The Changing Sound Environment and its Impact on Music

Culture:

Cases from Borneo

Gisa Jähnichen

Universiti Putra Malaysia

gisajaehnichen@web.de

The Changing Sound Environment and its Impact on Music

Culture:

Cases from BorneoAbstract

This philosophically focussed paper aims to find evident links

between music practice performed by groups and individuals and

the rapidly changing sound environment in rural, suburban and

urban areas of Borneo. Seen from this perspective, sound

identities seem to be of far greater importance than yet

expected. They are responsible for a fairly unconscious but

intense physical and psychical experience with musical

creativity expressed in different ways and not exclusively

based in ethnically determined music performances. Thus ethnic

boundaries blur and become permeable the more arbitrarily sound

environment develops. Meanwhile fairly obsolete traditional

education cannot prevent the impact of these sounding or

silencing changes.

Exploring selected recordings made over the last few

years, the paper discusses cases from various places in Sabah

and Sarawak. Finally, it suggests a few interdisciplinary

research approaches that may help to preserve the variety of

sounds and the often unique musical knowledge related to it.

Keywords: sound environment, Borneo, biophonies, anthropophony,

musical creativity

I hear a mystic voice around my breathe,

As if a spirit whispered in the breeze,Whose breath scarce stirs this swaying palm, beneath

Whose rustling fronds I rest in dreamy ease,Near the blue marge of Austral’s placid seas.

It is the voice of years, that long asleep,Now wakes again its plaintive melodies;

Wild, warbling, all from dark, oblivion’s deep –They bid my pensive soul in sad remembrance weep. 1

Hector A. Stuart (1876)

Introduction

Sound environment and music practice are in a complex way

connected to each other. Unfortunately, the relationship

between music practice and “natural sound” is often simplified

through so called world music products in which biophonic and

geophonic sound carpets (Krause 2004) play an essential role.

The connection is rather complicated and in various individual

ways filtered through associative experiences and socially

established localness. Localness and time consciousness are the

two main categories, which play an important role for sound

identification (see Figure1: Imagination of sound environmental

layers from simple conception to a simple time based

conception).

This paper tries to give some examples from selected

studies on Borneo’s sound environment and its possible relation

to music practice based on sound analysis and corresponding

philosophical discussion.

Perception of changes

Elements of sound environment are always changing step by step,

according to slight climate changes, weather periods, and

seasons. The natural sound environment, which is composed of

biophonies2 and geophonies, is an important indicator of time

periods of the day, the year and the groups of years,

especially in agrarian societies or transformed societies

mainly based on agrarian production.

Anthropophony, manmade sound in general, depends on these

basics as its latest developed layer. It has a double function:

first and foremost it is a continuous part of natural sound

components, a function, which is sometimes repressed in our

thinking. Secondly, it is a consciously used tool for

distinctiveness. Changes of geophonies and biophonies have

seemingly an indirect influence on this second function.

Most probably, people experience sound environmental

changes through subjective movements from one place to another

in a comparatively short time. Movements of people are very

closely related to their sound experience.

Environmental changes are categorized accordingly and

follow the same principle of identification as long term local

changes. Thus areas are called dry or wet not only for their

degree of humidity. They show all attributes of a sound

environment in a dry or a wet area where some biophonic sound

layers cannot exist or are richly represented. Often, listening

and smelling precede the view with one’s own eyes due to the

fact that sound and smell do not need any light. It is always

possible, not only in daytime.

If the specific sound environment of a certain place

changes too fast, or the changes observed along a travelling

route are too far from the travellers’ expectation, then

associated patterns of identification are getting “out of

harmony” and lead to fundamental distortion and dissonance.

These de facto environmental issues of unbalanced sound –

taking subjective human perception as a criterion – are rarely

directly reflected in sound production. Thus musical practice

does not change its sound structure immediately. We can rather

observe a process of cultural re-positioning in which

distortion and dissonance is expressed as a part of individual

sound experience.

The following example shows spectrograms of biophonic

omissions (see Figure 2 and Figure 3). The first part is a

complete spectrum of forest sound; the second part recorded at

the same place and on the same time after cutting out four of

the highest trees in that surrounding (around Kuala Penyu).

Although we can probably hear a more flat and less vivid

sound, the change is not as obvious as it could be in a

grassland park with small tree groups, where cutting trees has

a deciding and immediate impact. But summarized over a couple

of months, the sound changes become clearly evident due to

frequency re-positioning. This process has to do with biophonic

balance that is one of the most prominent appearances of

localness.

