Annoying Music in Everyday Life

Felipe Trotta

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781501360640
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Ethnomusicology

Just as music has the power to inspire, it has the power to irritate and enrage. Why does certain music annoy us? Why does it force us to leave rooms, invade our personal space and affect us on a visceral level? Based on more than 70 interviews, this book discusses the everyday challenges of living together with unwanted music. It examines issues of taste, individual rights, private and public spaces, violence and the law. The interviews explore various relationships with forced listening and the behaviors that result. Interviewees talk about emotions and reactions to the nuisance caused by music, highlighting matters of otherness, individualism and rights. They discuss experiences with neighbors, at stores, on the street, while commuting and even in their homes - and reveal the complex social interactions mediated by music and sounds in our day-to-day lives.

1

Slippery concepts

Music, sound and noise

A few years ago, my daughter got, as a birthday gift, a scintillating red electronic spider-shaped toy. From the top of its ‘body’, two low-quality speakers played a loud sound while it moved on the floor, changing direction as it hit an obstacle such as furniture, walls, doors or someone’s body. My daughter loved it. I cannot say the same about me and my wife, but that’s not the point. I remembered this spider because, for me, it was a very good example of annoying music. The recorded file played by the speakers could be easily defined as ‘music’, once it was a recognizable ostinato with a rhythmic pattern, a melody and a sequence of three chords repeated exhaustively. Despite the poor distorted sound of the designed speakers, it was ‘music’.

As I began to interview people for this research, I not only recalled the spider (which has somehow haunted my music memories since then) but also expected someone to mention children’s toys as an example of irritating music-sound experience. Anyone who has had any contact with young children is aware of the number of noisy toys available on toy stores’ shelves, and the disturbance they cause inside families’ houses. Of course, one can say children are noisy, not only their toys, but also their play, which is filled with cries, chants and all sorts of human and non-human sounds. Children learn things through sounds, they make experiments with them, they cry and sing to call our attention. Shouts are the common audible presence of children and, usually, they have fun with sounded objects. My daughter was quite frustrated when the spider ‘broke’ one week after its arrival at home. In fact, we removed the battery and, as she was too young to understand, she only regretted that it had stopped ‘singing’. Possibly, for a child, ‘music’, ‘singing’, ‘sound’ and even ‘noise’ are words that make up part of a set of designations used to define the sonic dimension of their playful universe. However, what called my attention was that in my interviews – done with adults and (a few) teenagers – nobody mentioned children’s toys.

For me, this silence towards such a noisy universe may not be due to memory blanks or to a consideration that the nuisance caused by toys is of low importance, but to a conceptual fracture that splits the sound universe into separated definitions of sound, music and noise. Although the differentiation between these concepts is far from being clear, it is interesting how all the interviewees excluded children’s toys from their memories of unpleasant music experiences. Perhaps they would not define my daughter’s spider as playing ‘music’, but making ‘sounds’, or even making ‘noise’. Therefore, before going further in the debate on annoying music, I think it can be worth it to discuss these definitions.

What do the words say?

At first, it is important to reinforce that this book is about music, not sound or noise. My initial thoughts during the beginning of the research were not to dedicate too much effort to the definitions of each term. For some time during the process of collecting data and talking to people about annoying music, I followed a common-sense understanding of the category ‘music’, a word that easily refers to most popular music (songs) heard on radio stations, on playlists, at parties, in stores and on streets and that also includes music pieces (not-songs) heard at concerts, on recordings, on TV shows, on soundtracks of films, in ads and in many other audio-visual formats. Music is music!

In fact, most interviewees did not manifest any doubt regarding the conceptual idea of ‘music’, talking about their music experiences in daily life without questioning its definition. However, some conversations pointed to the unclear conceptual differentiation between music, sound and noise. After some time, then, I realized the need for a deeper discussion about these terms. In everyday talks, sometimes the word referring to a sonic experience slides from one to another, revealing not only the kind of listening practice but also the movement of the definitions themselves and the relative value applied to each one.

When confronted with unwanted music, people often elaborate a value judgement on the kind of sound that is being played. This evaluation is made explicit through the language choices made while describing unpleasant sound events. Therefore, the words ‘music’, ‘sound’ and ‘noise’ are transformed into concepts related to hierarchical ideas about this experience. These concepts are applied to specific sonic events as resources for highlighting the subjective evaluation of such events. Far from being technical or limited concepts, the differences between music, sound and noise are blurred in daily talks, according to this personal judgement. Often, the evaluative force of the concepts points to the positive interpretation of the word ‘music’. ‘Music’ defines not only a sonic phenomenon or a kind of artistic manipulation of sounds, but a complex process of evaluation and classification of sounds in everyday life.

