City Noises, City Sounds
DOI: https://doi.org/10.59350/yymdv-t8302
Last week, I spent a few days in New York City to celebrate Thanksgiving. I stayed in the Bronx, at an apartment a few feet away from the Bedford Park Boulevard stop and a subway train yard. Now, even though I have lived for over five years in a sleepy Upstate town, I have developed an uncanny ability to sleep wherever, whenever. The screeches and huffs of the trains were but a distant murmur to me. In fact, they were almost soothing, a reminder of the sounds of my childhood. My hostess was a bit concerned that the sounds hadn’t let me sleep. I reassured her, telling her, “I lived surrounded by noise in San Juan. The sounds of the trains weren’t really a problem.” She told me other guests hadn’t had such a good night sleep.
That made me think of soundscapes, my soundscape in particular. As someone who has lived in cities, towns, and countryside, I am very aware of the different sounds that characterize each place. I lived in the Bronx as a child, and traveled to Puerto Rico often. My mom likes to remind me that I had trouble sleeping when we would go out to visit the family on the West Coast because I didn’t like the sound of roosters in the morning. Eventually, after we moved to Puerto Rico, I grew accustomed to the sounds of roosters and chickens in the morning, as well as the murmurs of the stillness of the night, and could sleep through either. As an adult, I lived in San Juan. My apartment building stood at one of the busiest corners in Rio Piedras; there was always something to hear. Some nights it was the cackle of drunk college kids headed back to campus. Other nights it was the conversation of cops who had come to the cafe downstairs for breakfast (it opened M-F at 2 am). And sometimes it was the faint tweet of the crossing sign, an alert for the blind. When I moved to Binghamton, I had trouble sleeping: the silence was disconcerting for someone who had spent the last five years falling asleep to the sweet lull of “noise.”
All of this came back to me last week, as I stood in the guest bedroom, making the bed. Many distinct sounds make my soundscape. They follow me wherever I go, and will inevitably color the way I interpret other sounds. They color the way I “listen” in other words. For example, some people will find the sounds of the city abrasive, harsh on the ear. I, on the other hand, always find city sound comforting and exciting. They sound like life to me. Of course, they also remind me of the city of my childhood, the city I always look for when I visit other cities. Can I add other sounds to that soundscape? Certainly. The whirr of the refrigerator in my kitchen that starts and stops at random moments of the night is an example of a sound I have added to my soundscape. I’ve also added the open and shut of the doors in the hallway outside my apartment, a sound I can hear as clear as a bell in my apartment. But I think that the same way that we add sounds to our soundscape we also categorize them according to the sounds we have already stored in our memory bank. The sound of the fridge is the sound of “home” for me, and it sits alongside the sound of roosters and the sound of the city streets. Same could be said for my idea of “noise”: there are sounds that mean “noise” to me, and that definition is inevitably rooted in what I define as “sound.”
Liana Marie Silva
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A Day at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Annex
DOI: https://doi.org/10.59350/34arq-mnj17
When I went down to NYC at the beginning of the summer, I saw an ad for the John Lennon exhibit at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Annex in Soho. The exhibit focuses on Lennon’s stay in New York and the music he produced while he lived in the city. My curiosity stemmed not just from my own research interest in immigrants and their connection to New York City, but also from the fact that I am a music fan and a Beatles fan in particular. Considering that the actual Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is located in Cleveland, I was excited about the Annex experience. I made it to the Annex in late August and indulged my rock and roll fantasies in the basement-level space.
Even though this is not the place for an exhibit review, what I want to focus on regarding my Rock and Roll experience is the importance of sound to the Annex experience. (Once again, I have not been to the actual museum in Cleveland, so I am not sure if this is just standard for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.) When you walk into the Hall of Fame Gallery–they sell you tickets for particular times, so that entrance to the Annex is allowed only at the time on your ticket–you are surrounded by tiles with the inductees’ signatures and that light up when the artists’ music plays. The lights dim while the music starts out slowly, shifting from tile to tile, then gains speed until you are surrounded by music and voices. It ends abruptly, and you are led into a room where there are tv screens and stools, a room meant to recreate the experience of being at a live concert. Again, the music is loud, you are shrouded in darkness, and the screens light up with images of famous musical artists (thankfully from yesteryear and today) as well as quotes. After spending some time watching “The Power and the Glory,” a screen opens up and you move into a large room full of pop music memorabilia, but only after you pick up what looks like a Walkman with a headset. The room is segmented, either by time period, by influences, by artists, or by region–there’s one section devoted to New York City music. The Walkman allows you to hear the tunes while you look at the memorabilia and read the descriptions.
My brother, nine years older than me and a music aficionado as well, agreed with me that having the music come on at every station was a great perk. I expected your run-of-the-mill museum tour tapes, but I was pleasantly surprised to hear music playing while we ogled the bustiers, guitars, and letters. Score! Oftentimes we found ourselves singing along or calling to the other to come over to a station and tune in. I enjoyed the Lennon exhibit, but my favorite part was “The Power and the Glory.” For a young person like me who grew up in a small town, devouring page after page of Rolling Stone, this was the highlight for it was supposed to emulate what it would have been like to see The Sex Pistols in concert, hear Muddy Waters play, feel the shrieks of the female fans when the Beatles came onto the stage.
However, what really caught my eye was that sound was always tied to the visual. The sounds complemented the viewing of the objects–even though the objects were there because their owners produced music. Except for the concert room, where at times the audience was left in the dark, with just the music track playing while you tried to guess who was next, the music was a part of the exhibit as a way to showcase the memorabilia. This was especially evident in the John Lennon exhibit. It was heartwarming to watch a music video with John Lennon, Yoko Ono, and Sean Lennon on holiday, but I wanted to hear more. There were plenty of John Lennon artifacts on display (like the INS letter to Lennon that asked him to leave the country), but what about the music he made? I commend the Annex’s idea of having the music play when you walk up to a piece of memorabilia, but the music should play a bigger role.
You can’t go to a concert and not buy a souvenir, right?
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Liana Marie Silva
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