The Bloomsbury Handbook of the Anthropology of Sound

Holger Schulze

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781501335426
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Médias et arts de la scène
• Subtopic: Musique

The Bloomsbury Handbook of the Anthropology of Sound presents the key subjects and approaches of anthropological research into sound cultures. What are the common characteristics as well as the inconsistencies of living with and around sound in everyday life? This question drives research in this interdisciplinary area of sound studies: it propels each main chapter of this handbook into a thoroughly different world of listening, experiencing, receiving, sensing, dreaming, naming, desiring, and crafting sound. This handbook is composed of six sections: sonic artifacts; sounds and the body; habitat and sound; sonic desires; sounds and machines; and overarching sensologies. The individual chapters explore exemplary research objects and put them in the context of methodological approaches, historical predecessors, research practices, and contemporary research gaps. This volume offers therefore one of the broadest, most detailed, and instructive overviews on current research in this area of sensory anthropology.

Part I

Living With Sonic Artifacts

Pulse

Michael Bull

Objects do not speak for themselves. They are embedded in a wider cultural matrix that is materially, conceptually, and sensorially based. Objects, however defined, might have a range of potential sonic affordances. Yet even this observation raises the question as to wider issues concerning the nature of sonic objects.

This section illuminates a variety of sonic objects through the examples of headphones, toys, databases, and musical instruments. These objects weave in and out of sound in complex ways. Does the connection between a database of sound files and a piece of software for radio programming reside solely in its sonic results? If a day on the radio is skillfully programmed it might give joy to a listener—yet the software itself just lies there silent, dormant. Maybe the talking doll doesn’t make any noise at all but merely speaks as the child’s sonic imagination. Equally, the object that is the headphones placed over or into the ears makes no sound in and of itself but remains a vessel for the audiovisual messages it mediates, amplifies, transforms (while perhaps also indicating to others “do not disturb”). Does sound constitute a new equivalence of exchange then, while each object possesses its own specific sonic affordances? Sonic objects can be simultaneously global and local. They can be intimate, friendly, threatening, domestic, public, and universal; there are more mobile phone accounts, for example, than inhabitants of the whole world—making the mobile phone a truly global object of the twenty-first century. Is it necessary for a sonic object to be a material artifact, and if so what sort of material artifact? Could it be animate? A bird, for example, or the wind, the ocean, the rain as it accompanies human subjects through their daily lives? Does the explanation of any object necessarily reside in its “use”? Do we have to wait for the literalness of its vibration—or are its vibrations merely the “end” product of the social, cultural, political, and economic nature of the object that sings, squeaks, talks, rumbles so as to emit a response? The anthropology of sound objects has always contained a level of ambiguity, from the birds in Malinowski’s early study of the Trobriand Islanders (Malinowski 2001), which could supposedly inform them that a relative on a neighboring island was ill. On islands with no telephones or other mechanical ways to communicate, the relatives awaited the arrival of their cousins at the water’s edge; when asked how they knew when to wait, they would say “the birds told us.” Similarly, Steven Feld grasped the link between the sounds emitted by the Muni bird and the human emotional responses among the Kaluli people (Feld 2012). Bird sound is certainly a rich seam in the history of anthropological sonic objects.

What role do sonic objects play in the constitution of any cultural system, be it the Kaluli people of the Papua New Guinea rainforest or the contemporary urban dweller? Sound objects can be understood as cultural connections, threads that pass through the individual, the collective, the historical, the economic, and the political. For the purposes of this introduction, these connections begin with an object that lies on my desk. It is a cylindrical piece of metal, just over three inches in length; it makes no sound. It is just lying there—my grandfather’s First World War trench whistle. Engraved upon it are the words Hudson & Co, Birmingham 1916. I have no stories of my grandfather’s wartime experience; he died many years before I was born—ironically of a heart attack while digging a civil defense trench in the United Kingdom on the outbreak of the Second World War. This is unlike the case of my Corsican grandfather, who would tell his teenage grandson many tales of his experiences at the Battle of Verdun. I never thought to ask him whether he had used or possessed a trench whistle. As a child this whistle was my pride and joy, to be looked after, used, and guarded. With my friends I would play war games in the nearby woods and fields. These fields near Southampton had been bombed in the Second World War—and through a trick of time we would imagine ourselves in the war: me with my First World War whistle, anachronistic, in the wrong war. The excitement at finding a spent ammunition cartridge was intense, as was my joy in using my grandfather’s whistle, which I would place between my lips and blow: the sound was immense, reaching over 1,000 meters! I didn’t realize then the nature of the mediation between technology, sound, and the body. As I grew up, I stopped using the whistle of course. It has not been blown for over fifty years but has remained tucked away in a draw, rediscovered by me some years ago while going through my mother’s possessions after her death.