Balancing biophonies

One very interesting example is the instant reaction to sound

distortion in biophonies. For example we can observe a slight

frequency adaptation to an anthropophonic sound – the engine of

an airplane recorded while standing on an airfield from a quite

far distance. The chorus of cicadas and birds close to the

respective frequency layer adapt to the rising formant of the

engine’s sound, probably to ensure its distinctness, which

means – on the other hand – that this “strange” kind of sound

is integrated into their biophonic scheme (Figure 4).

Once the maximum of frequency change is reached, the sound

is interrupted. Thus human made sound can influence biophonic

systems immediately as well. The question remains, if human

beings have a similar “phonic instinct” towards their

environment as regular contributors to biophonies.

Another group of examples can show us the significance of

sound environment as a time marker. The following three figures

show the same place in the morning (8:30 am), during sunset

(6:40 pm), and deep in the night (1:30 am).

From examining each of these spectrograms, it is easy to see,

that the night is the most diverse and noisiest part of daily

biophonies.

Historical background of biophonic perception of localness and

time

Do biophonies play such an important role for all the

culturally and socially different inhabitants of Borneo? Is

there any evidence for changes in the sound history before

globalisation? Concerning these questions, it is useful to re-

read early western sources for their simple-minded and

unagitated dealing with all matters regarding sound.

In 1885, the naturalist Forbes thought that the perception

of nature, probably including its sound, is essential to the

‘natives’. He wrote: “he was struck with the natives’ acute

observation in natural history and the accuracy with which they

could give names, habits and uses of animals and plants in the

jungle, and the traveller cannot but admire the general

handiness and adaptability to changed circumstances and

customs....” (Forbes, 1885; quoted after Treacher, 1891: 21).

Although Forbes may interpret his own changed

circumstances as crucial, knowledge resulting from nature and

1 Stuart, Hector A. (1876). Nat Zoan – A Romance of Borneo. San Francisco: Wm. P. Harrison: p. 11. In the cover introduction Stuart remarks clearly: “The scene is laid on the coast of Borneo and adjacent seas. The sketches of manners, customs, scenery, etc., are strictly correct, no poetic embellishment being employed.2 I apply these rough categories of sound environmental layers according to the bioacoustician Krause (2004) and the definition given by the Wild Sanctuary Sound Archive, which already works since 1968 in Sonoma Valley, California, on this subject: “GEOPHONIES (Non-creature sounds):rain, wind (not recordable, per se., only its effect across broken reeds, through trees, etc.), fast and slow streams, different types of lake, ocean, and inland waterway wave action, glacier masses moving over land, glaciers crackling (as ice melts), glaciers calving & more.BIOPHONIES™ (Whole habitats):muskegs, coastal coniferous, marshes, lakes, bays (inner tidal zones), riparian zones (fast and slow water), inland coniferous forest, open marineenvironments (w/ whales, seals, birds and airborne vox), submarine environments (same as above only marine vox w/ birds replaced by fish, whales, crustaceans), tide pools, shoreline & more. Our library contains over 15,000 individual voices ranging from Aardvarks to Zorillas.ANTHROPHONY (Historical & Cultural):Traditional music, songs, stories, and spoken word sound sculptures (including Native American and indigenous cultures, and historical recreations) are part of the rare and endangered audio we acquire, record, and produce by commission.”

its observation should have played an important role for all

types of journeys. Sound must have been one of the most

reliable sources of knowledge on Borneo.

Ada Pryer describes her perception and shows a distinct

way of perception. In her memories from 1893 she explains: “The

forest, even at mid-day, when the sun is at its highest, is

cool, gloomy and silent: at day break the monkeys call, and the

myriads of insects raise a pleasant and not unmusical chorus,

but beyond this and the occasional call of a bird very few

sounds are heard.” (Pryer and Hutton, 1893: 179). Obviously,

she is not able to analyse the sound background, the noisy

carpet of biophonies that are well arranged and which are so

typical for a certain local spot.

Shelford, another naturalist, comes closer to this type of

knowledge source. He brings natural sound in closer connection

to anthropophony with his description made in 1916:

“The Gibbons go about in large herds; their cry isextremely musical, and in the early morning the junglefairly rings with it. I know no more joyous sound innature than the delightful bubbling shouts of thesecreatures, and he must be indeed a confirmed slug-a-bedwho can resist their call to be up and doing in the mostdelicious hours of the tropical day. The Malay and Kayannames for the Gibbon – Wa-wa and Wok – are onomatopoeic inthat they represent two notes of the series of whistlesand hoots that the animals utter”....”I know of noinstrument on which the cry can be well imitated except asimple thing made by the Kayans out of bamboo-joint andknown as Buloh-Wok, with this the cries can be imitatedwith such great exactitude that the apes are often decoyedwithin a few yards of the performer.” (Shelford, 1916: 6).

