Why It's Important To Listen To Our Cities

In the process of making this Sounds Of The Cities series, the team behind the Sound Matters podcast hit a roadblock. Now that the forces of globalisation and industry dominate our urban environments, cities are fast becoming robbed of the sounds that render them distinct from one another. Each becomes a chorus of traffic congestion and construction sites, smothering unamplified intricacies such as the accordions of Paris or the birdsong of London’s sprawling parks. And so the problem is this: How does a podcast present a sonic exploration of the world’s most famous cities when there’s little left, sonically speaking, to help tell them apart?

Instead, the podcast connects with artists to discover how they contemplate, and interact with, the sounds of these cities. Host Tim Hinman speaks to documentarian Cathy Fitzgerald about how the cacophony of London crowded out her ability to think, forcing her to flee to the countryside; he invites sound artist Ish to explain how he reworks the noise of Delhi into music (for instance, by sampling and manipulating car horns to create something resembling a brass section).

It would be a mistake to dismiss this series as a mere reflection on the city as an artistic muse. There has always been a streak of activism within Sound Matters, driven by the fact that noise pollution everywhere is damaging our health and our natural environments. By listening closer to the spaces in which we live, we are better able to understand how they are changing and how we might choose to live alongside them. When the podcast is as impeccably produced as this (only to be expected from a show sponsored by high-end electronics manufacturer Bang & Olufsen), the potency and importance of listening is rendered crystal clear.