Need to save a “dying” sound? Call a Doc! (Sound Doc that is . . .)
I am going to start this post by talking about photography, another field in which I have worked. If a young student walked up to me and said “I want to be a professional photographer” I might say “Are you going to open a studio? Will you shoot portraits? Maybe shoot products for ads or models for fashion?
But if the student said “No, I want to do documentary photographer, take pictures of people on the streets or shoot nature scenes,” then I would not be surprised. Since about the beginning of photography various kinds of documentary photography have been done. Matthew Brady covered Civil War soldiers (though the technology was so crude then he could also shoot the soldiers standing still outside their tents, not in action). Lisette Model was recognized for what has come to be known as “street” photography. Henri Cartier Bresson, W. Eugene Smith, and Margaret Burke White were among many fine photojournalists who traveled the country and world do document current events. Ansel Adams captured the natural beauty of the West. I could go on and on and fill this entire post with names of people known for their documentary photos.
Now if the student mentioned above had come to me and said, instead, “I want to be a recording engineer or producer” the very next sentence out of his or her mouth might well be “I am building a small studio in my home until I can get a job in a large commercial one.” It is often assumed as an automatic reflex that the art of recording takes place in a studio. Yet photographers like Cartier Bresson and Ansel Adams never had ”home studios” or commercial ones for that matter. Certainly there are and were many fine studio photographers but it is not automatically assumed that a professional photographer needs a studio. So why a recordist?
In this post I want to make the case for documentary sound.
I started my photographic example by naming names, so I will do the same for sound documentation though I only have room to name a few people out of the many I know who work in this field. But I think their stories will introduce you to the documentary possibilities of audio in an interesting way.
Let me start by talking about oral histories.
Oral histories are recorded stories of people relating actual experiences of their lives. Initially, these were often recorded and transcribed to print and published as books or articles. But with the advent of good quality small recorders, this medium seemed suited to radio and now, with podcasts, there are even more ways to get sound histories out.
An early practitioner was the late radio personality, Studs Terkel, who sometimes broadcast, or released on cassette, oral histories but who also compiled them for books. One of his most famous books was “Working” in which he interviewed people across the country about their jobs.
Probably the most famous current oral history project is Story Corps. It was founded by David Isay, a broadcaster known for gathering interesting oral histories about all kinds of human experience. Usually people relate their stories best in an interview situation since if one simply sits a person down in front of a microphone and ask them to talk, it can be hard to just talk in a coherent and interesting manner.
The interesting thing that Story Corps has done is to create “StoryBooths” in public spaces such as Grand Central Station in New York City. These are automated interview booths where people are invited, mostly as pairs, to come in. One usually interviews the other. Since the pair are usually connected in some way (a relative, best buddy, co-worker, etc.) some people may feel more free to talk about difficult issues in their lives than they would to a more distant broadcaster. These are collected. Some are aired on public radio but virtually all are archived.
See https://storycorps.org/
But a great many oral history projects are on a smaller, and often more personal, scale. Some public radio stations try to reach out to their community to gather oral histories. One of the most effective is WYSO, a public radio station in Yellow Springs, Ohio, that is part of Antioch College. The station manager is Neenah Ellis and I probably need to mention that she was, many years ago, a student of mine. She then worked at NPR for many years and now runs WYSO. That station is exceptionally interested in collecting oral histories. They have a project called Community Voices that gathers oral histories and they offer workshops to train people in how to collect those. See https://wyso.org/programs/community-voices
Yellow Springs (near Dayton) is a small community but their oral history project is huge and important. Nearly any community of any size could support the collection of oral histories. This is an important part of audio art. It is roughly the sonic equivalent to natural portrait photography and there are portrait studios in nearly every town. Oral histories can be collected anywhere. Nearly everyone has an interesting story (or 2 or 3 or many) to tell.
But the flip side of oral histories are soundscapes.
These are recordings of the natural environment designed to preserve the sounds of different places and events in the same way that landscape and similar documentary photo forms preserve the visual aspect of an environment.
In recent times the recording of soundscapes has been led by Canadian sound artists, composers, and researchers, probably started by the work of R. Murray Schafer, a composer, researcher and environmentalist who wrote an early seminal book: The Tuning of the World” (1977) and who claims to have invented the term “soundscape.”
These Canadians were concerned partly with documenting sounds for posterity, but also with what they called “acoustic ecology” — preserving sonic environments, preventing sonic pollution, etc. Here is a link to a more recent book by Shafer:
Many of these artists consider themselves composers and made sonic collages of the sounds they recorded. Two other influential Canadians in this genre include:
Hildegard Westerkamp https://www.sfu.ca/~westerka/
Claude Schryer https://www.musiccentre.ca/node/37411/biography
Another important documentarian of the natural environment is Bernie Krause. Although his early work was as a musician who incorporated some natural sound into his music, he has since gone on to record thousands of natural sounds as individual sound clips, many available on CD. His work can be studied at https://www.wildsanctuary.com/.
Combining oral history and soundscapes:
I also want to touch upon an important sound documentarian who combines the two genres discussed above. He records nature and scientific processes, ethnic festivals and music, and conversations related to these issues. He is Jim Metzner, producer of Pulse of the Planet, a two minute radio program aired daily over a great many public and commercial radio stations that feature sounds related to our environment and culture. https://www.pulseplanet.com/ These programs, which he has now done for thirty years, can be heard over the internet as well. His program has had a number of sponsors but it is currently supported by the National Science Foundation.
Finally . . .
Sound art of all kinds demands a real sense of listening, not just hearing.
There is a composer, who I have been aware of since my college days and now know personally as well, who has been concerned with what she calls “deep listening.” Any sound artist must learn to really listen in order to understand and manipulate sound. Her name if Pauline Oliveros and she started composing and working with electronics in music before that was common for women, I may discuss more of her work in future posts but here is a link to read now: https://deeplistening.org/site/
For now. . . Good listening – to people’s stories, their music and to the world.
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