Why should it make sense to the Kayans calling the Gibbons, if

not to be phonically integrated into the complex sound

environment, to become an accepted part of it, thus to make

themselves inaudible to the other beings, to get a little more

control of their roles in the sounding world? Tools of sound

deception exist in nearly all cultures of Borneo, although this

way of deception may have the meaning of biophonic

substitution. On the other hand, biophonies had a special

meaning to some people as far as they were connected with the

use of omen and traditional belief. A hundred years ago, Gomes

described the following:

“The Dyaks begin clearing the ground of jungle and highgrass when the Pleiades appear at a certain height abovethe horizon at sunset. Some little time before this theaugur sets about his work. He will have to hear the cry ofthe nendak, the katupong and the beragai, all on his left.If these cries come from birds on his right, they are notpropitious. The cries of the other sacred birds must soundon his right.” (Gomes, 1910: 58).

Krause takes an early spectrogram to explain historical layers

of biophonies. In an example from Camp Leakey, he

“...illustrates a more complex tropical biophony that wasrecorded in March 1991 in Borneo. The sound pattern shownin this spectrogram indicates a much healthier and olderhabitat because of the variety, density, anddiscrimination of voices. It clearly demonstrates nichedifferentiation that had very likely been established overa considerable evolutionary period, where a large numberof creatures occupy various frequency ranges and times.”(see Figure 8, Krause, 2004: 27).

Although Krause explains in detail that biophonies show their

individual dissonances and harmonies3, all these undoubtedly

fascinating analytical excerpts do not consider one very

essential part of sound environment. The missing dimension is

the anthropophony in its diverse social determination, which

overlaps with ethnic imprinting that draws significantly on

localness. Anthrophony overcomes biophonic subordination. But

it is always part of it and it is always influencing biophonic

settings.

Impact on music practice

In the course of history, human made sound became reproducible

independent from place and time. Mentally, anthropophony seems

to exist outside of the sound environment. We can even imagine

sound without the sound itself. When we mentally compose sound

we are using our ability to “think sound”. Thus athropophony is

quite different in its complex functionality from biophonies

and geophonies.

Through the possibility of imagination, human beings are

able to compare soundscapes and their elements. However, social

and cultural sound conditioning remains attached to localness

and time. Although equipped with verbal skills, anthropophony,

of which music practice is one remarkable part, is poorly

analysed in average communication. The environmental

perspective seems to contradict identification patterns and

verbally propagated progress in terms of not missing the

connection to the mainstreamed world of the production of needs

3 “Dissonance [Original definition] A subjective judgement as to when things don’t sound “right”. [Bio-acoustic example] The residual sound one might hear in a disturbed or damaged habitat such as clear-cut forest or a dying coral reef.” (Krause, 2004: 55), “Harmonic [Original definition] The relationship of one tone or voice to another. Also, the complex series of measurable tones within a single note.[Bio-acoustic example] Most birds, insects and mammals distinguish one group of sound-creators from another (without the use of elaborate laboratory equipment) which helps them to create a harmonic series unique to their own voices needed to establish and defend necessary territories.” (Krause, 2004: 56)

followed by consumption. Formal education is not able to

compensate for the lost understanding of balancing sound that

focuses on strict localness and time perception. In this

context, tradition becomes a one way abstraction, and thus

anthropophony is ultimately separated from its sound basics.

The sound of wind, sea waves and seagulls incorporated into

world music items recalls a nostalgic past, and nearly never

the dissonant present.

The more independent sound production, such as the use of

instrumental sound, and the replacement of these instruments

with electro-acoustic manipulation, the more arbitrary becomes

the produced sound. Space and time blur or freeze and leave

sound creativity with little room for development outside of

music tradition. In a seemingly not very conscious way, human

culture compensates for sound environmental distortion and

“dissonances”. Suburban and urban sound samples are well known.

From the environmental perspective, it can be said that sound

variety is much poorer, daytimes are less distinct; working

tool generated sound overlaps with biophonic frequency layers,

without any efforts to adapt a specific spectrum in volume and

sound quality. Covered biophonies will be rapidly and

increasingly silenced. The independence from time and space in

sound reproduction adds a further arbitrariness of

identification patterns. Places such as suburban housing

areas4, which do not have any joint history between biophonies

and anthropophony, are going to lose their audible uniqueness,

even if we do not consider forest or swamp clearing activities.

How does it affect Borneo’s unique music practices, which are4 Slowly grown city centres show a higher variety of sound layers (Aftab, 2005: 136).

going to be de-rooted, re-labelled and alienated of their sound

environment?

Two music examples should help to draft alternative

developments in music practice: the piece Mangazou Id Soboong

Daat” of the rock group Gayang Kulintangan from the album

“Lambayad Naga Do Totuvong” and the electronic arrangement

called “Borneo Inc.” by Dave Lumenta5. The music of these two

examples is created by people with local sound experiences and

addressed to young people living in different areas of Borneo.

