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ABSTRACT
While scholars have drawn attention to the production of space through sound, there has been less attention given to the interchange between multiple co-existing environments. This paper examines how the sounding of one place informs and produces the sounding of another by focusing on Western art music as it is multiply negotiated by urban residents in Taipei, Taiwan. Building upon Stefan Helmreich’s provocation on the transductive quality underlying immersive soundscapes, this paper looks at how various instantiations of piano playing in apartment buildings, on municipal garbage trucks and on the Taipei Mass Rail Transit System produce expectations for sonic space in a relational, rather than isolated, context. By analysing a grassroots campaign to regulate household piano practice, this paper shows how cultural expectations for the sounding of one place is spatially and ontologically produced in relation to adjacent auditory environments throughout the city. Contributing to discussions for a sounded anthropology, this paper addresses how residents navigate diverse auditory environments and calls for ethnographic attention to the movement between, not only within, sounded spaces.
Acknowledgements
The author wishes to thank three anonymous reviewers for their feedback and comments.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. For more on how the Taipei subway system has become a vehicle to promote civility, Anru Lee describes how the the mass rail transit system regulates public behaviour among its users as a mode of self-presentation to the global community (Lee Citation2007).
2. Only the first line of the melody is used, not the entire song. For more on easy listening and background music, see Leydon (Citation2001) and Lanza (Citation2004).
3. For more on Schafer’s approach to the auditory environment, see Schafer (Citation1977, Citation1993).
4. In 1900, the German music critic Eduard Hanslick wrote of what he considered the predicament of low quality, harmful piano playing (Hanslick Citation1900; Hui Citation2014).
5. While Schafer is credited with establishing soundscape studies, the term soundscape was used by Michael Southworth in relation to urban planning as early as 1969 (Southworth Citation1969), On a critique of the term soundscape and its use in sound studies, see Kelman (Citation2010).
6. Japan’s surrender during World War II led to the Republic of China in Nanjing to reclaim Taiwan under the Cairo Declaration of 1943 less than a decade before the Republic of China would retreat to Taiwan following its defeat in the Chinese Civil War. The Cairo Declaration of 1943, an agreement between the Allied Powers of the US, UK and Republic of China, stated that “All the territories Japan has stolen from the Chinese, such as Manchuria, Formosa and the Pescadores, shall be restored to the Republic of China”.
7. Compared to environmental noise problems, piano sounds are generally understood by government officials to be regulated within the context of the Social Order Maintenance Act. Still, it is not explicitly cited as a public nuisance. Articles 72 and 73 state that individuals may be fined NTD $6000 for “getting drunk or rowdy, swearing, or making noises in public places”, as well as “quarrelling, fighting or making noises” (Social Order Maintenance Act Citation1991).
8. Since the court record discloses Sherry’s full name and identity, I choose not to provide the citation here as it would connect her with the anti-piano noise group, in which her identity is not public.
9. At least one news outlet has reported that the reason that Beethoven was selected for garbage trucks was that Hsu Tse-chiu, the head of the Department of Health at the time, had heard his daughters’ piano playing (Hickman Citation2012).
10. Since the end of Martial Law in the 1980s, more attention has been given to indigenous and local forms of music making in Taiwan. Under a process of Taiwanisation, the democratising state under the Kuomintang, and then under the Democratic Progressive Party, have taken efforts to recognise the unique features of Taiwan’s aboriginal groups and local folk traditions. In particular, ethnomusicologist Wang Ying-fen has raised awareness of Nanguan, a traditional Hokkien and Fujianese style of music that is popular in Taiwan, as one of the “oldest living musical traditions in China” (Wang Citation1992, 25). Her work has been crucial in generating recognition of local, traditional, Taiwanese-styled folk music as a legitimate cultural heritage in Taiwan. The shift in the recognition of traditional folk songs as music is ongoing. Recent research in music education in Taiwan has focused on identifying strategies to incorporate indigenous and traditional Taiwanese music in predominantly Western music curriculum. The important point to make here is that “music” was originally understood as a cultural import to Taiwan. Only in the last few decades have local musical forms gained respectability.
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Jennifer C. Hsieh
Jennifer C. Hsieh is a Hou Family Visiting Research Fellow at the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University. Her research and teaching focus on subjectivity formation as it relates to sensory perception and urban governance. She is currently working on a book manuscript on the production of noise as a regulatory object in contemporary Taiwan.