Discussions on music, noise and silence are aplenty, but when it comes to modes of listening, there is a sense of muted incomprehension. Do we listen? Do we listen enough? Do we talk about listening practices? As we walk into the city, we are moving through a spectacular variety of dynamic sounds, but how many of us actually listen to the city beyond a vague idea of noisy traffic and loud bazaars! The Delhi Listening Group believes that listening can transform your experience of knowing and being in the city. Here is one group that finally breaks the silence on listening!
Delhi Listening Group is an initiative of Ankur Society for Alternatives in Education and Phonebox Productions. Ankur is an organisation working in six working class settlements in Delhi with the aim of building collectives that are able to recognise and draw on the resources that are available in the neighbourhood while Phonebox Productions is an initiative in the field of sonic media art and broadcast. The group was started as a collaborative venture bringing together practitioners to explore listening practices as modes of creative and pedagogical inquiry into the city around us.
“We are interested in creating situations and spaces which invite people to listen to things they may usually take for granted, not notice, ignore, dismiss or refuse to engage with,” says the group. Recently, they conducted a ‘City and Sound’ session in collaboration with Khoj, comprising a listening tour of Khirkee area in Delhi followed by a discussion. The group believes that, “Listening is a different way of encountering the city than looking. We learn different things when we consciously listen. With listening practices, we try to understand with our ears as much as possible.” Reflecting on the concepts of noise and listening, they articulate, “listening is a process of composing and ordering the ways we attend to what we hear, perhaps noise is what we edit out of this meaning-making, that which violates a specific order of listening.”
Bringing attention to the fact that ‘noise’ is largely contextual and different sounds affect people differently in various circumstances, they give the example of a loud water pump which can be disturbing, but if it means that water is being filled into the tank in your house, the same sound can be quite pleasing. This identification of our relationship with sounds is crucial because “understanding sounds changes how they affect us.”
The recently-formed group is now trying to organise wider activities and interventions that focus on ‘learning through the ears’, developing ‘listening muscles’ and extending the sonic imagination. Some members of the group have also been working closely with school children to adapt listening practices to these contexts. They are also striving to get like-minded people together to generate more discourse and discussion on issues connected with listening and sound like noise control, bio-acoustics, sound in public space, shared listening, sonic art, acoustic ecology, etc.
Currently, they have put their heads (and ears) together to work on a mobile structure called the “Rik-Shor.” This unique cycle-rickshaw will be taken around different parts/localities of Delhi and would function as an interface/platform for locality-based listening trips.
The group would basically need to play by ear as this novel and intriguing initiative gathers momentum slowly, but steadily. A unique exploration like this can be highly impactful and definitely points out loud and clear that we need to make more noise about ‘listening’!