The issuing and use of trench whistles in the First World War was a response to the sonic nature of that conflict. The Western Front frequently produced a sonic ceiling of sound in which troops could distinguish little and where shouted commands went unheard. Trench whistles attempted to overcome this with a loud, shrill sound. The whistle itself might engender fear or expectation, as its blowing could signify an instruction for troops to attack— to scramble out of their trenches and march towards the enemy, with death, injury, or success at the end. The design of the whistle meant that it could be held in the mouth while keeping both hands free so as to pursue the attack. Whistles did not merely signify attack but also warning—of the arrival of trench mortars, an impending gas attack, and so on. The design and sonic qualities of the whistle were a product of a dialectic of warfare within Western industrialization of that period. It acted as both an antidote to, and a furtherance of, the industrial noises of war in its destructiveness and protectiveness.

The blowing of the whistle, and sonic objects in general, cannot and should not be isolated from the culture and values that engender their production and use. The object, in this instance the trench whistle, possesses an individual, collective, political, and historical narrative. And now it sits on my desk—a thread in my own narrative, extended as I write this. I probably first encountered the whistle as a child while watching television: Dixon of Dock Green, which was all the rage in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Each week it portrayed the life of a fictional police constable who was friendly and wise. At some point in each thirty-minute episode, a police whistle would sound, signaling the pursuit of a criminal or as a call for assistance. Whistles had been introduced for London’s Metropolitan Police Force in 1884 and, like their subsequent military counterparts, could be heard at up to 1,000 meters depending upon the nature of the terrain. Police whistles fell silent in the 1970s, to be replaced by the use of radios both in the street and in police cars, their sound traversing greater distances than the whistle while simultaneously remaining silent to the public ear. Police whistles have recently been partially reintroduced in Cambridge to alert the city’s many cyclists of danger.

Whistles have, however, fallen rather silent in Western cities of the twenty-first century. As sonic emblems they are largely a product of an earlier stage of industrialization—few remain, factory whistles no longer punctuate the working day; the age of the steam train, with its shrill yet exciting warning whistle I would hear as a child, has largely disappeared. Yet this is no Schaferian nostalgia for the disappearing sounds of an earlier age—merely an observation. Nonetheless, the whistle remains a part of other social spheres, not merely as a local artifact but as a global one. Perhaps it has more in common with the ubiquitous mobile phone than we might imagine? The whistle is still an everyday sonic object on the sports fields of the world, from the village green to Wembley Stadium. Soccer, the world’s most popular and most monetized sport, continues to use the common or garden whistle to control and punctuate the game, even alongside the presence of contemporary technologies such as VAR (video-assisted refereeing). Yet it would be an error to separate the whistle from the matrix of objects of which it is a cultural part. Just as in the First World War the sound of the whistle only made sense within the context of various technologies designed to maim and kill, so the use of the whistle in the soccer game is embodied within a range of sonic objects broadly defined. As young teenager, I would attend every Southampton Football Club match at the club’s home ground, the Dell. I would travel to each match with a group of older family friends and we would stand in the same spot, under the clock, at each match. The Dell itself was of course a sonic object, coming to life every match day: a secular temple of sound in which over 20,000 people would stand—singing, talking, eating while they awaited the whistle that would start the match. In those days there was little manufactured sounds, no prompts, no sonic accompaniments to the match. A rudimentary sound system would play a few songs before the match and an intercom system would give instructions when it was time to leave afterwards. However, most of the sounds came from the supporters. Singing would erupt early on, spreading out beyond the stadium and throughout the surrounding streets. The matrix of sounds of football matches and football stadiums is now global and mediated, watched by millions worldwide on televisions, laptops, mobile phones, and so on. In the sports grounds themselves, while the whistles remain the same, the sound matrix of the event has been transformed and is increasingly corporately organized. Indeed, when I go to a football match today it reminds me of sitting in an expensive seat at a theatre. All those years ago, a ticket, at a mere fifteen pence, came out of my pocket money—today I have to pay £30, £40, or even £50 to watch an equivalent match. Globalization, sonic or otherwise, tends increasingly to exclude those who, in James Baldwin’s phrase, “cannot afford the price of the ticket” (Baldwin 1999). Yet as I walk past my local stadium, adjacent to the university in which I work, I can hear the roar of the crowd just the same. And I easily recognize the volume and timbre of that roar—it’s a home goal!—the relief it embodies is clear and strident. Then I hear, somewhat fainter, the referee’s whistle as the game restarts, and all is well in the world. All in that fraction of a second, in that cultural moment, in that place at which the sounds of my feet on the frosty path crackles along with the sigh of the wind. The sound object of this particular whistling also has its place within a cultural matrix.

