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Rainforest Soundwalks (fwd)
[from the acoustic-ecology list]
Hello eary folks,
As some of you may know, Steve is quite a renowned
anthropologist/ethnomusicologist who has focused on the "acoustemology" of a
number of villages in Papua New Guinea. Over 25 years, his books and audio
releases have shared his exploration of the ways the sound of the forest
permeates the cultural consciousness, including music-making, casual
sound-making, and ceremonial song forms.
This spring, he released a double-whammy of great sounds.
Smithsonian-Folkways put out a 3CD set of ethnographic recordings (including
his half-hour "day in the sound life" piece done for NPR in the late '80s
that was a direct response to Steve's exposure to the WSP call for acoustic
ecology researchers to create composed works to disseminate what they've
learned, and which led to Mickey Hart's entry into Steve's creative life,
spawning funding for state of the art field gear and the release of a widely
acclaimed CD a decade ago); see
<http://www.EarthEar.com/catalog/bosavi.html> for the Smithsonian set.
More to this list's point is his first all-environmental sound release,
Rainforest Soundwalks. Here, Steve did something like what Michelle's
friend suggested, ie recorded multiple tracks at varying heights in the
forest, then created a subtle mix. But his goal was not so much to simulate
an actual physical walk, as to relay some of what he'd learned about
listening.
See <http://www.EarthEar.com/catalog/rainsoundwalks.html> for more details,
including Steve's liner notes.
Carlos Palombini recently did an email interview with Steve for an extended
review in Leonardo, which offers the clearest written sense of what Steve
was after with this CD. With their permission, I'll paste it below for
those who are interested.
The cicadas are in full buzz here in the foothills of the southern Rockies.
Walking from home to my nearby office yurt offers a rich, loud,
ever-shifting mix, within each pinon pine tree and across the hillside,
while the ground is speckled with the holes they recently climbed out of.
Before this, there were a few days that offered the subtler treat of the
quiet clicking they do upon first emergence; that one always draws me in to
really SEE them, as if to convince me that it is something concrete in
there. The many voices of the tree community. . . . .
Jim Cummings
EarthEar founder
> Carlos, here are brief answers to your questions.
>
>> [1] The first one concerns your CD title: Rainforest Soundwalks. I was sure,
when I requested the CD, that the point of "view" would be that of someone
who walks through the forest with a pair of possibly binaural microphones
and a portable DAT recorder. That does not seem to be the case. Would
"soundwalk" here refer to a moving "intention of listening" (the term is
Schaeffer's)? To the fact that you (seem to) offer to the listening a
four-panel retable through the textures of which it may wander? Or is this
reading too "ethnic", too "etic"?
>
> As you (and Schaeffer) suggest: The term "soundwalk" is not really literal
> here. The duration of each piece (tracks 2-3-4) is not the duration of a
> physical walk, or of contiunuous movement with a microphone. There is
> actually very little physical walking with the microphone. Each of my
> "soundwalks" takes place in a distinct forest locale at a distinct time of
> day. But each is really about a way of listening to and at the forest edge.
> The "soundwalk" takes place in the head and body, in the way of listening, in
> the attention to the surrounding/motional sound field. These are composites,
> not just of the height and depth, space and time of the forest, but also of a
> history of listening -- my history of listening and being taught to listen,
> over 25 years. Thats why I call it an "acoustemology", a sonic way of knowing
> place, a way of attending to hearing, a way of absorbing. Even when still the
> body is doing the moving. Even when locationally fixed the microphones are
> sensing motion. The "soundwalk" is a densely layered audio image of this
> experience.
>
>> [2] On first listening, I seemed to discern a logic in Rainforest
>>Soundwalks:
>> from the figure/background contrast of the first track to the incredible
symphony
>> of the last one, where every singular component of the rich texture is a
soloist
>> in its own right. Is this "correct"? And if so, how would you describe the
>> intermediate stages? (Sorry if this sounds like trying to convert you to
>> my own "reading".)
>
> You are hearing this quite consonantly with the way I do. There is a Bosavi
> term, dulugu ganalan that means "lift up over sounding." This is the term for
> this sound world's spatial and temporal interplay. Out of the density of
> sounds "solos" appear only to be registered momentarily and relayered into
> the overall density. The sonic poetry of the forest is here, in this textural
> density. Each of the audio immersions is meant to indicate a different way
> that multiple sound sources interlock, overlap, and alternate to create this
> acoustic space that keeps arching up as it moves forward. This is how the
> sound tells the listener the exact hearing position, the time of day, season
> of year, the orientation of the forest geography.
>> [4] How do you fit _Rainforest Soundwalks_ in the context of the Western
>> art music tradition? (This is not meant to be offensive.)
