Tan, Marcus Cheng Chye

This paper will examine the poetics of sound archiving as a means of documenting and evaluating Singapore’s cultural and political economy. It is twofold in consideration: an inquiry into sound’s significance for/in Singapore and the media/tion of archiving sound. This first concern involves an investigation of selected sound events and their relation to the cultural and political life-worlds (Lebenswelt) of Singapore/ans. The second section argues for an importance of archiving sounds in/of Singapore given the absence of any authoritative sound library or sound map. Many iconic, culturally defining sounds are now lost to time; this loss further underscores the importance of archiving for past sounds and the perception of these sounds by historical actors inform us about the changing character and identity of cities, people and cultural practices. Technology today provides the means to capture and contain sound, as ephemeral phenomena, in high fidelity and this paper will include a discussion of an ongoing research project in collaboration with the National Archives of Singapore (SoundscapeSG) which involves a web-based platform that contains Singapore soundscapes in ambisonic formats.

Soundscapes engender historical, cultural, social, and aesthetic meanings through acoustical qualities that reflect a community’s lived experiences. In this article, we propose music lesson ideas that help students appreciate and embrace their sociocultural heritage—by creating, performing, and listening to soundscapes that are representative of their locality. These lesson ideas are guided by pedagogical imperatives drawn from key soundscape literature, which reveals sounds as being powerful in sculpting culture and identity as well as impacting ways of knowing. Activities in the lessons serve to develop students’ aurality and their understanding of the sociocultural connotations of sound. The learnings gained may supplement more traditional musical skills and knowledge acquisition in the music classroom.