The term sharawadji and its related effect came to my attention several years ago while conducting a study on the soundscape and historical evolution of a section of St-André Street on the Plateau Mont-Royal in Montréal. In this study, I conducted several soundwalks per week over a three and a half month period. I recorded many of these soundwalks in order to use the digitally sampled and stored environmental sounds in a soundscape composition complementing the written component of this project. This particular manifestation of the sharawadji was felt at approximately three o’clock on a cold and humid morning in March of 2004. Walking with headphones on and microphone attached to a minidisk recorder in my mittened hand, I heard an omnipresent sound that I had never heard before while sounding this particular street. The sound was elusive for the greater part of the walk. Each time I heard it, I would stop all movement and stand perfectly still, however each time I would stop the sound would cease to be audible. After three or four times I thought that the sound, which I perceived as melodic in nature, was an aural hallucination. Eventually, the esoteric sound event became audible once more, and for a longer duration. I perceived it as a succession of elongated resonant tones, with wavering harmonic overtones containing a distinctive yet foreign timbre. The sound filled the immediate acoustic space, yet it was not emanating from within it. It was a sound that was everywhere and nowhere at once; subtle yet all encompassing. The instance of sound had the effect of suspending time, or at least slowing it down considerably as it commanded my attention. The mediation of sound through the recording process heightened my perception of the sound as it resonated through headphones that brought the sound very close to my ear. Barry Truax suggests that recording equipment should be used as an extension of listening, just as one uses a telescope or microscope to enhance the ability of the eye to see (Truax 190). Although the sound was not “loud” it was mixed into the ambient sounds of the quiet early morning, exerting a powerful influence over my senses.
“Avec l’effet sharawadji, nous participons a l’actualisation d’une impossible virtualité, et nous retenons notre souffle pour ne pas empêcher son accomplissement jamais accompli” (Augoyard and Torgue 127).
The experience was like a daydream wherein my ears and entire being abandoned themselves to the sonic event. Metaphorically speaking, everything around me ceased to exist for that moment except for this sound, which engulfed me and held my listening ear so intently. I probably held my breath, as suggested in the above citation, subconsciously trying to stay perfectly still in order to sustain the sublime sonic event and the state of elated contentment it instilled in me. The Sharawadji as experienced in sonic form is, in effect, something that is not touched (sawarazu) or is left as it is (sawaraji), as one would not want to interrupt its sequence of moments and the affect that they bring. Though the sharawadji is not touched and is left as is, the experience of the sharawadji touched me, and did not leave me as I was. It awakened a curiosity for sonic fantasy, and a desire to hear it again, as its sound touched my entire being like no sound had done before. Andra McCartney explains that the vibratory nature of sound means that sound touches every part of our bodies, by flowing through our entire being (Soundscape Works 179).
I felt exceedingly privileged to be an ear witness to this unique moment in sound. In retrospect, what I find interesting about this experience is that the sound that I heard was very subtle. I do not think that I would have heard it had I not been so focused on actively listening to the soundscape, nor will I ever be able to know if I would have heard the sound without the mediation of the recording device. While the sound event was unfolding I did not question what the source of the sound was, and even if I had, I don’t imagine I would have had a clue as to the origin, because the sound was too esoteric and unfamiliar to me. I was only able to discover afterwards upon manipulation in a digital sound-editing program that a moving train was at the source of this sound. I used equalization to cut out the high frequencies and microphone hiss, and raised the resonance and amplitude of the lower frequencies. After a few adjustments in frequency, the distinctive bass heavy repetitive clunk–clunk sound of a moving freight train became audible.
This equalization treatment of the field recording did not clarify the source of the wavering tones, which were also filtered using equalization. It was only in conversation with Véronique Taschereau, whose apartment was situated right alongside the tracks on Masson and Des Érables streets, that the source of the wavering tones was discovered. She explained that in the winter, every time the train traveled slowly around the bend in the track at Fullum and Masson streets, a high-pitched scraping/squealing sound would resound at an elevated amplitude. The squealing was due to the heavily corroded rails in this section of the track, which caused friction with the trains’ wheels. This was the source of the sound I heard as filtered across time and the cartographic space of 25 city streets (7 streets north, 18 streets east).
The following summer, this particular section of track was overhauled, which eliminated this sound from the sonic environment. The perception of this sound as a sharawadji in this particular instance is clearly dependent upon point of view. Wavering tones comparable in my mind’s ear to the concept of the music of the spheres were a nuisance for residents living in the proximity of the source and the cause for noise complaints. From an acoustic ecologist’s point of view, would it be fair to wish for the preservation of sound that is sublime in its ethereal tones at a distance yet aggressively grating and irritating at the source? The answer is obviously no, however the field recordist in me wishes the sound would still reach across the cityscape on cold nights.
The term Sharawadji was integrated into my vocabulary after having the above-mentioned experience, which means that after having been under the sharawadji’s spell, I was oblivious to the fact that this experience had a name. Canadian composer Claude Schryer’s text entitled Searching for the Sharawadji Effect: Electroacoustics and Ecology introduced me to the term, and enabled me to articulate and understand what I had experienced. Schryer explains that the sharawadji “is an esthetic effect characterized by a sensation of plenitude sometimes created by the contemplation of a complex soundscape whose beauty is inexplicable”(Searching For The Sharawadji 22). The sharawadji does not occur through simple contemplation of a beautifully complex sound environment, there needs to be an unexpected transformation in the observed sound environment for the manifestation of the sharawadji to occur. The catalyst for this transformation comes in the form of an element of rupture that shatters the perceived mundane properties of the soundscape. Only when this rupture or break away from “the mundane” occurs can there be a potential for the sharawadji to emerge.
What is being suggested by “the mundane” as a descriptor of sounds that populate a soundscape is that we generally become accustomed to these sounds that we hear on a daily basis, often to the point that we no longer hear them. The sounds of our environments become normalized, as we become accustomed to hearing cars, birds, lawnmowers, children playing in the back alley, helicopters, fireworks, drunken banter, dogs barking, wind, crickets, low-flying airplanes etcetera. The sounds offer us clues as to what is happening in the places that surround us, but we tend to block them out. Over time when engaging in active listening, patterns of sound are identified, and familiarity is achieved in regard to the types and frequency of sounds that compose the soundscape of a given area or place. Thus the soundscape is perceived as “mundane” and predictable, and the potential for it to exhibit an element of surprise is rare, which is rudimentarily speaking, an important element of the sharawadji.
Ears cannot be turned off, but they can select what they do and do not pay attention to by sharpening or softening their focus. We block some sounds out because as R. Murray Schafer suggests, there is an overpopulation of sounds: “there is so much acoustic information that little of it emerges with clarity” (Music in the Cold 71). The absence of clarity and differentiation between sounds becomes difficult in built environments where no thought was given to acoustic balance. We are aurally inundated by the sounds of our cities. Our coping methods are passive and do not work towards remedying the noise volume of urban environments. We cope by turning the stereo up, putting in earplugs, or numbing our aural senses, thus diminishing our ability to listen as we shift our threshold of hearing to ignore that which is a nuisance. The outcome is that we have lost a great part of our aural inquisitiveness and ability to understand and gain knowledge about spaces by listening to their acoustics.