>
> Rainforest Soundwalks is obviously a very "musical" recording in the sense
> that it presents both a new field of sounds and is structured to provide a
> way into listening that can either be narrative or non narrative. It is not a
> literal kind of program music. But it is also not entirely abstract. It uses
> editing and compositional arrnagement techniques that are very influenced by
> my studies of electroacoustic music. At the same time, it is also in
> conversation with other environmental, natural historical, acoustic ecology,
> and soundscape (radio/performance) recordings. I am trying to reach out,
> simultaneously, to sound artists, ecologists, anthropologists, soundscape and
> radio people, and composers of experimentsal music. I listen often and
> carefully to work by all of these people, and Rainforest Soundwalks is very
> much about my conversation with their work, as well as my distinctive way of
> listening absorbed through years of being in the Bosavi forests.
>
>> [5] What is the "Anthropology of Sound" and who are its exponents today?
>
> I coined that term many years ago in response to the term "Anthropology of
> Music." My original concern was that ethnomusicologists were artificialy
> separating the patterning of sound called "music" in the West, from the full
> human and environmental world of sound. A good example in my early research
> is the relationship of crying to singing to bird calls -- a relationship
> central to the understanding of hearing and knowing through sound in Bosavi.
> That was the subject of the Sound and Sentiment book you heard about.
> I call my work anthropology of sound because it attemtps to connect
> sonic/acoustic form to social and historical meaning. Everything I do is as
> much concered with the production of sound (the sources and agents) and the
> reception of sound -- who hears, how it is heard.
>
> The best way to get the full sense of this "anthropologyu of sound" idea is
> to juxtapose Rainforest Soundwalks with the 3CD anthology & booklet I just
> released on Smithsonian Folkways -- Bosavi: Rainforest Music from Papua New
> Guinea. On those CDs you hear how the forest sounds not only inspire the
> poetry and imaginaton and acoustic patterns of Bosavi song, crying etc. You
> also hear how Bosavi songs and work sounds and ritual and ceremonial sounds
> transform these forest sounds and are performed in concert with them. The
> "music of nature" becomes the "nature of music." The juxtaposition of these
> recordings presents the larger acoustic ecology of Bosavi that has been my
> passion -- presenting a whole anthropology of/in sound for this community.
> Rainforest Soundwalks is the foundational recording because it lets you hear
> the basic tracks, the sonic everyday -- whether high tone bird solos or more
> uinfolding ambiences -- that people listen to throughout their lives. It is
> through and on the attentive listening to this world that Bosavi people built
> their songs and musical lives.
>> [3] Could you describe your choice of equipment in less denotative terms
>> than the CD booklet does? What kind of DAT recorder is the Sony D7 and why
have
>> you chosen it? What kind of preamp is the Aerco and why use it? What kind of
microphones are the AKG 460B, the CK1, and the AKG451EB and why have you
chosen them? Why use a Nagra IV-S instead of a digital tape recorder? What
is a "X-Y stereo pair"?
>
> The D7 (now replaced by the D8) is a mini-DAT, a so-called DAT walkman. It is
> small and convenient and runs on 4 AA batteries. The AERCO is a custom preamp
> made by Jerry Chamkis in Austin Texas. It accepts XLR cables and provides RCA
> and mini jack out. It is superbly quiet and clean, and makes it possible to
> use high end phantom power microphones and by-pass the (less sophisticated)
> preamp circuitry of either a DAT or the Nagra. The mics I use are AKGs
> because they seem to tolerate the high humidity of the forest pretty well.
> And they have the right characteristics for the sounds I record. They have a
> rising response and are very consistent and clear in the mid and upper
> frequencies. These are field-worthy versions of AKG microphone circuitry (the
> 414) that is well known in studios. I used a stereo Nagra until 1992 because
> nothing else would hold up in the environment. I like analog warmth. Tracks
> 2-3-4 were the stereo Nagra with the Bryston frame. I believe these were the
> first field recordings made with the Bryston in the field, meanignt he first
> use of portable Dolby SR in field recording. This was the gear I used for
> Voices of the Rainforest, the CD I did with Mickey Hart in 1991. The SR
> circuitry made it possible to record low voume sounds with very minimal
> noise. I use X-Y stereo (the microphones cardiod and slightly crossed)
> because they produce the most gentle version of a stereo field. Unlike A-B,
> ORTF, or binaural stereo recording configurations, X-Y does not overly
> spatialize the left and right. There is so much sonic ambiguity about space
> in the forest, and I wanted the stereo image to register that. X-Y recording
> techniques do this best for me.
------------------------------------------------------------------
Needle clusters shirring in the wind --- Listen close, the sound gets better
--Gary Snyder, Mountains and Rivers Without End
------------------------------------------------------------------
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