1

The Headphone

Naomi Smith and Anne-Marie Snider

Figure 1.1 Assembling ASMR listening: headphones, video, and a digital device. Photographer: Naomi Smith.

Crinkle Crinkle Lil Shirt

Maria—also known under the name of GentleWhispering—gazes intently into the camera and sways softly from side to side, her hands fluttering gently, her expression is warm, relaxed, and calm. She has long blonde hair and a slight Russian accent. She is whispering to you and explaining the premise of the video—*Crinkle Crinkle lil shirt … * - ASMR/binaural/hair brushing/whisper (GentleWhispering 2014a):

Good evening, as you can tell by the title this video is going to be dedicated to crinkle shirts; and I have three of them … I would love it if you would tell me which one you like the best … And I will be gently brushing your hair—I will try to whisper mostly so you can hear the sounds of the shirts better … I am going to include the soothing sounds of crinkling.

The first shirt, as Maria explains, is “very crinkly” and appears to be a pink waterproof outdoors jacket; she explains that the loud crinkles of the shirt mean that her movements must be “extra slow for you.” The crinkly shirt sound helps recreate the sensation of sound all around the viewer as it is highlighted by Maria’s movements. The dimensionality of sound created by the crinkling shirt, should, as Maria hypothesizes, add something “extra” to the experience. She stops talking and turns her back to the camera, moving gently to create crinkling sounds with the jacket. Excusing herself, she grabs a hairbrush that she describes as “very dear to her heart” and commences slowly brushing your hair. She disappears from the screen, and all you can hear are the sounds of the shirt and the hairbrush moving through your hair from “behind” you, along with some inaudible whispering that carries an air of calm and reassurance.

I think that getting your hair brushed is one of the most intimate and pleasant feelings a person can feel. And I think that has to do with the feeling of us being vulnerable and someone taking care of us; calming us down, touching our hair … I think for a lot of people the feeling of hair being brushed is as close as they can get to tingles [no talking, sounds of shirt crinkling, hair brushing and gentle breathing; Maria is mostly out of frame] … it is definitely one of the most pleasant feelings and every time it makes you feel so relaxed.

(GentleWhispering 2014a)

The soundscape is carefully arranged. The first shirt is the loudest, with its stiff fabric generating deep crinkling sounds at the slightest movement. Maria describes the second shirt as subtler but still very capable of producing pleasant crinkling sounds. The subtle crinkling sound of this second shirt allows Maria to introduce additional elements into the soundscape, specifically hair brushing. Maria is something of an amateur ASMR theorist, and many of her videos propose potential explanations about the nature and significance of ASMR: Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (GentleWhispering 2014b). As Maria brushes your hair, she theorizes about why the sound of hair brushing might be so soothing; she explains that the sound of hair brushing serves as a memory trigger, it is “going back into the childhood time [sic] … with someone who cares about you.” Maria connects the feeling of ASMR produced by the shirt and the hair brushing to a broader sense of childlike enjoyment of the world and connecting with nature, “smiling into the sun, hugging a tree, climbing a tree” (GentleWhispering 2014a).

