Saturday 20 November 2021

Soundscapes

 I was in the village the other day when the Angelus began to ring. The bell has a loud, brassy, slightly cracked timbre with a weird resonance; quite unlike the bell in the next village, which sounds flat and hollow, like a dustbin being whacked with a broom.

We tend to think of travel visually: Instagrammable views, architecture, light, bright turquoise skies or the virulent viridian of the Northern Lights. But with my eyes closed I can tell the difference between different soundscapes, and as Covid-19 is still putting a crimp in my wanderlust, I decided to daydream my way around the sounds of the world this morning.

  • Early muezzin in Sur, Oman. A deep, warm bass voice in what, already, is not quite the silence of night.
  • Duelling muezzins of Istanbul. I'll swear it's personal between the Sultanahmet Mosque and its nearest competitor. A very different kind of muezzin from the factual recitation of the Omanis; here, it's operatic, with fluent melismas, digressions, ornaments, stretching every breath out as far as it will go, and underneath the melody the incessant honking of taxis on the meidan.
  • A valley in Uzbekistan where suddenly, every single donkey started to sing out and the valley resonated like a bowlful of braying.
  • The plink, splash of icebergs slowly melting in an Icelandic lagoon. Every so often I'd hear one that had become top-heavy suddenly crash down into the water, and the ripples from its collapse, and then it would be back to the plink, plink in the vast midnight silence.
  • The whistle of swans' wings as seven of them flew in arrowhead formation over my camp at Pensthorpe, Norfolk, in the early morning.
  • Chai garam chai, chai garam chai, the song of the tea vendor on an Indian train. 
  • "Ladies, get your husband a new tool here!" the cheeky stallholder at Brick Lane. His rudery only matched by the stout lady who sells new season white asparagus on the market at Ezy-sur-Eure.
  • In Mirabai's temple at Chittorgarh, someone sings bhajans to a small harmonium. The melodic line never stops; note after note, meandering, wandering around itself, plaintive and unfulfilled.
  • Ethiopian priests rattling their sistrums as they chant, and then the big drums coming out for prayers and hymns in a joyful shout.
  • Staying in a guesthouse on the banks of the Chao Praya river in Ayutthaya, I hear the big barges going up and down the river all night. The low growl of the motors, and then as that dies down, the ripples of the wake hitting the pilings below the guesthouse, slap slap slap, and then again, silence, till the next boat.
  • Explosions in the dark in Colombia. And then shouting and music. The start of the annual fiesta in Barichara - but we were worried for a moment!
  • A zampogna playing its pastoral tune in front of a Christmas crib in Rome.
  • A Catalan picnic, with a gralla player sitting on a car bonnet, his instrument emitting raucous squeals, and drum players each side rattling away - this apparently being a quite normal way to celebrate the weekend. (And later, back in Barcelona, I danced the sardana in the cathedral square to the sound of the band - clarinet-rich, but with a tiny strident whistle leading every tune.)
  • Monsoon rain in Tamil Nadu, less weather than a 360 degree waterfall effect.
  • If petrichor is the smell of earth after rain, there should be a word for the sound of motorcycle tyres hissing through rainslick just after a storm.
  • Egrets and sacred ibises in a tree in Dire Dawa, squabbling and gossipping.
  • The lapwings calling whee, whee on the uplands of the Drouais.
  • Owls calling at night, the whoo-whoo of the little tawnies and the screech of the barn owl.
  • Horns of Indian traffic, never silent, "Please be horning". Personalised horns like personalised ringtones only even more annoying.
  • Ping ping PA-dum, the French railway announcement tone. SNCF appear to have the copyright as no other railway in the world uses it (or not to my knowledge. Maybe they do in Andorra. But then Andorra doesn't have any railways.)
  • And the marvel that is Binche carnival, with its 26 brass band tunes. Though my favourite is the little morning tune played just on a single clarinet as the Gilles gather in the outlying villages and suburbs and start making their way into the town.