By: Story by VASANA CHINVARAKORNPublished:
23/04/2009 at 12:00 AM
Newspaper section: Outlook
"The soundscape of the world is changing." - Raymond Murray Schafer
It started in North America, but has its philosophical roots in the Far East. And now the branch of study called soundscape has drawn substantial interest and campaigns to preserve the "acoustic ecology" all over Japan.
In her lecture at the Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn Anthropology Centre, Prof Keiko Torigoe, an expert on soundscape in Japan, outlines the development of this avant-garde discipline. At the height of the social movements of the 1960's, the Canadian composer/writer/environmentalist Raymond Murray Schafer (born 1933) raised the issue of noise pollution as a significant but often taken-for-granted problem.
With his colleagues at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Schafer launched the World Soundscape Project, which seeks to "find solutions for an ecologically balanced soundscape" by bringing together research on the scientific, sociological, architectural, philosophical and aesthetic aspects of the environment. Several studies have since been conducted on the different soundscapes on both sides of the Atlantic and later in other corners of the world.
Torigoe herself plays a vital role in introducing soundscape study into Japan. Originally a musicologist, she participated in a Schafer workshop held in Canada in 1979. Attracted by the broad, boundaries-crossing notion of soundscape, Torigoe later did further research on the original World Soundscape Project, translated a couple of books by Schafer, and with other colleagues founded the Soundscape Association of Japan.
Interestingly, Schafer was in large part influenced by US composer John Cage (1912 to 1992), who was in turn inspired by Zen Buddhism. In his prolific and often dramatic career, Cage experimented with every possible kind of sound, regardless of its musicality or lack of harmony, thus challenging the standard conventions of music. For instance, Cage's renowned 4' 33", in which the three movements are played without a single note, is meant to induce the audience to be attentive to the sonic environment around them. He once described his music as "purposeless play ... [but] this play is an affirmation of life - not an attempt to bring order out of chaos, nor to suggest improvements in creation, but simply to wake up to the very life we are living, which is so excellent once one gets one's mind and desires out the way and lets it act of its own accord."
Torigoe's colleague, Prof Kozo Hiramatsu says, "After John Cage, the ['concert hall'] definition of music has become just nonsense, a restriction of music." After all, enjoyment of music, in the all-encompassing sense of the word, has always been part of human history. "In Thailand, musicians play in the streets; it's mobile," he points out.
Still, could it be that what someone considers as "music" might be another person's source of anguish? Schafer once said: "Noise is unwanted sound ... Noise is any undesired sound. Noise is the wrong sound in the wrong place. This makes noise, to be sure, a relative term."
A specialist in noise pollution, Hiramatsu traces the rather uncanny evolution of the classifications and views among the public toward this acoustic dilemma. Noise can be tolerated, taken for granted, taken as a sign of progress or prosperity (like during the postwar period of Japan when reconstructions that entailed loud noise were in vogue). Or it could be perceived as a "germ" or "weed" that needed to be controlled, if not exterminated. There is also an elitist penchant, Hiramatsu notes, among the upper class to blame the working, less educated class as responsible for noisy occurrences. In the West, from the Industrial Revolution in the mid-18th until the 20th centuries, he cites, there were no regulations against engine noise (considering that most machines would be owned by rich people) but street musicians (who usually begged for money at the houses of the wealthy) were outlawed in many cities.
It is not that the working class has been immune or indifferent to noise. Hiramatsu points out that the poor tend to live in noisy, crowded places and are afraid of forced eviction or other unfavourable measures if they make any complaints to the authorities. Ironically, when they are prompted by circumstances to voice their grievances, they are often told that they will get "used to" the problems in the end, that their concerns are no more than "sensation pollution".
"The government tends to treat it as secondary in importance," Hiramatsu accepts. "But [of all] complaints against environmental pollution, noise is always at the top. Over the last 15 years, noise researchers have found lots of evidence that noise has many health effects. You can't endure it!
"The upper class people are always annoyed by the lower class people and they try to control their noise. This is sensation pollution. They've never experienced such a high level of aircraft noise! Working class people are exposed to loud engine noise every day, from morning to night, but they [the well-to-do] just don't care about them.
"The only way to persuade those people is movement. History tells. Those who suffer from noise must speak out, repeatedly, and take action against noise. There's no other way."
"Yes, to start from [the] individual [is] to make balance in the society," Torigoe concurs.
So after studying soundscapes for years, what kinds of sounds can repel the two Japanese scholars? A pause, and Torigoe says she does not like car noise, "not any one specifically, but when many, many cars are running and I can't even identify which sound is from which car. The level of ambience is getting higher and it masks many other sounds. That kind of noise doesn't have any information [meaning] and it masks other things."
Having studied the problems of US military airbases in Okinawa for more than two decades, Hiramatsu quickly votes for "noise around airbases ... and not only in Okinawa ... it's very intense, tremendous, very annoying," he exclaims.
Another candidate for unpleasant noise offered by Hiramatsu is motorcycle noise, especially when it has been deliberately heightened by the owners/riders. He certainly looks forward to the day when there will be some regulations that effectively tone down the engine's volume.
But as of now? "Motorcycles have become a 'musical instrument' in Japan. They're playing 'music' - in the streets!" There seems to be a boyish sense of smug hilarity as Hiramatsu makes a mock screeching and engine roaring noise. "I'm a forced audience. And I'm annoyed. There's a lot of forced audience! That is exactly the concept of soundscape," and he utters a laugh, loud and long.
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