Crinkle Crinkle lil shirt … (2014a) is the first ASMR video that I, Naomi, ever listen to. At the time, I am procrastinating about grading papers and drifting around the internet. I find myself reading an article about ASMR that emphasizes its strangeness, the whispering, the waving hands. I am curious and I am bored, searching for what Paasonen (2015) calls an “affective jolt.” I fish around for my headphones and plug them in, pressing play. I start with the volume turned right down, trying to avoid any “nails on a chalkboard” response, but I don’t perceive the sounds as misophonic. Rather, I find myself straining to hear the small sounds, pushing my earbuds further into my ears. So I turn up the volume, and a warm, relaxing sensation washes over me. The headphones allow me to forget that I am in an open-plan office and direct my attention inwards. They narrow my perception and I do not experience the sounds as coming from outside in; rather, they feel like they are being dredged up from pleasant corners of my memory. My thoughts, tense, jittery, and restless, almost immediately relax. It feels like the headphones are a way of injecting a blissed zen feeling straight to my brain. It is strange, it is intriguing, and it feels good.

Is a crinkly shirt a good thing? Usually, the answer would be no. A shirt that crinkles is likely to be made of stiff, low-quality fabric. Insofar as a button-down shirt has a sound, it might be best described as an almost inaudible rustle. One of the many tensions in ASMR is that it forces us to reorient ourselves to objects, instead of valuing objects for how they look or feel; they are valued for how they sound. In an ASMR content, the parts of an object that are usually discarded, including the plastic packaging, are often carefully kept (for example, the plastic comb that is still in its plastic packaging in Crinkle Crinkle lil shirt … [2014]). In this way, objects become separated from their capacity to be used for their original purpose. You cannot use a comb in its original packaging for combing your hair, but it can make satisfying crinkly noises when it is gently pressed. As such, objects move from their direct relationship with an intended use, to objects whose primary purpose is to produce sound.

In a sense, ASMR makes instruments of the unexpected. It does not matter that the comb is still in its packaging: ASMR sound production allows it to become a new hybrid object—a combinpackage (as we call it)—whose purpose is to make gentle, plastic-crinkle noises as part of a pleasurable soundscape. Likewise, the cheap, crinkly shirt, probably profoundly unpleasurable to wear, finds new life and utility in sound.

Using things in a manner that they were not originally intended for often makes people uncomfortable. Why is she fondling that comb, they might wonder, and why is it still in its package? The tension exists because the uninitiated (to ASMR) do not recognize the new object, the combinpackage, whose only job is to produce sound. The use of mundane, everyday objects to create ASMR demonstrates that these objects can “generate and transmit affects themselves” (Ash 2015: 85). Headphones play a central role in producing and approaching these new objects.

Previous scholarship implies that headphones act as a bubble, distancing the urban citizen from their surroundings by drowning out the sound of the city with other noises (usually music) and turning public spaces into private auditory experiences. Bull (2012) highlights the power of headphones, and by extension the iPod, to transform and transcend the geography of space. However, the way headphones are used to experience ASMR is substantively different. Rather than blocking out or transmitting sonic geographies, the brushing, tapping, crinkling, scratching, and typing sounds typical of ASMR content allow the listener to experience the unremarkable sounds of daily life as immersive. Headphones help ASMR listeners to focus on particular experiences of sound. Without headphones it is difficult for the viewer to “get” ASMR. Think about everyday sonic experiences without headphones: for instance, unless someone is rustling a packet of crisps behind you in a movie theatre you are unlikely to pay much attention to the sou...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Contents 
• Contributors
• Introduction: What Is an Anthropology of Sound?
• Part I: Living with Sonic Artifacts
• Part II: Sounding Flesh
• Part III: The Habitat in Sound
• Part IV: Sonic Desires
• Part V: The Listening Machines
• Part VI: Sensologies
• References
• Acknowledgments
• Index
• Imprint