The understanding of local sound references – given through

samples of sape and kulintangan performances – presupposes the

familiarity with different music traditions. The pieces are

obviously not composed to satisfy musical needs of outsiders.

Both examples strive for their placement in a new sound order,

which is dominated by anthropophony but not exclusively and not

with its arbitrariness. They show their aim to be re-localised

and – in the same step – to be identified with

contemporaneousness of past and present. The kulintangan

patterns mixed with deathmetal attracts and creates

perceptional disorder at the same moment. The “kulintangan”

used here is not directly related to an actual community. It is

alienated from traditional meanings, although it reminds

slightly to playing techniques I could observe in the Labuk

area near Sandakan. The composer extracted a sound sample taken

from a self-constructed performance. Thus we deal with an

’abstraction’.

5 Dave Lumenta, who describes himself as academic drifter, failed musician, and pork-eating austronesian, is from Kalimantan. He travels around Asia. This piece was composed when he stayed a longer time in Japan.

The synthetic sape-rock-mix in the second example sounds

much softer and less aggressive than the deathmetal-example. It

expresses strong individuality through incorporating

electronically generated sound, which reminds to distortion

caused by a radio transmitter. But in its core, the meaning is

quite similar and serves the same environmental function.

Today, human communication can be acoustically reproduced

independent from time and space. We can listen to music and

voices whenever and everywhere. This special character of

antropophony is one reason for its increasing isolation from

complex sound environment. On the other hand, it is obviously

the basis of modern creativity, which can have such interesting

results, in which localness and the people’s history is not

simplified.

Final questions

Travel guides were not needed by the people of Borneo in the

time of Forbes and Shelford. Today’s travel guides, such as

that of Tamara Thiessen, show the giant cultural distance

between former times and present days. She says that

“The karaoke craze has not escaped Borneo, though it isnow declining in favour of trendy international bars andclubs in Sabah and Sarawak. These hip hangouts are alsoeroding the tradition of a hotel-based nightlife in KotaKinabalu and Kuching. The live music scene is thriving,though music is bit behind the international times.”(Thiessen 2008: 76).

This quotation suggests that modern anthropophony represented

by any local music scene exists first and foremost outside of

cultural diversity. Travellers may need simple, understandable

messages which make them feeling home everywhere, although

somewhat apart from ‘international times’.

Another gloomy example of modern hearing loss is the

effort to create genre boxes, in which timeless labels are

thrown according to the witless understanding of statistic

column creators of a university institution such as presented

in the proceedings of the 2008 ISMIR conference of

Philadelphia. Here, “Etnik Sabah” ranges together with Dikir

Barat, Gamelan, Ghazal, Inang, Joget, Keroncong, Tumbuk Kalang,

Wayang Kulit and Zapin in one software scheme for automatic

genre classification of Traditional Malay Music (Doraisamy et.

al. 2008: 333).

In contrast to these two examples of thoughtless

approaches, we should take sound environmental issues more

seriously. Our holistic view of the sound environment and its

impact on cultural positioning – an ongoing open-ended project

– can find time and space related patterns of integration into

a sound environmental system of high complexity.

Today’s consciously reproduced sound reality is far poorer

in its flexibility and its immediate responsiveness than all

instinctively organised phonic orders. High speed music

production does not mean high speed thinking; the opposite is

mostly the case. Some efforts to reproduce place and time

through simple ethnicisation, through labelling of scales and

sound colours, have a strong non-historical smell. Instead, we

should encourage further diversification of identifiable sound,

further individualisation according to socially produced

patterns in changing places and of different groups who are not

only ethnically determined. Thus, the understanding of our

sound environment becomes an important part of our cultural

communication and of our self-esteem.

What do we add to the chorus of the earth? And what have

we silenced? These two questions could form the start of our

journey to a holistic conception of cultural development and to

discover more of our still verbally unarticulated but audible

knowledge.

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Figures

Figure1: Imagination of sound environmental layers from simple conception to a simple time based conception

Figure 2 and Figure 3: Before and after cutting trees, samedaytime (approx. 9:00 pm).

Figure 4: adaptation (dotted line) to the engine sound (blackline) through ascending frequencies of approx. 50-60 Hz.

Figure 5: Morning at Gunung Mulu (8:30 am). Slight rain as partof geophonies, which are heard through drops falling on leaves and the ground.

Figure 6: Sunset at the same place (6:40 pm).

Figure 7: Night at the same place (1:30 am).

Figure 8: Camp Leakey, Borneo, primary old growth biophonyspectrogram (Krause, 2004: 27).