In a widely known ethnomusicological definition coined by John Blacking in his often-quoted How musical is man?, what we usually call ‘music’ can be understood as ‘humanly organized sounds’ (Blacking 2000). In this definition, music is the result of an action done by humans, which implies ideas of organization and manipulation of ‘sounds’. In his words, ‘musical performance, as distinct from the production of noise, is inconceivable without the perception of order in sound’ (Blacking 2000: 10). According to the author, ‘sound’ is the raw material that must be processed to become ‘music’. Interestingly, Blacking admits that ‘noise’ may also be produced by humans, but he does not develop a more detailed debate about the distinctions between the two concepts. Following the same direction, Puerto Rican sociologist Angél Quintero Rivera states that this organization is an action that aims to control the materiality of life, playing an important political role in social struggles (2005: 34). ‘Music’, hence, is a human artefact that deals with power negotiations and inequalities, as the result of control over ‘non-musical’ sounds. Quintero Rivera develops a wide interpretation of the process of colonization in Latin America, in which missionaries tried to impose a musical heritage of church music on indigenous people. These musical procedures are defined by him as a modelling system of thought and values, manifested in sound organization as a device of power. In this sense, the resulting syncopated rhythm that he calls ‘tropical music’ is a negotiation of colonial power processed as a shift in sound organization. In this interpretation, the social human action of organization of sounds is conceived as a political tool that allows people to reshape power asymmetries through music-making. The force of this argument lies in the fact that the resulting concept of ‘music’ is defined as the consolidation of a power struggle in which ‘sound’ is the basic material. Organization is understood here as a form of control, adding an ‘order’ to the sonic universe and, consequently, controlling behaviours, thoughts and interactions. Once the ‘order’ is related to the definition of ‘music’, ‘non-musical’ sounds would be conceptually associated with ‘disorder’. Often, these sounds are referred to as ‘noise’.

The idea of order appears indirectly in the more neutral definition of acoustic sound, according to which a sound source that produces irregular waves is defined as ‘noise’ whereas regular sound waves are perceived as ‘musical sounds’, or ‘tuned sounds’. Brazilian musician and scholar José Miguel Wisnik defines this difference in his often-quoted book O Som e o Sentido (Sound and Senses):

Nature provides two major modes of experiencing the complex wave that sound is: regular, constant, stable frequencies, such as those which produce the tuned sound, with its well-defined pitch and irregular, inconstant, and unstable frequencies, such as those which produce noises, blurring, sound scribbles, and buzzing. (Wisnik 1999: 26)

Although this definition tries to avoid value judgements about the sound waves provided by nature, the positive value of the semantic field of ‘regularity’ encompasses the idea of order and organization, locating in the opposite pole the ideas of irregularity, disorder and disorganization, usually attached to a lower value. The association of noise as a disturbing element echoes certain approaches of the theory of communication, in which the ‘clearness’ of effective communication must be done without the interference of external sounds that may puzzle the sign or even block understanding (Shannon and Weaver 1964). These sounds are referred to as ‘noise’ that ought to be eliminated and purified so that perfect communication can be achieved. Although it can be argued that the idea of interference has been applied to communication systems inspired and funded by telegraph and telephone companies, the assumption that ‘noise’ is the word that defines sounds that blur the efficiency of communication is widely disseminated in daily speech. The force of the negative interpretation of the word ‘noise’ crosses different fields and authors, providing a strong common-sense agreement that is still applied by people in their vocabulary about sonic experiences and evaluations.

However, the distinctions between ‘noise’, ‘sound’ and ‘music’ are not always that clear. Sometimes, people slide from one word to another, depending on the feeling they want to highlight. Even in academic works, the distinction is often obscure. In his influential work about ‘noise’, Jacques Attali defines ‘music’ in the first pages as an ‘organization of noise’. Throughout the book, Attali sometimes refers to ‘noise’ as a synonym of ‘sound’, defining it as the raw material of the organization or codification operated by ‘music’. In his words:

All music, any organization of sound is then a tool for the creation or consolidation of a community, a totality. It is what links a power center to its subjects, and thus, more generally, it is an attribute of power in all its forms. Therefore, any theory of power today must include a theory of the localization of noise and its endowment with form. (Attali 2009: 6)

The ‘form’ would be, according to the author, the music itself, conceived as a formation, domestication and ritualization of the ‘noise’ (2009: 24). Going further, he states that ‘noise is murder and music is sacrifice’ (2009: 28), trying to understand the sacrifice as a way to represent and dramatize actual violence. The conceptual intersections between music and violence in Attali’s work will be discussed later in this book, but what remains relevant for now is the way he frames the concept of ‘noise’ attached to the concept of ‘sound’, and both opposed somehow to the idea of ‘music’. In Attali’s terms, there is no substantial difference between sound and noise, as he underlines the role of music as a device of control and organization. The opposition between ‘music’ and ‘noise’ within the realm of sound events appears also at the beginning of Bruce Johnson and Martin Cloonan’s book about music and violence, precisely when the authors argue that it is needed to unveil the ‘negative pole’ of music experience in daily life. According to them, music is ‘sound’, ‘and when it inflicts violence it does so not only by virtue of what it means but what it then is: noise’ (2009: 4). This statement resounds common-sense agreements that put a qualitative meaning in the word ‘noise’. The ideas of disorder, disorganization and disturbance in communication and violence are attached to the word ‘noise’ as it highlights the unpleasant or uncontrolled nature of sounds. Although it can be perceived as a human action, noise is usually described as ‘something unwanted, inappropriate, interfering, distracting, irritating’ (Hendy 2013: x).

