If you create a soundscape of your city, I would love to hear and talk about it!