Marie Suzanne Thompson (2014) suggests that this binary separation of the universe of sounds should be put aside once it directs the interpretations towards a ‘good’ and ‘bad’ definition. According to her, these common definitions are insufficient to describe the complexities of noise in everyday life, highlighting that this approach requires a listener who hears it as such (2014: 20). Therefore, she criticizes the simple definition of noise as ‘bad’, stating that this is framed through a subject-oriented perspective that ignores other powerful possibilities and usages of the term noise and of the noise itself. In her thesis, she proposes a non-binary definition, in which noise is not defined through what is it not (not desired or irregular sound waves), but as a ‘productive, transformative force and a necessary component of material relations’ (Thompson 2014: 6). Her attempt to understand noise ‘beyond unwanted sound’ is due to her interpretations of noise-music, which displace the idea of noise as disorder. In fact, thinking about noise-music is an interesting way to take noise as a floating category, that can be taken both as an undesired malfunction in communication systems and as a powerful tool to develop artistic creative works. According to Thompson, noise-music explodes the binary opposition held by authors such as Attali, who understands noise as ‘the antithesis of music – it is what lies outside the realm of ordered, musical sound’ (Thompson 2014: 177). In noise-music, noise is not only the material to be organized, but the result itself of this organization. In this sense, noise and music would be defined and perceived as complementary categories, beyond the common-sense definitions.

However, in doing so, we inevitably fall again into the subject-oriented approach she explicitly tries to avoid. Noise-music can be understood as ‘music’ only for those who are trained and able to listen to it in that particular way, those who are able to understand noise-music as ‘organized sounds’. Although Thompson’s arguments are very fruitful in enlarging the conceptual definition of noise, her theoretical approach is somehow detached from the everyday language in which noise is often defined and redefined. Yet she clearly states that she doesn’t deny ‘noise’s everyday connotations but looks to add to them’ (Thompson 2014: 18); the idea of noise as an unsettled category rather than an always negative term can be productive in emphasizing precisely the role of the listening in the process. In other words, the way people hear sounds is a key element in the process of defining music, sound and noise.

My point is that subjective perception doesn’t need to be set apart for us to understand sonic experiences in a non-binary way. Instead, the form through which people apply different terms to specific situations is relevant in revealing hierarchies between the words and the concepts that define their experience. Usually, ‘music’ is referred to with a positive approach, but not always. Same as ‘sound’ and even ‘noise’. Empirical data suggests a slippery administration of these concepts, framing spoken language with a subjective judgement of the sonic experience. Let’s take, for instance, the report by Janet, a sixty-four-year-old Scottish retired pharmacologist who describes a situation in public transport that is not precisely related to ‘music’, but to a sound leakage of music devices that cannot be listened to as ‘music’ by her:

Even on a bus, I can’t stand people who play these in stereos. Here in Edinburgh, you go on a bus – if you go upstairs and somebody comes behind you and haven’t got decent earpieces, you can hear this tiny sound behind you. It’s leaked and I find that really irritating. Because all you hear is the din: you don’t hear the music, you just hear the din. That’s what I call ‘impersonal stereos’, because they are meant to be only for the person who is listening to music but when the sound comes out, some of them are really loud. I don’t like it and sometimes I simply move away and sit somewhere else.

Janet puts it very clearly that she would rather have her trip in silence, but this sound half-way between noise (‘din’) and music is perceived as extremely irritating. Her sound experience leads her to define it as ‘noise’, although the owner of the earpieces obviously was listening to ‘music’. Moreover, she raises an important issue related to our debate: the volume. Her perception of the sound that leaks from the earphone is merged with a judgement about its loudness. Accordingly, she can only hear the ‘noise’ because the person is listening to the music ‘too loud’.

Technically, volume is the amplitude of sound waves, heard in a range of dynamics that goes from the low piano to the high forte. ‘The intensity is an information on the energy of the sound source’ (Wisnik 1999: 25), which always raises corporal sensations associated with an amount of strength and force. Very loud sounds can interfere in the body in several ways, with a growing potential to harm or damage alongside the increase of the volume. Discussing the effects of loudness in sound perception, Michael Heller (2015) points to the importance of thinking about the physicality of the sound experience, since radically different bodily consequences happen depending on the volume. Beyond the so-called ‘threshold of pain’, ‘sound waves are no longer experienced as intangible or detached objects of hearing but confront the body through an experience of direct physical touch, force, or torment’ (Heller 2015: 42). He argues that, in extreme loudness, a listener collapse occurs, provoking the auditor to lose the percep...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Slippery concepts: Music, sound and noise
• 2 Private individuals and the music from elsewhere
• 3 Sharing spaces and sounds in public and private
• 4 Sound, music and violence
• 5 What music? Tastes, morals and values
• 6 Regarding the sound of the others
• Epilogue
• References
• Index
• Copyright